The Winter Olympics and fringe sports

The Winter Olympics are underway in Italy and with it the return of some fringe sports that most people only hear about every four years. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I find fringe sports interesting.
The Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games run from Feb. 6 through 22. They will feature such popular sports as alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating, speed skating and ice hockey.
This year’s Winter Olympics added its first new sport in over two decades – ski mountaineering, aka “skimo.” The last one added was skeleton in 2002. (See articles by NPR and Sherwood News.)
All told, the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy will feature 116 medal events across 16 different sports and disciplines.
Some seem like fringe sports that should be eliminated from the games but probably won’t for historical and other reasons. Chief among them is curling. Come on, that’s not a sport. It’s a pastime for people in the northern climes.
I also don’t get the appeal of bobsleigh, which comes in two-man and four-man varieties as well as two-woman and women’s monobob.
While luge is a legitimate sport in my mind, I don’t understand the reasoning behind doubles, which stacks a second person on the sled. It has been relentlessly ridiculed in memes this year, for good reason.

Photo: Luge women’s doubles at Winter Olympics 2026. (Olympics photo)

How do you find out you’re good at this? What’s the conversation look like https://t.co/3ZuH3NDVPV pic.twitter.com/4mYOoaEGhg

— National Champion Speaker (@HoosierSpeaker) February 11, 2026

Winter Olympics Introduces Exciting New Event 'Septuple Luge' https://t.co/Eo8Ou5o1hO pic.twitter.com/eu8uTPnWUQ

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 11, 2026

El deporte es tan homoerótico en tantos aspectos. los amé pic.twitter.com/lX206BwrWH

— JONATHAN (@_macaconinja_) February 11, 2026

Latest physical hall of fame is for U.S. Olympians

By my count, there are over 465 physical halls of fame that you can visit in the U.S. and Canada. They include halls devoted to aviation, music, sports at the college and professional levels, and other pursuits.
The newest brick-and-mortar hall of fame is the United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It hosts the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame.
The U.S. Olympic museum opened on July 30. The 60,000-square-foot building features 12 galleries. The museum cost about $91 million to build, according to USA Today.
On July 3, the Ellensburg Rodeo Hall of Fame in Ellensburg, Washington, opened its doors. It features historic photographs and artifacts, showcasing the best cowboys and cowgirls in the history of the Ellensburg Rodeo. (See article by the Daily Record.)

Photo: Exterior of United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs, Colo. (United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum)

Physical halls of fame on the way for U.S. Olympic athletes, Illinois rockers, more

There are at least 459 halls of fame you can visit in the U.S. and Canada. And more are on the way. (Check out this Google map of the halls of fame in North America.) They include halls of fame for athletes, musicians, inventors, aviation, fishing and toys, to name a few.
The newest physical halls of fame are the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame, University of Texas Athletics Hall of Fame and the National Comedy Hall of Fame Museum.

Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame

The Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame partnered with HeadzUp Vegas to create an interactive boxing exhibit and museum. The NVBHOF Interactive Boxing Exhibit and Museum is located inside the Boulevard Mall. It held its grand opening on June 22, 2019.

University of Texas Athletics Hall of Fame

The University of Texas Athletics Hall of Fame opened a brick-and-mortar facility in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 30, 2019.
The Frank Denius Family University of Texas Athletics Hall of Fame is a $17.1 million project housed in the 24,713-square-foot Red McCombs Red Zone in the North End Zone of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

National Comedy Hall of Fame

The National Comedy Hall of Fame Museum opened its new facility in Holiday, Fla., on Nov. 12, 2019. The museum features material and memorabilia documenting the U.S. comedy industry.

Here’s a look at some more that are on the way:

U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame will be hosted at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum. The museum is scheduled to open early 2020 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The 60,000 square-foot museum is dedicated to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes and their compelling stories. It will feature artifacts, interactive exhibits and videos.

Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame

The Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame was announced last year and the inaugural class will be revealed this year. There will be a permanent display in PNC Park recognizing those selected for the honor.

