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This is legit an SNL ski. I think they did it for figure skating.
announcer: it seems that Russia has randomly selected their 3 time gold medal athlete again to compete! how lucky!
No problem, we can just put all birth certificates, death certificates, and government-issued ID (front and back) on the blockchain to ensure randomness.
39 Year old Electrician Dale walks across it without any issue. You see, it’s just like one of his jobs that someone else engineered from a desk without ever seeing that the job is impossible. But, Dale is the man who pulls it off by crossing narrow trusses carrying tools and the new equipment, while his assistant watches from below rethinking his career knowing Dale’s the man he’s going to have to replace in the next 10-15 years.
Ok, but give them 1 year and a salary to train, make every event into Cool Runnings.
Also only allow 26 year olds so we have a level playing field.
If one of your players breaks the lucky egg, that’s it you’re out.
I’d love this. There’d be a lot of great stories about the training and everything leading up to the event.
The montage of each athlete from start to game day would be so much more impressive. I don’t sports betting, but I’d absolutely start the day the athletes are selected.
As funny as Peter Thiel’s Steroid Games would be, seeing regular ass people become somewhat good at a thing is more interesting than seeing a 1-in-100million freak of nature do something even further beyond my own experience than what pro athletes already do.
Steroid games sounds disgusting. I’m not surprised to learn that Thiel is one of those guys that is into steroid freaks. Yuck. It is horrible for the people taking them, and gives them lifelong problems, like those poor woman the Stasi in East Germany were tasked with doping without their knowledge to win in olympic competitions, swim team I think idk if others too, during the cold war.
Just awful, they might still be around, normally I support the right to use drugs, but anabolic steroids are just awful and have few if any legitimate uses.
I’d be a bit more interesting if they only got a month or two to train - if it’s a year then they ought to get pretty good (too good)
If you don’t give them enough time to train then this wouldn’t be as interesting as you think it’d just be a lot of injuries
A year gives them a chance to actually condition themselves. Anybody can achieve that transformation or something close with dedication. A month though, and even the best training in the world isn’t going to make up the difference between a randomly selected athletic and nonathletic person.
But the point is that it is your average joe that hasn’t trained to see how the average person would fare.
The average Joe can go try random sports today. You can even watch people try new things for the first time.
The point is to inspire people by showing what dedication and support can do to elevate Average Joe.
My surprise is that this isn’t a common thing from the TV network. It would be fairly simple to do a “virtual” overlay of some average Joe running on the same track from previous years, and individual sports would be even easier to do featurettes.
I’d lean toward two people being featured. An average Joe male and a decathlete female or some such. There are some events that even an average man would crush, but seeing the woman beat the guy consistently would also be kind of fun.
What events do you reckon an average Joe would crush? I’m struggling to think of one.
I think they mean relative to a woman, so basically anything where strength is a major factor. I think they specified decathlon athlete for women so they’d be on more equal footing.
Testosterone is a hell of a drug. For example, my wife is friends with a female powerlifter. While I do work out, it’s not really with any sort of consistency and I never focus on raw strength. Her second place winning squat max was my 12RM.
Lol I don’t think you can compare a local powerlifting comp with the Olympics. For reference, the current record for the women’s 49kg weight class clean and jerk is 117kg. The average American man is ~90kg, which would put them in the 87kg+ weight class, where the womens record for the snatch is 140kg. I think you’d be hard pressed to find an average Joe who could snatch his bodyweight, let alone ~1.5x .
I’m not. I’m comparing local female power lifting to the average man. We’re strictly talking about non-olympians.
I’d lean toward two people being featured. An average Joe male and a decathlete female or some such. There are some events that even an average man would crush
This is what I was talking about?
Mental gymnastics of course.
curling is the only thing i can think of. Maybe a luge but thats just because the extra weight gives him an advantage.
Nah an average man would suck ass at curling. Believe me I have a girl friend who does curling semi professionally and invited us to come try a couple times. It’s way harder than it looks and if you never tried it before you will not get a single stone inside the circle. The amount of control needed for that is not something an average person has.
Inertia is a loooong process, you’re right that’s why dudes just fire 100 mph pucks at each other
Shout out to the US women’s hockey team though, they’re crushing it
I think being a decathlete is a bigger advantage because they have a better intuitive feeling of physics.
When I was a kid and didn’t know anything about any celebrities other than what I saw on TV or heard on the radio, I used to enjoy some stand-up by Seinfeld.
One joke I once enjoyed from him is that the luge is the only Olympic sport one might engage in involuntarily.
Mental gymnastics of course.
This is almost the plot of The Hunger Games.
At PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, a large video game convention, they have an event called The Omegathon where random attendees play a series of video games to decide who is the best.
When the event has proper commentators, it is the best thing at PAX.
(Unfortunately, most of the time, the person with the mic barely commentates and doesn’t even tell the audience which competitor is on which screen, which sort of ruins it for spectators.)
no murder tho
yet
(and the hunger games is similar to the japanese movie “battle royale”, famously liked by feet lover quentin tarantino, probably just because he can point to it as stupid trivia about where the battle royale genre comes from, the same thing I’m doing now)
No intentional murder, but I assume that if grandma gets drafted into the ski jump or if random untrained people like Dale the electrician are pitted against each other in Olympic fencing, boxing, or rugby, there are going to be a few deaths.
Pro athletes weren’t (officially) allowed to compete in the Olympics until 1988
The long term university students with golden long term “scholarships” in the US, the Soviet soldiers with unlimited hours for their “hobby”, and the legion of public employees in European countries that went for 8 hours runs before “work” were 100% not professional athletes.
8 hours runs before “work”
This would get me to actually sit through a meeting, but at what price?
there’s a huge difference between collegiate and non-paid athletics and dale in the example above.
I’ve said this for years. Make it like The Price is Right and just call people down from the stands to do the 110m hurdles.
Seeing somebody train their entire life and have the perfect genetics for something isn’t encouraging normal people to have a go. I want to see a fat builder doing the triple jump for a cash prize.
I was always bored of seeing “the best” to do his thing. Sure it’s interesting for a few seconds to see someone go absolutely nuts on a yo-yo, but then it’s just noise. And the next one who is the “second best” just does the same thing again, but idk, his string has less tension or some shit.
I still would never watch someone do sports but the other day I had this idea: Children sports must be more exciting to watch because children grow -> they have to adapt to their new arm length on the match day! Whoops his aim is off by 2 cm today, can he adapt in time??!
I don’t wanna hear about all the abuse that would encourage
I’d pick random amateur athletes of the sport. Gymnastics in particular seems kinda dangerous if you have never trained it somewhat seriously. The gap between mildly talented amateur athletes and world elite athletes should usually still be gigantic.
IDK, I want to see the interview with Dale after he puts on skis for the first tine, but before he does the ski jump.
“I can see you have put the skis on backwards. It’s this a secret technique that you stumbled upon?”
Hes stumbling on something alright
Nah nah I want to see Dave from accounting try out Big Air snowboarding
I’ve been trying to defend this idea in my friend group for years! Let’s call it the normalympics, and treat it like half a reality show half a sport competition. I want to see an middle age accountant learn pole vaulting each weekend during one year.
May I present to you Eddie the Eagle
I vote yes!
Good, I’m in :)
That might actually get me to tune into the Olympics…
Walmart has cameras and facial recognition on their self checkout lane. It’s been said that they let people keep doing stuff like this until it hits the threshold for when it can be considered an arrestable offense, and then they have them arrested.
On an unrelated note, covid is still a thing, stay safe and wear a mask. Also, cash exists.
Was this supposed to be on a different post?
