Like I Was Sayin': How to make Winter Olympics even better
The Winter Olympics are at a crossroads. The question is whether the International Olympic Committee is ready to take the kind of steps necessary to move the Games to the next level.
Sure, they’re Olympian now, by definition. But they could be much better. I’m optimistic that the IOC is willing to surge ahead to ensure the success (and by success, I mean good TV ratings) into the future.
The IOC has already made steps.
Consider the difference from even 38 years ago. Back in 1980, the U.S. Olympics hockey team won the gold medal, but the rest of the Olympics? Boring figure skating. No short-track skating. No snowboarding, half-pipe. Not even any curling. There were only six sports – with 10 events (since things like skiing have multiple variations) – contested. This year? There are 15 sports with 102 events.
Here’s my point: The IOC doesn’t need to keep expanding sports. It simply needs to make the existing ones more exciting.
I have recommendations.
You want me to keep watching NBC’s coverage through commercials every five minutes and boring interviews? Try these three updates to the sports:
Multiple competitors at once. In events such as short-track speed skating, the excitement comes from several athletes racing simultaneously – and the inherent danger. Same thing is true on the snowboarding and skiing slopestyle events.
What if we added multiple performers to other sports?
I’m thinking of downhill ski races, sending them down side-by-side or side-by-side-by-side (elbowing each other at 60 mph). What about three or four luge teams shooting down a wide track simultaneously, racing to the finish?
Want something really out of the box? How about multiple figure skaters on the ice at the same time? The thrill of whether someone will land a triple-lutz, triple-toe loop combination will be multiplied when someone else is racing toward them. Backward.
Increase jingoism. When I was a kid, the Olympics were all about misplaced national pride. The Russians (who were the Soviets then) cheated. We didn’t. Wins over the evil empire were celebrated as if they proved our culture was better.
We live in a flattened world, where we don’t believe that anymore. But what if we tied medals at the Olympics to something of national importance – for instance, to the ability to have military bases in other countries. Each gold medal gets you three foreign bases, a silver medal gets you two and a bronze gets you one.
Do you think we’d care more about the giant slalom or the skeleton if a gold medal expanded American military influence?
And how significant would this year’s banning of the Russian team be if that meant they had to close all of their military bases in other nations?
Let’s bring back American pride: Make the Winter Olympics determine our nation’s influence on the world.
A winter pentathlon. The Summer Games have the decathlon and the pentathlon in track and field and this is the winter version. Imagine watching the same person over the course of the week competing in downhill skiing, figure skating, the luge, the ski jump and curling. It would be ratings gold, especially if multiple people were competing at the same time!
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.
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