SportsJuly 31, 2024

Ten sports we should cut from the Olympic programme (and what could replace them)

Contributing writer

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?

England vs USA tug of war at the 1920 Olympics (Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

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.

Imagine Luke Littler winning an Olympic gold medal (Photo: Zac Goodwin/PA Images via Getty Images)

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?

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’

Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

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.

someone landing in the water with a big splash surrounded by Z fossil fuel branding as they try to rehabilitate their polluting image with the public — Definite Olympic potential (Photo: Shanti Mathias)

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.

Keep going!

Without a Seine or an Eiffel Tower, what would an NZ Olympics opening ceremony look like?

SportsJuly 30, 2024

Dreaming of a New Zealand Olympics opening ceremony

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

Politics reporter

Without a Seine or an Eiffel Tower, what would an NZ Olympics opening ceremony look like?

The French had Celine Dion, boats floating down the Seine and a heavy metal band with a beheaded Marie Antoinette. What would we have?

The year is 2028: Christopher Luxon is still our prime minister, Taylor Swift is still on the Eras Tour, and the Olympics’ host city, Los Angeles, has been forced to abandon the ceremony due to local water wars. Somehow, standing out from the big global superpowers, one plucky nation is chosen to rise to the test of hosting the world’s largest sporting event: Aotearoa New Zealand.

It’s a tough gig for such a small country, but if there’s one thing that stands out about New Zealanders, it’s their desire to one-up the French. In every other aspect, however, New Zealand is woefully unprepared for an event of Olympic levels, which is why we’ve never done it before – not even the winter one. But does it hurt to dream?

The build-up to the ceremony has been tense. New Zealand were able to secure the Olympics by offering up Auckland and Wellington as host cities, a promise of good Kiwi ingenuity and a tidy Kiwi mentality – it was the repeated quaintness of the word “Kiwi” which truly sold us on the international stage. Though many New Zealanders, and indeed, those around the world, asked, why? And how? Good questions solved by Luxon’s promise of a results-driven event within a workable budget (amount not disclosed), and not to worry because taxpayers will see the economic benefits of such a revered sporting event balance out all the last minute infrastructure spending anyway.

Again, the case is made for a new waterfront stadium to be built in Auckland, stat. Unfortunately, years prior, Auckland Council had chosen to revamp Eden Park instead by giving it 10,000 extra seats. If only the waterfront stadium dream actually got off the ground when it was first pitched 18 years ago.

Being the largest and only covered centre city stadium in New Zealand’s biggest city, Eden Park is chosen to host the opening ceremony. There’s no point in trying to emulate Paris’s outdoor spectacle, as half of Queen Street still resembles a derelict wasteland of empty retail space and the Waitematā Harbour is as polluted as ever, and still not quite as revered as the Seine. The industrial backdrop of Penrose would be a hard sell for the international athletes, so Go Media Stadium (formerly known as Mt Smart) is out of the question. Aucklanders worry the city’s lack of culture may be a thorn in the side of a memorable ceremony, so a pitch is made – and then rejected – to bring Wellington Airport’s giant statues of Gollum and Gandalf up for the occasion. A decision to lean heavily on fern imagery is chosen instead.

In 2028, Eden Park is still the only Auckland venue vaguely suitable for an Olympics event (Photo: Amber Easby)

In the lead up to the big day, the Olympics rings are installed and hanging off the Sky Tower, Auckland mayor Oscar Kightley politely and repeatedly calls for improved behaviour from locals in the media, and Auckland City Council is staring down the barrel of millions of dollars in debt thanks to a much needed clean-up of the city to rid layers of gum and vomit and those pesky smells from the streets.

The 4,500 athletes competing in the games travel from the Olympic Village dotted across Auckland’s waterfront where, just a few blocks ahead, construction for the City Rail Link still hasn’t finished, and the city’s excessive collection of road cones has been dumped into the underground to avoid overwhelming tourists. The French are unimpressed by the lacking scenic route between the waterfront and Kingsland, but the US competitors find it cute. Meanwhile, Wellington City Council is hurriedly trying to block the last of the multiple leaks across the capital in the hopes that travellers won’t be put off making future trips to the windy city.

The delivery of the Olympic flame to Eden Park is a spectacle in itself: a cross-country relay takes place with the torch travelling from Northland to Stewart Island before arriving back in Auckland. It passes through the hands of Luxon in Wellington, Richie McCaw in Christchurch, and a stop-over in Hobbiton with Peter Jackson before arriving in Kightley’s hands in Auckland.

The floor of Eden Park is transformed to resemble a thick bush, because “nature” seemed like a safe bet to sell New Zealand on. The opening ceremony kicks off with 2,028 performers executing a specially-choreographed haka, and it’s this leaning into Māori culture which prevents the NZ Olympics from resembling a very watered down and much cheaper version of London 2012. Light projections across the grounds and dancers retell the Aotearoa’s creation story, the separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku which formed light, before floating puppets of kiwi and tūī are carried across the stadium while Dames Kiri Te Kanawa and Hinewehi Mohi sing Pōkarekare Ana.

The parade section sees the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra perform the hits from the Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring soundtrack as countries march out. When they’re done, “traditional New Zealand music” is played instead: Canada walk out to a recording of ‘How Bizarre’ loud enough to drown the boos, the Japanese are forced to listen to ‘Slice of Heaven’ and Belgium learn what a halfway house half way down Dominion Road is by way of Don McGlashan.

Out of a smoke screen, Lorde appears onstage to sing a rousing but stripped-back rendition of ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ with Paul Goldsmith on piano, in a dress imitating Bjork’s Athens moment lit with the projections of Aotearoa’s greatest sporting moments: Yvette Williams flying through the air, Peter Snell breaking through the finish line, and a simple logo that says “Up the Wahs”. A performance of ‘Poi E’ from Pātea Māori Club follows, before Rita Ora takes the stage, because a national export is essential in every ceremony and as the wife of Taika Waititi she was the easiest person to book. She sings a club-ready version of ‘Anchor Me’, which critics describe as almost as good as Chris Warren’s rendition on Shortland Street, but not quite.

Lorde, Paul Goldsmith and Rita Ora would be among the billed performers (Photos: Getty Images, The Spinoff)

The Olympics cauldron, shaped like a half-cut kiwi fruit with poking torches to resemble the seeds, sits in the middle of the stadium and is lit by New Zealand’s most successful medal holders: Lisa Carrington, now the soon-to-be mayor of Tauranga, and Ian Ferguson. Tongan athlete Pita Taufatofua, of oiled-body fame, returns to hand Carrington and Ferguson the torch. Both torch-bearers wear korowai and travel by a float-turned-waka to light the cauldron, leading to many fumbled pronunciations from overseas commentators.

The ceremony ends with flames burning the Auckland city skyline, and the Olympic rings shining through the night as they hang from the Sky Tower. On television, the spectacle is vivid and joyous, though viewers won’t have to know the truth of Auckland’s public transport system and the hours of stand-still traffic now caused by this ceremony. The entire globe is in disbelief: New Zealand actually pulled it off. In the distance, John Banks laughs from his Remuera mansion.