Memphis Sports Hall of Fame

The Memphis Sports Hall of Fame is scheduled to open an exhibit at the AutoZone Park baseball stadium in Memphis this spring. The Memphis Sports Experience & Hall of Fame is a collaboration between Memphis Tourism and the Memphis Redbirds organization.

Illinois Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The planned Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66 this week announced its first class of inductees. They include Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick and others. The organization behind the hall has purchased a building in Joliet, Illinois, for a future museum. The first floor of the museum is scheduled to open later this year, the Herald-News reported.

Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame

The Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame is establishing its inaugural exhibit within the Charles M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana. It is currently raising funds for the project.

Character Hall of Fame

Last July, Comic-Con created the Character Hall of Fame with Batman as the first inductee. The inductees will be on display at the physical Comic-Con Museum, which is due to open in 2021 in San Diego’s Balboa Park.
The museum is described as “a year-round pop-culture wonderland featuring rotating immersive exhibits, theaters of varying sizes and extensive educational programming.”

Photos: Exterior of United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum (top); and logo for Illinois Rock & Roll Museum Hall of Fame.

Most noteworthy magazine covers of 2016

After reviewing the most controversial magazine covers of 2016, it’s time to look at the most significant and noteworthy magazine covers of the year (excluding final issues and those with naked cover models).

Playboy, March 2016

The first nude-free issue of Playboy magazine featured Instagram-famous model Sarah McDaniel on the cover.
(See articles by the Daily Mail, the New York Times and AdAge.)

Variety, Jan. 26, 2016

Entertainment trade journal Variety covered the #OscarsSoWhite controversy with a whitewashed cover titled “Shame on us.”
(See articles by the Huffington Post, CNN and AFP.)

The New Yorker, May 2, 2016

The New Yorker magazine paid tribute to the passing of musician Prince with a cover that evoked his hit song “Purple Rain.”

Vogue, June 2016

Vogue scored a coup by getting Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, for her first magazine shoot, which landed her on the cover.
(See article by the Daily Mail.)

Attitude, July 2016

Kate’s husband, Prince William, was the first royal to appear on the cover of a gay magazine when he graced the July 2016 issue of U.K. gay lifestyle magazine Attitude.
(See articles by the Daily Mail, People and the Telegraph.)

Vanity Fair, Summer 2016

Continuing the royal theme, Queen Elizabeth II posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz for the cover of Vanity Fair.
(See article by the Daily Mail.)

Women’s Running, July 2016

Marathon runner and transgender woman Amelia Gapin broke barriers by appearing on the cover of Women’s Running.
(See articles by New York magazine and the Daily Mail.)

Harper’s Bazaar, India, October 2016

Tracey “Africa” Norman and Geena Rocero became the first transgender women ever to appear on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.
(See article by the Daily Mail.)

Sports Illustrated, July 4-11, 2016

Continuing the transgender theme, Caitlyn Jenner posed for the cover of Sports Illustrated 40 years after she won the gold medal for decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics as a man, Bruce Jenner.
(See article by the Daily Mail.)

Glamour, August 2016

Actress Mila Kunis started a craze when she posed (nearly) makeup-free for the cover of Glamour magazine.
(See articles by E! Online and the Huffington Post.)

V magazine, November 2016

Singer Alicia Keys followed Kunis by going makeup-free for V magazine’s cover.
(See articles by MSN and V magazine.)

Time, July 11-18, 2016

Time magazine covered Britain’s exit from the Europe Union, aka Brexit, as potentially the first domino to fall in the EU.

People, Oct. 10, 2016

People magazine had to scramble to cover the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, one of the biggest entertainment news stories of the year.
(See articles by CNN and the New York Post.)

Sports Illustrated, Nov. 14, 2016

Sports Illustrated featured the World Series champion Chicago Cubs on a winning cover.
(See article by Sports Illustrated.)

