We only get steady coverage of Olympic sports once every four years. Because of this, I have little ability to understand or appreciate some of the events that I’m unfamiliar with, like say Handball or Badminton. As the summer games enter their second week, Gymnastics and Swimming give way to some of the second-tier events that are supposed to tide us over until the Sprinting begins.
This means that we’re getting to the point in the Olympic Games where the events are becoming more difficult to watch. This isn’t because the coverage is bad, or because the athletes aren’t very good, it’s just that there are some events that are so disconnected from any reality that it can be difficult to understand what is happening on the screen… and why?
Take the Triple Jump for instance. Was there a time in history when sequential jumping was an everyday necessity? Stringing three successive, yet different, jumps together is actually something more common in a Super Mario game isn’t it? And how did we determine that three jumps was better than two and that four were too many? Why not just let the person continue jump after jump until they can’t jump anymore? I say that the person who gets the furthest around the track gets the gold.
I understand that there was a time when throwing a javelin was essential to human survival, but hasn’t hitting something with said javelin always been the historical point of javelin throwing? How come there aren’t any targets? It also doesn’t help the uneducated viewer that the officials don’t leave the previous javelin stuck into the ground to that you can see who’s has gone the furthest. How about spicing the javelin event up by having it become about accuracy instead of distance. I’m not saying that we put people innocent people in danger, but can’t we at least skewer some innocent watermelons?
To make these middle-weeks of the games more interesting than ever, here are 13 more ideas that I respectfully submit to the International Olympic Committee:
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