Stephen Skory

Breaking news: These sports will be immediately eliminated from the Olympic games, due to the fact that they are incredibly lame and arbitrary. Any sport that is judged is “inherently flawed and unfair,” the UN ruled today, and subjecting the worldwide public to these events will be deemed an “act of cruelty.” Any medals already awarded in these sports in the undergoing Olympics will be reclaimed and turned into equipment for legitimate sports, like weights or shot puts (much like turning ’swords into plowshares’).

• Boxing: A borderline event, it does have a clear scoring system, but matches can be called when “in the referee’s opinion, (a boxer is) being outclassed or excessively punished.” Also, boxing is brutal and thuggish.
• Diving: Until and unless the diving competition becomes quantifiable (e.g. splash height and distance in the belly flop competition), diving is prohibited from the Olympics.
• Equestrian: While this isn’t always judged, any Olympic sport that uses another animal is so obviously disqualified it needs no further comment.
• Gymnastics: The king of judged sports. Incredibly popular world-wide. This event pits tiny men and girls (and they’re almost entirely girls, see the “16″ year-old Chinese girl) in events where grace and style are actually part of the scoring. There have been scoring controversies every year. Until and unless scoring can be done by an objective computer, this event is banished to the WE channel between reruns of Hallmark movies.
• Judo & Taekwondo: While these are awesome events, they are judged. An electronic scoring system, similar to fencing, would be acceptable.
• Modern Pentathlon: See equestrian, above.
• Rhythmic Gymnastics: See gymnastics, above. Also, no real sport needs a ribbon which one twirls artistically.
• Synchronized Swimming: While the world loves a pool full of young women in swimsuits (see Baywatch), any sport set to music and that has choreographers is clearly eliminated from the Olympics. Dancesport isn’t in the Olympics, and Synchronized Swimming shouldn’t be either. (*)
• Trampoline: Most don’t even know this is in the Olympics. So most won’t miss it.

The UN also ruled that in evaluating future Olympic sports, the IOC will only consider events that Stephen Skory cares about.

(*) With apologies to my good friend Chris S., it seems to me that Dancesport is hijacking the word ’sport’ like so many humanities hijack ’science.’ If dancing was obviously recognizable as a sport, it wouldn’t need to append the word at the end. We don’t call it Baseballsport. Or Physicsience.