People, Nov. 28, 2016

People named Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as its “Sexiest Man Alive!”
(See articles by the Daily Mail and People.)

Sports Illustrated, Dec. 19, 2016

Sports Illustrated named NBA star LeBron James as its “Sportsperson of the Year.”
(See article by the Daily Mail.)

Sports Illustrated, Dec. 26, 2016

Sports Illustrated spotlighted Olympic swimming great Michael Phelps on the cover of its year-in-review issue.

Modern pentathlon not modern enough

With the 2016 Summer Olympics underway in Rio de Janeiro, it’s time for me to go on my every-four-years rant about how the lineup of sports in the Summer Games needs to be revamped.
First, I’m against having sports in the Olympics that already have a world championship equivalent or major professional analog. Therefore, I’d scrap the following sports: soccer (the World Cup is enough), basketball, rugby, tennis and golf (the Olympics canceled this one, but brought it back). The same goes for baseball, which is set to return to the Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo.
Second, I’d dump equestrian events from the Olympics. Those sports are as much about the horse as the athlete. Plus, that would mean one less venue a city would have to pay to construct.
Third, I’d get rid of sports that look silly today or that likely wouldn’t exist anymore if not for the Olympics keeping them alive. In this category, I’d eliminate race walk (an oxymoron if ever there was one), badminton, fencing, rhythmic gymnastics, field hockey, synchronized swimming and table tennis.
Along the same lines, I’d scrap the following games from track and field: discus throw, hammer throw and shot put. Of course, the decathlon and heptathlon would have to be modified as a result.
The International Olympic Committee is more likely to add sports than eliminate them unfortunately.
In June, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee supported adding five sports for the Tokyo 2020 games: karate, skateboarding, sports climbing, surfing and baseball/softball. The event program for the 2020 games will be finalized in mid-2017.
Finally, one sport I’d like to see modernized is the modern pentathlon.
The modern pentathlon has been a core sport of the Olympics since 1912. It comprises five very different events: fencing, 200-meter freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, and a final combined event of pistol shooting and a 3,200-meter cross-country run.
The contest was created to simulate the experience of a 19th-century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines: he must ride an unfamiliar horse, fight enemies with pistol and sword, swim, and run to return to his own soldiers, according to Wikipedia and the New York Times.
I say modernize the sport for today’s audiences. Make it more like a Jason Bourne competition to find the most bad-ass warrior.
Keep the swimming, cross-country run and pistol-shooting. But replace the horse jumping with a motorcycle race and swap out fencing for hand-to-hand combat of some type, such as mixed martial arts. I'd bet sports fans and TV audiences would eat that up.

Entertainment predictions: Final season for ‘Walking Dead’ announced and more

Entertainment bloggers and journalists have weighed in with their predictions for 2016.
Here are some notable predictions covering movies, TV shows and music that caught my eye.

‘The Walking Dead’ final season will be announced

Joseph Lee, a writer for 411mania, thinks AMC will set an end date for its hit series “The Walking Dead,” currently in its sixth season, sometime in 2016.
“Regardless of what some people think, TV shows can’t go on forever,” he wrote. “‘The Walking Dead’ returned to lower ratings than we’re used to … and the lukewarm reception of ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ tell me that maybe everyone’s getting a little tired of zombies.”
He doesn’t believe season seven will be the last, maybe not even season eight, but AMC will announce when the final season will be, he said. AMC is likely to announce the end of the show with a multi-season deal, Lee said.

‘Batman v Superman’ will beat ‘Captain America’

The website Moviepilot predicts that “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” will beat “Captain America: Civil War” at the box office.
“I think that ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ will be the real winner of the battle,” Moviepilot writer Luke Gordon Smith said in a post on Oct. 23, 2015. “Even though the Marvel Cinematic Universe has many movies to back it up and the DC Cinematic Universe only has one, ‘Batman v Superman’ pulls more weight in the superhero world, and will pull more fans at the end of the day.”

