Deadspin fixes: The Olympics

They tried to relaunch The Superstars about a decade ago by teaming athletes with celebrities, and it wound up being awful, memorable mostly for Terrell Owens and Joanna Krupa bickering. There is celebrity heritage here from Battle of the Network Stars, but when NBC had The Superstars in the 1980s, and it was just pro athletes competing against each other, it was incredible stuff, capped off by the obstacle course. Renaldo Nehemiah, who dominated The Superstars, remains on the Olympic scene, as he’s Sha’Carri Richardson’s agent. Let them both be part of Paris 2024, please.

Katie Ledecky is the undisputed queen of the Olympic pool, but how would she fare at Olympic Pool? Let’s find out. It’s possible to run multiple tournaments all through the Games, too. Eight-ball, nine-ball, get some of the British athletes to explain snooker (above), and for the athletes who have finished their Olympic program and are ready to kick back, sure, there are some drinking-game variations, too. And if we’re getting into drinking-game variations, let’s see how those table tennis stars do when there are some cold ones on the table and the game is now beer pong.

It’s the Olympics, so they’ve got to be a couple of decades behind the times, which means we can’t go full-on esports here. That’s fine, because there are elite esports athletes already, and they deserve their own spotlight. But you know what else deserves its own spotlight? The greatest arcade basketball game of all time. There’s already a perfect system for keeping Olympic records… weirdly, they’re all currently held by someone named ASS.

No, not the video game, as we’ve already got NBA Jam as part of the program here. MarioKart in the streets, appropriate for the Olympics in Paris after its creation by the French video artist Rémi Gaillard. You want to be an Olympic city? You’re signing up for two weeks of the best athletes from all over the world go-karting all over the place. Invest in light rail and put the streets to this far better use, urban planners.

We already have golf — the inferior version of the game — as part of the Olympics, because there are international organizations devoted to the climate-destroying pastime of rich idiots everywhere. In addition to being objectively more enjoyable than an activity famously described as “a good walk spoiled,” mini golf provides an opportunity to showcase the culture of the host site with the on-course obstacles. For Paris, for instance, an Eiffel Tower hole would be a must and great fun, and a guillotine hole to commemorate the French Revolution would be equal parts challenging and a warning to those who prefer the “regular” game.

In some places, this is mini golf’s natural companion. At the Olympics, it can be a daily diversion for the athletes on their non-competition days. Individual competitions, team competitions, indoors, outdoors — whatever format you need to make the vests and lasers work and for everyone to have a good time… and probably get absolutely throttled by the 13-year-old skateboarders.

It’s already on ESPN2 an astounding amount of the time. Like, pretty much daily. It’s bizarre. There can’t be that much live cornhole to be televised, which means they’re showing a whole lot of pre-recorded cornhole. Anyway, this is a great chance for letting athletes from different countries team up together, and since it’s already on TV, there are commentators available.

So, you came up short in the Olympic boxing ring, or the shot put, or, heck, dressage? That has to be unspeakably frustrating, putting in all that time and training and effort, but falling short of your ultimate dream. Now’s a chance to take out that frustration on some poor idiot who deserves it. Before the Olympics, organizers will scour Twitter for any moron saying they could take a point off Serena Williams or beat a WNBA player at one-on-one, and from that pool, find volunteers to be the namesake Idiots for this event. Between innings of Olympic baseball and softball games, one idiot will be sent running onto the field, and actual Olympians will get to chase after them and take them down. Scoring will be based on speed, precision, and takedown style. Just imagine a rodeo, clowns et al. It won’t totally make up for falling short of the medal podium, but putting a shoulder tackle directly into some dope’s spleen is a nice consolation.

Self-explanatory, and since the Olympics are probably never coming to Jacksonville, where this would be a culturally relevant sport to include in the full program, let’s set up some Olympians on the Seine and let ‘em rip.

This actually was an Olympic sport, a century ago (see above). Great Britain beat The Netherlands for the final tug of war gold at the 1920 Games in Antwerp. But in even earlier days, in 1900, gold went to a mixed team. That’s right, back then, Olympic teams didn’t have to be just one-country entities. So, in 1900, a half-Danish, half-Swedish team out-tugged five French guys and Francisco Henríquez de Zubiría of Colombia for the gold. The American team withdrew from that competition, interestingly enough held in Paris, because the tug of war was scheduled at the same time as the hammer throw, which half the U.S. men were also competing in. In 2024, why not run it back, once again with that ability to intermingle nations to compose teams, this time on a schedule that works for everyone? The best of the Olympics’ future can be found in the Olympics’ past. As for that other famous thing about the Olympics’ past, how about all nude? Tastefully done. But definitely, all nude. Well, maybe after enough of that beer pong…