The Practical Dubsism Rundown of Every Summer Olympic Event

Now that we find ourselves at the start of the 30th Olympiad, it is time for us here at Dubsism to perform another public service by giving you a quick rundown on things you need to know about each event of the Summer Olympic Games.  Let’s be hones, this is where you can learn a lot more about the Olympics than those moulyaks at NBC are going to tell you.

Archery – The only people who used bows and arrow were either Robin Hood and his band of thieves or Native Americans, and they are both all dead. The only people left using them are those enormously overweight southerners you see hunting deer on Saturday mornings on ESPN. The only thing more ridiculous than a 300-pound guy up a tree who thinks his camouflage NASCAR hat makes him invisible is the fact these Skoal-stained goatee wearers don’t dominate this sport.  Actually, that’s not the most ridiculous thing…I forgot they actually have a blind archer in this Olympics. Doesn’t blind archery sound like it belongs in the Monty Python Silly Olympiad?

Badminton – I don’t trust any sport which doesn’t have a ball, or at the very least a puck.  I certainly don’t have any respect for any sport whose object of play is called a “birdie.”  I have even less respect for this sport after discovering “birdie” is merely another name for “shuttlecock.” The entire sport and anybody who plays it can suck my shuttlecock.

Basketball – Here is the sport invented by Americans, perfected by Americans, and dominated by Americans.  Speaking as an American, I think it is amazing we found the last 12 not-gigantically fat Americans to fill out the team roster.

Beach Volleyball – The men’s version is completely unwatchable and the women’s version…well, let’s just call this what it is: sand-based soft-core porn. If Cinemax ever started a sports channel, women’s beach volleyball would figure prominently in its schedule.

Boxing – If the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ran a restaurant, they would be able to screw up a grilled cheese sandwich.  The only thing exciting about boxing is the chance  to see somebody get absolutely shit-hammered, but thinks to the IOC you have a better chance of seeing Bigfoot eating a unicorn than aan Olympic boxing knock-out.

Canoeing/ Kayaking – Remember the movie “Deliverance?”  What started as a bit of canoeing ends up in homosexual rape. There’s nothing sporting about that. Maybe we should just go all the way and make inbred hillbilly banjo picking an Olympic event as well.

Cycling – If you’ve ever lived in a city which has bike couriers and/or miles of deicated bike paths, you know that about 96.7% of avid bicyclists are complete douche-nozzles.  After all, this is a sport which produced the world’s only completely unsympathetic cancer survivor in Lance Armstrong.

Diving – Just once, I want to see somebody do a cannonball from the high dive.  It doesn’t have to be a diver; hell, it would be ever better if you got a shot put thrower or a super-heavyweight wrestler or weightlifter to do it.  Just one big dude doing a cannonball just once. Is that too much to ask?

Equestrian – Like the Olympics themselves, the equestrian events date back to the ancient Greeks, who developed what became known as dressage as a method of training for war.  In fact, in the early Olympics, only male military officers were permitted to compete.  We need to gt this event back to its martial roots.  I say make it a full-on medieval jousting contest.

Let’s be honest; there’s only two things that are cool to do on horseback.  One is jousting, and the other could be on the all-new Cinemax Sports Network.  You wouldn’t need judges for either; if you get knocked off your horse, you lose.

Fencing – Here’s another event that started as a military exercise, but lost it’s bloodlust somewhere along the way.  Somehow, sword-fighting morphed into long-haired Europeans poking each other with car antennas while wearing spaghetti strainers on their faces. The answer here is obvious; give them back the real swords and let the chips fall where they may.

Field Hockey – Who actually plays this game? Outside of American universities and three teams in Pakistan, where does this game exist other than the Olympics? Field hockey is the Slurpee of sports; it’s amazing how the simple addition of ice turns hockey from lame to awesome.

Gymnastics – As a black man in America today, I can say with absolute certainty that other than some sort of pork product, American black guys love nothing more than a white girl with a great ass.  Nobody has better asses than gymnasts, and just about the time I’m appreciating that, I’m reminded that most gymnasts are like 14 years old.  Then I go from “interested” to “feeling like I should be in a cell next to Jerry Sandusky.”

Trust me, you are going to want to check her ID before you go anywhere with this.

As far as men’s gymnastics are concerned, it is a weird combination of simultaneously being awe-inspiring in terms of what those guys can do (don’t tell me you aren’t impressed with the guys that do the rings) while being nearly completely uninteresting after the “Damn, I couldn’t have done that 20 years and 10,000 Big Macs ago” moment.

Team Handball – I don’t know what this sport is, but I know what it isn’t.  It isn’t your father’s handball; it isn’t middle-aged guys at the local YMCA slapping the piss out of a rubber ball in a racquetball court.  Team Handball is funky mash-up that is two parts soccer, one part basketball, and one part whatever.  I tend to stay interested in this for about five minutes, or until the “What the hell is this?” factor kicks in.

Judo – As a devotee of Judo, this is the one event that needs no tampering with whatsoever. The trouble is nobody really understand the difference between Judo and Olympic martial art, Tae Kwon Do.

Judo (“gentle way” in Japanese) is a modern martial art, where the object is to either throw or takedown one’s opponent to the ground, immobilize, or otherwise subdue one’s opponent with a grappling maneuver, or force an opponent to submit by joint locking or by executing a strangle hold or choke.  Strikes and thrusts by hands and feet are not allowed in judo competition. In other words, it is a bit like the first round of Bully Beatdown; you can’t punch a guy in the head, but you can certainly try to rip it off.