2016 will see a superhero movie bomb

Moviepilot’s Smith also thinks at least one of the big-budget superhero movies coming out in 2016 will be a box-office disaster.
“As there are seven superhero movies scheduled next year, I think that more than one of them will bomb,” he said. “In my opinion, seven is just too much. I know I will see them all, but your regular person will probably get tired of the constant comic book based genre. ‘Deadpool,’ ‘Gambit’ and ‘Doctor Strange’ all have things going against them. ‘Deadpool’ is rated R, and ‘Gambit’ and ‘Doctor Strange’ are relatively smaller superheroes. All of these things will lead to at least one superhero bomb.”

Frances, Jack Garratt and Nao are music artists to watch in 2016

The BBC and Google Play Music both announced their predictions for breakthrough music artists for 2016.
The BBC picked 15 artists and the Google Play Music list included 10 artists.
Three were on both lists: Frances, Jack Garratt and Nao.
Music discovery app Shazam also made its predictions for the breakout artists of 2016.
“According to its data, artists like Andra Day, who recently teamed up with Stevie Wonder for ‘Someday At Christmas,’ Tory Lanez and Post Malone are set for big things in 2016,” Revolt reported.

Disney buys a big video game publisher

Variety magazine’s writers and editors predict that Walt Disney will buy a big video game publisher like Electronic Arts in 2016.
“After spending big to buy Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm, Disney continues its trend of major acquisitions by purchasing a high-profile video-game company such as EA in order to exploit Disney’s wide-ranging library of costumed ‘Avengers’ and ‘Star Wars’ Jedis,” Variety says.

Summer Olympics in Rio will be a mess

“The Rio Olympics will be plagued by problems, in part a result of the political and economic turmoil plaguing the Brazilians. It will go down as the most poorly run and executed Olympics in history,” Andrew Klausner, founder and principal of AK Advisory Partners, a consultancy to the financial services industry, told Forbes.

Porn will invade virtual reality

With three major virtual reality systems set to hit the market, adult entertainment studios are making porn for the immersive experience.
Industry officials writing on XBiz.net predicted that the porn business will make waves the VR market in 2016.
Adult studio Naughty America will be at CES, aka the Consumer Electronics Show, next week to show off their VR porn.

Photo: Promotional art for “The Walking Dead” season six midseason premiere.

Wide world of weird sports

There’s no shortage of oddball sports trying to attract fans.
In October 2010, I wrote about 10 such sports. They included women’s lingerie football (Legends Football League), competitive eating (Major League Eating), professional video game playing (Major League Gaming) and beer pong (World Series of Beer Pong).
Other websites have compiled their own lists of goofy sports. Here are a few notable ones. Let’s see how they stack up. Warning: there’s a good deal of overlap.

10 Quirky Sporting Events (Neatorama; Nov. 24, 2009)

1. Toe Wrestling
2. Cheese Rolling
3. Poohsticks
4. Extreme Ironing
5. Buzkashi
6. Cell Phone Throwing
7. International Regatta of Bathtubs
8. Chess Boxing
9. Unicycle Hockey
10. Rock Paper Scissors League

17 Sports You Didn’t Know Existed – videos (Huffington Post; June 28, 2011)

1. Beard championships
2. Gurning (competition to make the ugliest facial expression)
3. Canine freestyle dancing
4. Beer pong championships
5. Cheese rolling
6. Cup stacking
7. Blo-Ball
8. Wife carrying
9. Extreme ironing
10. Rock paper scissors
11. Shin-kicking
12. Toe wrestling
13. Pig-n-Ford Racing
14. Segway Polo
15. Chess boxing
16. Joggling
17. Competitive eating

The 10 Most Insane “Sports” in the World (Cracked; Sept. 26, 2007)

1. Royal Shrovetide Football
2. Kabaddi
3. World Mountain Bike Bog Snorkeling Championships
4. Chess Boxing
5. Jai-Alai
6. The Eton Wall Game
7. Buzkashi
8. Eukonkanto (Wife carrying)
9. Hurling
10. The Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake

