Three Sports To Totally Spruce Up The Winter Olympics

Ahh, Olympics fever. Every two years, when the world rocks up on some poor country's doorstep for the pinnacle of sovereign excess and summer- and winter-based sporting competition, the people of Earth go just the tiniest bit insane, with some temporarily evolving instinctive powers of Robust Expertise In Sports They Couldn't Even Name The Other 50 Weeks Of The Year, inevitably leaving those of us who are just in it for the sick flips and gnarly crashes to endure lengthy tirades about triple lutzes and Belgian twists and how the Romanians would look better out there if they weren't all so depressingly malnourished.

These exchanges are fun enough for about three days, before you realise – particularly so with the Winter Olympics' mere 15-sport-deep program – you're just hearing the same debates and comments over and over again: So-and-so stacked it on the halfpipe. Whatsherface fell off her skis. Speed skaters have grotesquely disproportionate thighs compared with the upper half of their bodies. Yeah, yeah; we're at the end of the first week of the Games, and you've heard everything new you're going to this year.

But it doesn't have to be this way. The Winter Olympics could be so much more exciting; so much more appealing; so much more extreme

You see, each Games, at least one unofficial “demonstration” sport is showcased in an effort to make evident that sport's deservedness for a spot in the hallowed ranks of Olympics-approved activities. While it's generally more an exception than the rule that these demo sports are accepted to official program status (*cough*curling*cough*), I think it's pretty safe to say that the IOC really dropped the ball when they turned down the addition of these sports to the winter itinerary, especially for someone who, say, spent nearly a decade thinking that rugby league was one of the most encouraging sports on the planet because of a childhood misunderstanding about what getting points for a “good try” meant.

3. Skijöring (1928)

If you're anything like me – that is, prone to sprawling bouts of inertia on the couch in the wee hours of the morning with the television flashing meaninglessly in front of your glazed-over eyes while you quietly sob into a rapidly depleting tin of Milo and wonder when it all went so horribly wrong – then you've probably noticed there is just, like, a shit-tonne of skiing at these Olympics, right? Seriously, if you asked someone to name the two most distinct features of the Sochi Games, their response would probably be “skiing and hot people”.

But skiing, like most other sports in the Winter Olympics, kind of gets old pretty quickly – it's just a variation on the entire event's theme, which is people sliding down things at dangerous speeds while the deranged among us quietly hope for a spectacular crash. And, obviously, even people living as far back as 1928 were already well aware of that fact, because at that year's St. Moritz, Switzerland, Games, they demoed the noble sport of skijöring – or, less poetically, skiing with horses

Yes, like the graceful four-legged speedboats of the Alps, our stoic equestrian companions were conscripted to pull athletes along while they soared off jumps and navigated slalom gates and generally looked utterly ridiculous in what amounted to the unholy but totally entrancing lovechild of horse racing, waterskiing and lunacy.

Move over, sliced bread. Picture: Wikipedia

Admit it. You'd watch the hell out of it.

2. Winter Pentathlon (1948)

I switched over to the Sochi coverage a few days ago to find myself confronted with an event I hadn't expected to see at the Winter Olympics: shooting. "What is it about shooting in snow," I asked no one in particular, "that makes it require a distinct event from its counterpart in the Summer Olympics?" Was it the terrain? The type of gun? The outfits? Because, let's face it, Sochi's had some pretty fantastic outfits this year, and no one can convince me that several wardrobe choices are not just a giant "up yours" to Russia's projected general attitude towards the deeply fabulous.

But, no, it wasn't any of those things, and if I hadn't been so quick to rhetorically question myself, time would have provided me with the answer: I wasn't watching shooting, the event, but shooting, the component of a wider sport known as the biathlon, in which competitors mix their firearm prowess with their love of covering stupid distances on goddamn skis. Taken as a whole, it's the sort of event that sounds welcoming to aught but the beardiest of Nordic lumberjacks, or maybe genetically enhanced super soliders.

Still, that didn't stop a bunch of people from getting together in St. Moritz (again), in 1948, to say, "To hell with your pansy-ass biathlon. What kind of sissypants Nancy-boy only wants to juggle two sports? That's right, the worst kind. All right, kittens - those of you who can reach down your pants and say with conviction that you even have a pair, to the right. We're going fucking pentathlon-ing.

You heard me. Our postwar athletes wanted nothing more than to demonstrate that they weren't just capable cross-country skiers and (pistol) shooters - they could mix that business up with downhill skiing, horse riding, and fencing. Why? Fuck you, that's why. It was 1948 and the world was still fresh on the high from beating Hitler's face in. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't go all-out and shoot for a decathlon, with the final component being a jousting match against bears on snowmobiles.

Sometimes I think, "Not even the internet will have a picture for this," and you'd be surprised how often I am proven devastatingly wrong. Picture: shirtigo.co

1. Bandy (1952)

In an alternate universe, the sport of bandy made it in to the 2014 Winter Olympics. We were so close, people, to this year seeing the Olympic debut of a competition that has come to be known affectionately as "soccer on ice". But, before you get too carried away with grandiose visions of grown men trying to bunt a soccer ball despite the handicap of wearing ice skates, I should let you know that perhaps a more accurate description would be "ice hockey with a ball".

Not that that's a bad thing. Picture: Wikipedia

The sport, first demoed in 1952 at the Oslo Winter Olympics, tried for admission this year, with no success - but that didn't stop the Federation of International Bandy from going ahead and staging this year's Bandy World Championships in Sochi anyway, in a passive-aggressive act of defiance that should, by default, earn it a place at Pyeongchang in four years' time.

And although it would be easy to dismiss bandy, given ice hockey's rock-solid position among the pantheon of winter sports at the Olympics, as a pale and gratuitous imitation event, consider that, at the Summer Games, there is room for more than one kind of wrestling, canoeing, swimming, equestrian event, cycling, gymnastics and martial arts. And, as we've established, there are like 1600 different skiing events already at the Winter Olympics.

So, really, I ask you: can you honestly look deep within yourself and say that you could ever see too much horrifying chaos on ice?

Mitch has some theories about the mental stability of the people who invented luge, so follow him on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing: @mitchables