Modern Pentathlon  – Here’s another event with military roots.  It was created especially for the Olympic by the founder of the modern Games,  Baron Pierre de Coubertin.  It seems that Baron de Frenchy-Frog was inspired by the pentathlon event in Ancient Olympic Games, which was modeled after the skills of the ideal soldier at the time.  This is the concept behind the modern pentathlon. By replacing events like the javelin throw (When is the last time you saw somebody throw a spear in a war outside Africa?) with evenst like pistol shooting, the idea was to simulates the experience of a 19th century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines. Therefore, the events in the modern pentathlon are:

• Pistol Shooting
• Fencing
• 200-meter Freestyle Swimming
• Horse Show Jumping
• 3-kilometer Cross-Country Run

The thought was in order to escape, a cavalry officer of the time would need to ride an unfamiliar horse, fight with pistol and sword,  swim, and run. But like the original pentathlon, the modern one is showing signs of age. When was the last time an American fighting man recorded a confirmed kill with a sword?  This means we need the More Modern Pentathlon, with military challenges more reflective of today’s soldier.

• Rifle Shooting
• Judo
• Anything on Playstation
• Beer Pong
• Soliciting a Prostitute

Rowing – This is the one sport whose entire action (short of hauling the damn boat down to the water) is replicated by one of my favorite workout machines. I love the workout I get from the rowing machine, but there’s no way I could imagine doing that repetitive motion for 30 minutes without a TV in front of me or my Ipod in my ears.

Sailing – It’s not that I dislike sailing, I just don’t know enough about it to really understand what makes one boat faster than the next.  What I do know is the mere mention of the word “sailing” makes this damn song stick in my head.

Maybe Christopher Cross is just like his song and the event; I don’t get either of them. I mean, how does such a wussy song come out of a guy wearing an Earl Campbell jersey?

Shooting – See my comments on archery, and replace the bow and arrow with guns, and you pretty much get the idea. The two big differences are 1) guns aren’t an outmoded weapon and b) you can make shooting sports way cool again. To do that, ironically, all you need to do is go back to the way shooting sports were done before in the Olympics.

First of all, replace skeet shooting with its original variant, live pigeon shooting.  Sadly, this event was only held once at the 1900 Paris Olympics. The return of this event would be a natural for London, whose Trafalgar Square is home to about 70% of the world’s pigeon population.  Not to mention, succesfully hit targets could be used to feed the homeless. It’s really a win-win.

But the best idea would be to bring back dueling.  That’s right…old-school, glove-slappin’, “I demand satisfaction” dueling.  Olympic dueling was held only twice, and it involved competitors wearing masks and trying and to shoot each other in the face with wax bullets.  Think of it as your great-great-great grandfather’s version of paintball.

Soccer – Yeah, I know the rest of the world calls this “football,” but the overwhelming readership of this blog (all seven of them) are either American (or worse yet Canadian), and if I say “football” they all will be expecting 350-pound leviathans in helmets and far-too-revealing spandex pants.  The funniest part is those same  Americanadians bemoan the lack of scoring in soccer, yet think a 1-0 ice hockey game is a thing of beauty.

Swimming – If you enjoy the boredom of running in a circle on a track combined with the overpowering stench of pool chemicals, then swimming is for you. Here’s all you need to know about swimming: the winner will be wet and pasty white. The stereotype is that black people can’t swim, but there is really no way of knowing since the amount of chlorine in the “water” bleaches anything it touches eye-scalding white.

Synchronized Swimming – Take gymnastics and combine it with the aforementioned pool chemical aroma.  Not to mention, these people really aren’t swimming so much as they are auditioning for an Esther Williams movie 70 years ago.

Table Tennis – The day this became an Olympic event was the day the Olympics lost it’s last shred of credibility. What’s next? Olympic lawn darts? Horseshoes? 8-ball?

Tae Kwon Do – Think of this if Koreans had invented boxing.  Then give it the Olympic treatment, meaning to make it so sanitized there’s no way you are ever going to see someone actually get their face kicked in, and you have Olympic Tae Kwon Do.

Tennis – Does anybody actually watch tennis anymore? I haven’t watched men’s tennis once they got rid of the fun guys like John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors and replaced them with these pathetic raisin-sacs like Pete Sampras and Roger Federer.  Women’s tennis has been unwatchable since those two black guys took over.

Track and Field – We really have to find a way to make the running events less boring. Instead of running in circles on a track, let’s put $500 in cash on each competitor and make them run through Detroit at 2 a.m.

However, Track and Field owns the honor of having the single-most goofiest event in all of Olympia: Race Walking. Essentially, this is running without running; competitors must keep one foot in contact with the ground at all times, which gives this sport the distinct impression it was invented by John Cleese.

Triathlon – You know who competes in Triathlon?  People who have a compulsive need to know that when the apocalypse comes, they will be the only ones who are still able to get to work because they can swim, run, and bike for a combined 600 miles or whatever ridiculous number it is.

Volleyball – Much like it’s beach bound counterpart, volleyball exists more as a function of it’s revealing uniforms and to further the perception I’m some sort of twisted ass freak. Either way,  it’s time to make this sport nude, co-ed, and available on the all-new Cinemax Sports Network.

Water Polo – I suspect this may be the wet version of field hockey.  Outside of large American universities and some various Australians and Central Europeans, I’m not sure anybody plays this sport; the closest example being in a pool and trying to peg your kid brother in the head with a wet Nerf ball.

Weightlifting – You know how you only watch auto racing to see the crashes. It’s time to admit you only watch weightlifting for an unplanned visit from various bodily fluids.

Wrestling – There’s almost no sport harder, and almost no sport which requires a higher level of physical conditioning than wrestling.  Having said that, there almost no sport which has a higher level of homoeroticism than wrestling.  If you doubt that, let’s combine it with beach volleyball to give a charge for the “alternative” viewers of the all-new Cinemax Sports Network.

About J-Dub

What your view of sports would be if you had too many concussions

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