The 10 Absolute Craziest Sports on the Planet (Bleacher Report; Sept. 20, 2011)

1. Mokomoko Boxing
2. Lingerie Football
3. Limbo Skating
4. Quidditch
5. Sumo Wrestling
6. Shin Kicking
7. Worm Charming
8. Wife Carrying
9. Bird Song Competition
10. Sepak Takraw

10 of Weirdest World Championships Around (Neatorama; Oct. 3, 2012)

1. Rock, paper, scissors
2. Four square
3. Stone skipping
4. Sauna endurance
5. Mobile phone throwing
6. Toe wrestling
7. Air sex
8. Swamp football
9. Bog snorkeling
10. Sumo suit athletics

6 Insane Sports That Could Be in the Next Olympics (Cracked; Aug. 20, 2008)

1. Dueling pistols
2. Tug of war
3. LeCanne (Canne De Combat)
4. Speed skiing
5. Wushu
6. Rotorsports

10 Odd Discontinued Olympic Sports (Listverse; Sept. 24, 2008)

1. Live pigeon shooting
2. Solo synchronized swimming
3. Dueling pistols
4. Rope climb
5. Standing triple jump
6. Tug of war
7. Roque
8. Jeu de paume (Game of palm)
9. Distance plunging
10. Swimming obstacle race

There’s even a book on the subject of weird sports: “No Dribbling the Squid: Octopush, Shin Kicking, Elephant Polo, and Other Oddball Sports” (2009) by Michael J. Rosen. It’s available from Amazon.com.

2014 Winter Olympics recreated in Legos

With the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, coming to an end Sunday, my kids and I decided to make a few depictions of the games using Lego bricks and minifigures.
Here are the fruits of our labor. Pictured here are dioramas showing pairs figure skating, slalom skiing and luge. Enjoy!

Hot Olympic Girls and other cool websites

Got the winter blues? If you’re a straight guy or lesbian, here are some websites that will get your blood pumping.

Hot Olympic Girls

Hot Olympic Girls is a website devoted to the gorgeous women competing in the Olympic games. It includes lots of photos and background information on the female athletes.

Sochi On Tinder 

Sochi On Tinder is a blog devoted to the dating profiles of athletes competing at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Tinder, a smartphone app for men and women to hook up, has received a lot of press lately.

Sports Illustrated Swim Daily 

Sports Illustrated is covering the Olympic games in Sochi, but it also just released its annual swimsuit issue. Swim Daily is SI’s year-round website devoted to hot ladies in swimsuits.

Photos: Russian biathlon athlete Xenia Daskalova (from Hot Olympic Girls); and the Tinder profile of Spanish free skier Katia Griffiths (from Sochi On Tinder). 

Wrestling dropped from the Olympics; Here are some replacement ideas

The International Olympic Committee on Tuesday dropped wrestling from the Olympic program, starting with the 2020 games.
Removing one of the oldest Olympic sports was a bold decision. Wrestling, which includes freestyle and Greco-Roman events, has been around since the inaugural modern Olympics in Athens in 1896.
The committee made its decision after analyzing criteria such as television ratings, ticket sales, global participation and popularity.
Eliminating wrestling from the program allows the IOC to add a new sport later this year. The current program for the summer games includes 26 sports.
Wrestling now joins seven other sports vying for a single opening in 2020, the Associated Press reported. The others are a combined bid from baseball and softball, karate, squash, roller sports, sport climbing, wakeboarding and wushu.
Baseball and softball were removed from the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing games. I think they should stay off the program. I’m not a fan of large team sports at the Olympics, especially ones with healthy professional leagues like baseball. As such, I support removing basketball, soccer and tennis from the summer games, too.
I’ve previously written that the Olympics should clean house and dump other sports as well. I’d toss out badminton, table tennis and the equestrian events.
The IOC should free up some more spots for new and interesting sports like sport climbing, wakeboarding and perhaps even pole dancing.
One sport on the bubble with Olympic organizers is modern pentathlon, which has been on the Olympic program since the 1912 games. It combines fencing, horse riding, swimming, running and shooting – the five skills required of a 19th century cavalry officer. That doesn’t sound too “modern” to me.
I say it’s time to update that sport for the 21st century. Replace fencing with mixed martial arts, swap out horse riding for Motocross and substitute running with parkour. You can keep swimming and shooting in the mix.

