Last night I stayed up and watched Michael Phelps. Once again, he won a gold medal. In the end, he broke the Olympic record by winning eight gold medals. Very impressive.
Watching swimming made me think about the arbritrariness of these races. Years ago somebody no longer had to swim away from people killing him and had too much time on his hand. So he came up with decorative swimming like the breaststroke, the butterfly, and the backstroke and declared that he or she wanted to see who was the fastest swimmer using these methods. No longer was it important to just be the fastest swimmer from one point to another. Now the swimmer must do it in a unique way.
I thought I would try to spice up track and field by using the same approach to discovering the fastest people on land. Feel free to suggest better events.
First off is the worm crawl. Who is the fastest worm crawler on earth? Would could even spice this one up by having it done on different surfaces. We could have a worm crawl race in which they start out on dry ground, move to sand, then mud, and finish it up by falling off a ledge ten feet into a pool of water. I would love to watch it.
The next event is heavily influenced by the backstroke - the backwards run. Who is the fastest backwards runner on earth? Now that is a slogan that would keep the viewers attention.
I'm am struggling to come up with a solid third one to create good relays like they have in swimming. All I can come up with is the one legged hopping race. This one could be done by people with just one leg or by people using only one leg.
With these three events, we could then do a relay. First leg could be the worm crawl, followed by the one legged hopping race, then the backwards run, followed by normal running as fast as you can. The track and field medley if you will.
On another note, one swimming event I would like to see that they do not currently do is to see how far someone could swim underwater while holding their breath. I bet you used to do that with friends when you were younger.
Finally, I cannot even believe that trampoline is an Olympic sport. Wow is all I can say to watching people jump up and down on a trampoline as sport. I thought about spicing that event up too. We could combine it with running. If we create a giant trampoline the size of a football field, line up 100 people on one end zone and have them race as fast as they can, at the same time, to the other end zone. They would be bouncing off one another in Olympic glory. It would be great. Did I mention that I would also like barrel-sized holes position frequently throughout the trampoline? That would be Olympic fun.
I'm looking forward to the next Olympics where they implement some of these new variations on the already existing sports. Remember, these might be unusual but I am sure the breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly were unusual when they first began.
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You can read the true origin (as long as the person that put it on there wasn't lying) on Wikipedia.
Butterfly Stroke
Breaststroke
No origin listed on freestyle or the backstroke.
