Reform the Olympics

The Olympics in Beijing are less than two hundred days away.

That means we are getting closer to that rhapsodic time when every four years our sports media take 3 weeks off from worrying about the Maple Leafs, Blue Jays and Raptors to enlighten us on what we used to call amateur sport.

This usually takes the form of telling us which Canadian is going win which event; various predictions of how may medals “we” will win and; excuses or outrage when one of ours test positive for marijuana before jumping on a snowboard and careening down a mountain.

When the predictions are invariably wrong, the half-baked analysis follows. Let’s face it we don’t really have a chance until we reform the Olympics. Let’s deal with the summer ones.

REAL CANADIAN SPORTS

First, let’s add Canadian type sports. This is a no brainer really. Street Hockey is the obvious one.

But how about Mall Parking Lot Curling - lots of practice facilities on those 360 days of the year when the lots are empty.

Freshwater Sports Fishing could work. We’ve got the “mostest” and the freshest water in the world - for now anyway.

Table Hockey - the old one with the pegs that you use a marble for a puck would be best. I bet we’re the only ones with this model left.

Canadian Football - a game played nowhere else in the world featuring unique teams made up of 19 (non-imports who are usually but not always Canadians) and 14 Americans

A NEW PENTATHLON.

We could also replace quaint old events with equally quaint new events with Canadian content.

The Modern Pentathlon would change to the More Modern Northen Pentathlon.

Fencing would be replaced by Stick Swinging Hockey Fights.

Running by Glow-in-the-Dark Bowling ( 5 pin).

Shooting with Mosquito Extermination.

Equestrian with Log Rolling.

and Swimming by Personal Watercraft Racing.

REPLACE STUPID SPORTS

And let’s get rid of those truly stupid Olympic Sports and replace them with our own inventions.

What a waste of a beach is beach volleyball. Sand Castle Construction will be better.

Synchronised swimming which “we” used to be good at has to go. I’d replace it with Standing Broad Jump and Standing High Jump. (Canadians won medals in these discontiued events a hundred or so years ago. Some kind of conspiracy here, I think.) To save facility costs they could do their jumping on the beach with the sand castle competitions.

And finally the cycling event called Individual Pursuit. That’s the one where they go a couple of laps at walking pace looking backwards and then race like hell for one lap. Replace individual pursuit with Trivial Pursuit.

Now we'll have a chance.

That’s all folks.