Related reading:

The Summer Olympic Sports of the Future (The Atlantic; Aug. 13, 2012)

Photos: Michelle Stanek, United States Pole Dance Champion 2012 (top); and sport climber Johanna Ernst.

NBC’s fall TV schedule looks terrible, except for ‘Revolution’

NBC is using the Summer Olympics to promote its fall TV lineup. And by promote, I mean shove down our throats.
With the exception of “Revolution,” NBC’s fall schedule looks like a train wreck of epic proportions.
Ads for supposed comedies like Matthew Perry’s “Go On,” “The New Normal” and “Guys with Kids” are painfully unfunny. The C-list celebrity reality show “Stars Earn Stripes” looks funnier.
The best thing about NBC’s sitcom “Animal Practice” is the featured monkey. But thanks to some ill-timed words from Olympics host Bob Costas that monkey is now seen as a racial insult to gymnast Gabby Douglas.
Then there’s the hunky firefighter drama “Chicago Fire,” which looks like a boring rehash of shows past.
Only “Revolution” captures my interest.
Premiering Sept. 17, “Revolution” takes place 15 years after all electric devices mysteriously stop working. I’m intrigued about what that world, plunged back into the dark ages, would look like.

Pole dancing in the Olympics? It could happen

Pole dancing and sheep shearing are among the many sports that have been proposed for the Summer Olympics.
Pole dancing would be a fine addition to the games. It’s edgy and takes strength and grace to pull off. And it’s starting to shed its unseemly, strip-club image as more women take to pole sports for fitness. (See articles by CBS News and Suite101.)
But old images are hard to shake. The Huffington Post Comedy website added pole dancing to a list called “Summer Olympics: 16 ‘Sports’ That Should Be Included But Aren’t.” Others on the list include competitive eating and beer pong.
As for sheep shearing, it’s been proposed for the Olympics by the Federated Farmers of New Zealand, according to the BBC. I think that one should stay on the farm.

Photo: 2011 U.S. Pole Dance Champion Natasha Wang.

Time to dump basketball, soccer and tennis from the summer Olympics

It probably won’t happen, but the International Olympic Committee should drop basketball, soccer and tennis from the summer games.
The best athletes in men’s basketball and soccer and men’s and women’s tennis are already richly rewarded from professional leagues. Olympic competitions for those sports are unnecessary.
The best players in basketball gravitate to the National Basketball Association in the U.S. The NBA championship is the top accolade in that sport. Does LeBron James really need a gold medal to go along with his championship ring? I think not.
And the lopsided U.S. victories at the Olympics are an embarrassment.
In fairness, women’s basketball would have to be dropped from the Olympics as well. Women have the WNBA in the U.S., but the league is struggling.
In soccer (a.k.a. football outside the U.S.), the FIFA World Cup determines the best national team in the world. End of story. There are World Cup championships for men’s and women’s teams.
Tennis has an established professional circuit. There’s no need to have it at the Olympics.
It isn’t unheard of for the Olympics to drop high-profile sports. The Olympic committee nixed baseball and softball starting with the 2012 games.
The 2012 London games include 26 categories of sports.
The games wouldn’t be such a financial burden on the host cities if they cut back on some of the venues and sports.
If I were in charge, I’d scrap the equestrian events as well. That’s a sport for the very rich and they have enough competitive forums. Same goes with sailing. Get rid of it.
I’d also toss out badminton and table tennis. Their time has come and gone.
The Olympics are bringing back golf with the 2016 games in Rio. But once again, that competition is unnecessary since the best of the sport play professionally. So, I’d get rid of golf too.
In the long history of the Olympics, sports have come and gone. Games no longer competed at the summer Olympics include tug-of-war and live pigeon shooting. (See “9 Really Strange Sports That Are No Longer in the Olympics”; Time, July 16, 2012.)
Sports seriously considered for the upcoming Olympics have included karate, squash, wake boarding and roller sports.
They should consider adding drop ball as seen on “Adventure Time.”

