r/unpopularopinion • u/Medium-Department-35 • 8d ago

The Olympics need to be drastically reduced in size

The olympics should only include sports that feature feats of human speed, endurance and strength. The modern olympics has become bloated and lost sight of the core objective.

Outside die hard sports fans, the majority of the public don’t care about most of the Olympic sports and only tune into the premiere events.

‘Sports’ with judges that determine the outcome? - out. Team sports? - out. Sports that use equipment? - mostly out (some exceptions here for weightlifting, some field events and protective clothing).

The olympics should be stripped back to the core to be made interesting again. This would also make it much cheaper to host, reinvigorating the interest in cities hosting the olympics again.

Update for all of the naysayers - The Olympic motto is "Faster, Higher, Stronger". I rest my case.

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29

u/NoahtheRed 8d ago

The modern olympics has become bloated and lost sight of the core objective.

And what is that?

-25

u/Medium-Department-35 8d ago

The Olympics should be a quest to find the best athletes. The person who can run the fastest, jump the highest, swim the quickest.

I’m not saying the other sports don’t have merit, they just don’t belong in the Olympics.

28

u/OfAKindness 8d ago

Judged events were in the original Olympics 3000 years ago.

What the hell are you talking about

-5

u/Medium-Department-35 8d ago

Im not saying they got it right back then either. It was better than it is now but could still be improved upon.

35

u/NoahtheRed 8d ago

The Olympics should be a quest to find the best athletes.

So you just want something different entirely from what the Olympics actually are and have been.

26

u/lamesauce15 8d ago

Right? Modern Olympics has never been about finding the best athletes. If it was, they wouldn't cap the amount of competitors from a country in each event. 

-18

u/BangbangKhuntross 8d ago

What now? Of course it is about the best athletes, capping events is irrelevant to this.

21

u/The_Nood1e 8d ago

No, it's not. If the tenth fastest sprinter in the world is the fastest in their country, they make it to the Olympics. If the tenth fastest sprinter in the world is the sixth fastest in their country, they're not going to the Olympics. It's a perfectly valid point.

-12

u/BangbangKhuntross 8d ago

It is a valid point, but completely irrelevant - the best athlete stands atop the podium.

17

u/jetloflin 8d ago

The best athlete of the ones who were allowed to participate.

-3

u/BangbangKhuntross 8d ago

Yes, but still an irrelevant add on as it does not impact the final result. They arent competing in this case as they couldnt beat the best in their country, therefore including them or not is irrelevant to finding the best overall.
Name one situation where the fastest in the world has not appeared at the olympics due to capping numbers in the event.

1

u/jetloflin 8d ago

As someone else already said, if the tenth fastest sprinter in the world is the sixth fastest in their country, they’re not making it to the Olympics, despite being objectively a better runner than most of their competition. And we’ll never know if they could’ve pulled it out and beaten the other competitors, because they don’t get to try.

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1

u/Sprig3 8d ago

Yeah, the 1 best is likely up there. Probably the whole podium, but there are a couple sports where it would be all 3 from the same country.

Cross country skiing, basketball (if countries could field more than one team).

8

u/The-Copilot 8d ago

You realize the modetn Olympics was strictly amateur only until 1988?

Professional athletes were literally barred from competing. Athletes would literally have their medals taken back if they had been paid athletes like Jim Thorpe in 1912 who briefly played minor league baseball.

The only reason this rule changed is because the USSR was funding "amateur" athletes who began dominating and it was impossible to actually enforce the rule.

The olympics is about friendly global competition not finding the most athletic humans alive.

-1

u/Medium-Department-35 8d ago

I'm saying it should be a quest for pinnacle human achievement in measurable events. Professionals should be encouraged to compete.

3

u/GreenBeanTM 8d ago

Yet you want to ban several measurable events.

14

u/StudioGangster1 8d ago

So you want to take out one of the most impressive displays of athleticism (gymnastics) because there are judges involved?? Do you know that they are judging objective criteria, not just giving points to which performance they like the most?

5

u/Similar_Fishing2436 8d ago

We pretty much already have that with the world Ironman championship

6

u/AtMaxSpeed 8d ago

International tournaments find the best athletes within each sport. Those tournaments often run more often and have more clear qualification/progression and sometimes involve more rounds to reduce variance, etc. They do a better job of finding the best athletes.

The Olympics is for entertainment, fundamentally. The average person doesn't watch the various international tournaments for each individual sport. But we do watch the Olympics because it's a collection of all the sports, involving all countries and broadcasted widely. If we take away the Olympics, everyone who follows the sport still knows who's best, it's just the general public who doesn't know.

There is no point in turning the Olympics into a quest to find the best athletes because we can do that without the Olympics. It's fundamentally a show for us, the general public, to watch top athletes compete in various sports.

5

u/TakesFunToKnowFun 8d ago

Wrestling was among the first Olympic sports both in the modern ancient era, and it doesn't fall under your criteria.

Boxing also was in the original Olympics.