In order to move forward, sometimes we have to let go of the past. 

The Olympics! It’s like the Christmas of sports. There are so many things to love about it. Getting to confidently use terms like “repêchage” and “golden minute” without knowing precisely what they mean! Athletes breaking world records! Simone Biles! There’s nothing better than spending two solid weeks watching people from countries you’ve barely heard of winning medals in sports you didn’t know existed.

So far, I’ve been enjoying the skateboarding, one of the newer sports at the Olympics, first introduced in Tokyo in 2021, along with climbing and surfing. The 2024 Olympics will also see the world’s first Olympic breakdancing medals. Some people say anything which is subjectively scored shouldn’t count as a sport, but the Olympics is more than an exercise in leisure-based taxonomic classification. It’s about watching people perform truly insane feats of athletic strength, agility and endurance, and then crying about it afterwards. 

Besides, the Olympics have always had fairly loose criteria for what is considered a sport. Ever since the Olympics was rehabilitated in 1890, they’ve been constantly tinkering with the program. Some of the weirder discontinued events include hot air balloon racing, poetry, kite flying and architecture. The Olympic committee is currently considering baseball, cricket, flag football, lacrosse and squash for consideration in forthcoming competitions. But adding a new sport is expensive, and there’s only so much room in an already crowded schedule. Here are my suggestions for an updated 2028 viewer-friendly programme. 

Get rid of football and replace it with tug of war

Listen. I’m a football fan. I know about Gegenpressing. I know about Total Football. I even wake up in the middle of the night and pay to watch it. But that doesn’t mean it deserves a place at the Olympics. There are already a million other football trophies all of which are much more coveted and prestigious. All having football on the programme does is exhaust and injure the already overworked players, who ought to be home resting their legs in preparation for walloping Spurs. Football is for literally every other day of the year. So why not replace it with a sport that doesn’t get its fair share of the limelight? 

I think we should bring back an Olympic classic: the tug of war. The tug of war ran for five Olympic games but was dropped from the program after 1920. An entire century has passed, and I think it’s time for another go. It’s visually compelling. It’s cheap. It’s egalitarian. And it’s over quickly. What more could you want? 

Ban horses and bring in rollerblades

This may be controversial as New Zealand has a long history of equestrian success. But I just don’t think animals should be allowed to compete in the Olympics. This isn’t Air Bud. There’s no denying there’s historical precedent. The ancient Greek Olympics was a largely equine-based competition. But we don’t compete naked anymore either. It’s time to move on. 

I’m not saying that getting a horse to jog sideways isn’t a sport. Clearly the riders are extremely talented individuals, with as much precision and technique as champion fighter pilots. But it’s unbelievably tedious to watch, and always puts me in mind of a member of the landed gentry trying to parallel park a limousine, if the limousine was named Chipmunk, and had pleading brown eyes.   

The skateboarding has been so enjoyable to watch, that I think it’s time to add a few more wheels into the mix. Why not swap out the horses for a spot of rollerblading? There’s so much potential here. Two of the best events of the Winter Olympics are speed skating and figure skating, both of which could easily make the transition to concrete. Not to mention roller derby. Somewhere out there, there must be a Tonya Harding of the asphalt, waiting for her moment to shine.

Replace race walking with darts

One of the most boring and pointless sports, rife with cheating, in which everyone looks like they’ve had an unexpected bowel movement at the AGM and is trying to get to the bathroom without arousing suspicion.

I’m not against boring sports on principle. Which brings me to my suggested replacement: darts. There’s something comfortingly dull about a good game of darts. It’s a brilliant TV sport. It has a high skill ceiling. Anyone with a modest budget can play along in their living room. And there’s something charming about Olympic events where the athletes look like ordinary people, by which I mean their muscles don’t have muscles.

Replace some of the wrestling with arm wrestling

Not all wrestling. This is, after all, the Olympics and getting rid of it entirely would be like taking away the chariot racing. No. The wrestling must stay. But do we need quite so much of it? Six different weight classes is excessive. Can’t we just sort everyone into small, medium and large and be done with it? 

If we halved the wrestling time, we could easily have enough programming space for a bout of arm wrestling. Apparently competitive arm wrestling leads to serious injuries. But tell me which Olympic sport that doesn’t apply to? 