Resources:

List of Olympic sports (Olympic.org)

Olympic sports (Wikipedia)

Summer Olympics (Wikipedia)

Winter Olympics in Vancouver conclude

In honor of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which are wrapping up tonight, here are a couple of Olympics-themed lists.
The first is BlackBook’s “The 25 Best Looking Athletes at the Olympics.” The list includes gold-medal winner and Sports Illustrated cover girl Lindsey Vonn, pictured above.
The second is “The 5 most memorable Olympic figure skating falls” according to Scott Hamilton. The article on EW’s PopWatch blog includes videos of some spectacular figure skating falls.
The article would have been more helpful if it specified when during the videos the wipeouts occurred. So I’ll do it for them.

1. Kurt Browning’s Short Program in Albertville 1992.
Fast forward to 3:40 on the YouTube video.

2. Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini in 1984.
Skip ahead to 1:30 on the video. It’s a doozy.

3. Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner in 1980.
FF to the 1 minute mark.

4. Laetitia Hubert from France at the 1992 Albertville Games.
Jump ahead to the 52 second mark for the first of many falls.

5. Michelle Kwan at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Start at 2:55.

You’re welcome.

Chicago holds fire sale on merchandise from failed 2016 Olympics bid

Two weeks after losing the 2016 Summer Olympics to crime-ravaged Rio de Janeiro, backers of Chicago’s competing bid are holding a fire sale on merchandise bearing the candidate city’s logo.
A notice on the Chicago 2016 Web site says, “Celebrate Chicago with 50% off all merchandise.” There’s no telling how many shirts, jackets, hats, umbrellas and golf balls the city has in stock.

Interested? Check out the online store.
I can only hope that over-confident organizers didn’t pre-order any clothing boasting Chicago as winner of the 2016 Games. They’d have to torch those.

Chicago’s Olympic failure cheered by many Chicagoans; Chalk up a victory for Chalkie

As a native Chicagoan, I was disappointed that Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics was rejected. But it was probably for the best.
Family members who live in the city’s north suburbs were against the idea of Chicago hosting the Olympics. They argued that construction of the Olympic venues would be marred by graft and sweetheart deals in a city known for corruption.
They also figured that the city, and ultimately taxpayers, would end up footing the bill for cost-overruns.
Then there were concerns about traffic gridlock associated with the games themselves.
Needless to say, they were pretty relieved when the International Olympic Committee knocked out Chicago’s bid in the first round of voting Friday. Rio de Janiero ultimately won the honor.
Now Chicago will have to focus on its problems: aging transportation infrastructure, schools in need of aid, and the city’s crime rate, to name a few.
One wag sold T-shirts suggesting that Chicago’s Olympic mascot be a chalk outline of a murder victim holding a torch. Chalkie became the unofficial mascot of the city’s anti-Olympic movement. Check out the “Chalkie 2016” Web site here.
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass proposed a T-shirt that said “Chicago 2016” on the front and “Terre Haute 2020” on the back.

As every Chicago politician knows, Terre Haute, Ind., is home to a federal prison. That's where a few would be tossed after boodling their way to Olympic fortunes. And why 2020? That’s how long it would take for grand juries to do their work.

Most Chicago news coverage about the Olympics was supportive of the city’s bid. But there were many opponents. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that anti-Olympics activists cheered as the rest of the crowd at Daley Center Plaza mourned the voting that sent the 2016 games to Brazil. For more coverage of Chicago’s Olympic bid, check out the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.