As IF Times

link North Vancouver District wrestles with longboarding.

Modern times calls for modern updates to the staid old Olympic events.  In the 21st century, do people really care who throws a spear or hurls a ‘hammer’ the furthest?  Is it really captivating to watch someone lift the most dead weight?  Then there’s the running competitions.

It’s amusing enough that in a time when there are all sorts of possible conveniences of transportation invented and available,  that people will still be fascinated by how fast a human can run 26 miles.  The marathon was created as an homage to the couriers who had to run back to generals to report messages from the battlefront….about 20 centuries ago.   Yet to this day, modern athletes still perform these feats of human accomplishment and compete against others for national glory despite the fact that they have no particular relevance to modern life.  Thank goodness no one had to roll a stone for 26 miles back then.

I say it may be time to freshen up some of these traditional measures of human physical accomplishment with events which more clearly reflect modern society and sensibilities.  As the linked article describes, it appears that we are well on our way to adding ‘longboarding’ to the list of possible Olympic events.  Longboarding, for those who don’t live in Lotus land, is most simply described as riding a long skateboard while in the supine position down a steep and winding mountain road.  Did I mention that there is car traffic on the road at the same time?  While the ancient marathoners had to endure the risk of being killed as they ran back to command central, so would modern ‘longboarders’ run the risk of being taken out by a Volvo.

Adding the element of mortal danger would greatly increase the skill level (possibly) of aspiring athletes as well as dramatically spike viewership to the sport.  One can easily imagine categories of ability which would revolve around how many cars are on the track or whether to add trucks into the mix for the really advanced athletes.  In another time, parents would have done their best to tell their children not to play in traffic.  Who knew that they were holding back potential Olympic contenders?  If you can’t control kids, then legitmize their activities into sport.

As a matter of fact, we can pick many such childhood pursuits, tsk tsk’d by most parents, which can also morph into legitimate sport.  Swinging on a tire off a cliff.  Diving off rocks into rapids.  Cycling downhill in the dark.  An entire generation of kids can be brought into the Olympic movement.  Once parents see the light, they can encourage their kids to seek Olympic glory instead of being killjoys.

Of course purists will object to having such sports included among the traditional measures of human accomplishments.  Fair enough.  We can then re-brand these as the Darwin Olympics.