Replace some of the boxing with jiu jitsu

I don’t mind a bit of boxing. But like wrestling, judo and taekwondo, there’s just too much of it. Obviously getting through every country in every weight class makes the exhaustive schedule mathematically inevitable. But I can’t help feeling like the Olympics would be better served with a wider variety of shorter martial arts contests. 

Take karate, for example. Why did they get rid of karate??? Surely someone dropped the ball here. What about BJJ? What about an open MMA round? Sure, there’s the UFC, but it’s so damn expensive. Can’t we have it once every four years, as a treat? 

Replace tennis with miscellaneous world records

The best thing about the Olympics is the stakes. They’re so high! It’s incredibly moving to watch people who have trained hard their entire lives for a few scant moments of potential glory. Tennis, on the other hand, doesn’t need more publicity. The widespread popularity of tennis means that the Olympic stakes are low, because nobody cares. Watching tennis at the Olympics is like paying to see the Bolshoi ballet compete in a line-dancing competition. 

What never gets old is seeing people break world records. Instead of adding a bunch of overexposed sports to an already busy program, why don’t we accept that tennis is better on its own terms, and swap it out for a few random  medals? Fastest throw. Highest kick. Most push-ups in under a minute. Hell, we could even bring back the beep test. 

Replace the 400m breaststroke with the bomb

The best thing about the swimming heats is watching the world record creep forward at ever-diminishing intervals, as the athletes edge towards the limits of human potential. Perhaps one day we’ll reach a biological impasse, beyond which no new world records can be broken without body modification. But there is a lot of swimming, and some of the heats are better than others. Maybe it’s time to talk about giving up one of the lesser strokes, like breaststroke. 

Yes, it would undoubtedly ruin the lives of a few young Australian men who have probably been training their entire lives. But that’s the price of progress. If getting rid of an entire swimming stroke is too controversial, I think many people would agree that synchronised diving isn’t pulling its weight. It’s fun to watch for about five minutes. But the most exciting thing that can happen is someone falling flat on their face. So why not embrace that? I propose we introduce the concept of “The Bomb” to an Olympic audience. Surely VAR is advanced enough to accurately measure the largest splash radius. And NZ might scoop an extra medal or two. 

Replace team gymnastics with rope climbing

Like many diehard Olympic fans, gymnastics is the sport I’m most excited to watch, especially with a talent like Simone Biles, who has spent the last four years inventing new kinds of gravity. But every sport has to make sacrifices.

To this end, I think we should drop the gymnastics group medals. Maybe I’m just a crass individualist, but I think the Olympics is one time where it’s fine to be a libertarian. I don’t care which country has the most best gymnasts. I’m only in it for the individual glory.

If we cut the group competition, we’d have space to introduce a new apparatus. People have talked about introducing pole dancing to the Olympics, which isn’t a bad idea, but I think we should have a serious conversation about competitive rope climbing. Rope climbing was dropped from the Olympic program after 1932, but perhaps it’s time for a comeback. It’s fast. It’s cheap. Maybe there could be a special kind of ceiling-mounted bell you ring when you get to the top. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.

While we’re at it, let’s allow competitors in the men’s gymnastic floor routine to perform to music. They’re just out there rawdogging backwards handsprings, while the women get to tumble to TLC. The patriarchy harms everybody. 

Give shooting and archery a makeover

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I think we could afford to zhuzh things up a bit. How about some moving archery targets? How about a sniper round? In the Winter Olympics they have the biathlon, which is basically cross-country skiing with rifles. The shooting is interesting to watch because of the insane precision involved. But in general, the sport could afford to be a little more camp. To that end, why not bring back pistol duelling? It only appeared at the Olympic games once, in 1908, but I think it would add a little human drama to a sport which appears to be mostly about keeping your arm still. Back to back. Twenty paces. Velvet cowboy hats. Score it with Ennio Morricone and you have an instant, must-watch event.

Replace golf with literally anything

Anything at all. I don’t even care if it’s technically a sport. Chess. Poker. Mechanical bull. Catch and kiss. Limbo stick. Even a staring contest would be more fun. Seriously. Get it off the program. What golfers do in their own time is their own business. But there’s no reason to subject the rest of us to it.

In all seriousness, congratulations to anyone who has ever competed in an Olympic Games, besides the fascists and child rapists. Congratulations to all the New Zealanders, even the ones competing in fake and boring sports. And most of all congratulations to Simone Biles.