Olympic Games That Need to Be Added

You may not have noticed, but the Winter Olympics are on. (Yes, that was sarcasm.) You may love the Olympics. You may like the Olympics. You may not care about them. But, if you have not noticed them then you must not own a TV. They are everywhere! I even went so far as to look on the map to find out where in Russia is Sochi. It’s in the southern part of the country which tells me the northern parts must be too cold for the WINTER Olympics. Time to stop complaining about when it dips below the 50s here in Tennessee.

My favorite part of the Olympics are the unusual evens. Enjoy the skiing and skating. I’m watching the skeleton. Anyone who belly-flops onto a tiny sled, flying down a bobsled run face first with no brakes, is someone I want to buy a beer. That assumes they do not put the straight jacket back on him when the run is over. If that is too extreme for you, then you can watch the luge. It is the same thing as skeleton but the person is laying down, feet first down the bobsled run. What a bunch of wimps the luge guys are! I will admit I tried to get on the mixed doubles luge team, but I couldn’t talk Ashley Judd into being my teammate.

There are some games that I think should be added to the Olympic event list that have been overlooked.

• Ice Diving. Imagine the combination of the spectacular beauty and grace of diving with the insanity of ice fishing. You get on a diving board, bounce, flip, dive and try to make it through a tiny hole in the ice. That ice-hole is important. Without the ice-hole you can’t get back out after surviving the dive. One way in, one way out. Kind of makes the skeleton run seem safe, doesn’t it?

 

• Snow Polo. Do you have a horse you don’t really like that much? I’m thinking of the pony I rode as a kid that enjoyed scraping kids off its back using steel buildings to force children to choose between keeping a leg and riding a pony. If you have that kind of beast of burden, then snow polo is your sport. You play it just like regular polo – field hockey on horseback – but you play it in the snow. Now the risk of broken bones, falls, sprains and frostbite are very real dangers. But those happen to the horse you don’t like.

 

• Shovel Racing. I am shocked that this one isn’t in the games! You take a snow shovel, tie it to that horse you don’t mind shooting when it breaks it leg in the snow, then sit on the shovel while someone rides the horse as fast as it will go in the snow. Yeah, I want to try this one, too.

 

• Skijoring. Think shovel racing on skis. That is my kind of cross-country skiing. I think we should do it with snowmobiles instead of horses though. You can avoid injuries, temperamental steeds, and horse poop.

I hope these will be added to the list of games for Pyeongchang in 2018. Do you think the South Koreans will go for it?