You forget fast walking. The greatest of all great Olympic sports.

In other words, who fucking cares, the Olympics are a pointless show of shitty sports. No baseball, no American football, no softball, no golf, no futsal, no bowling, no cricket, no skateboarding.. I'm sure there are other snubs that I'm not big on too. Now wrestling too. MMA has been out for a long time. The Olympics is shit.

Baseball and softball might get in in 2020 as "additional sports". They're on that short list with wrestling and wakeboarding.

American football... softball... bowling... HAHAHA

Steephie obviously knows his shit about sports so much better than I so I'll ignore him.

"Additional sports" means what? A trial run? Bowling attracted 20 nations in 1988 and the IOC forgot about it after that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need uhh, three nations to give out medals? It has much more athletic quality than shooting does and takes much more athletic skill. I don't know what more than a stable torso you need for archery. A good bow and some soft feathers.

All of those I listed are much higher quality athletic competitions than shooting or archery. That's not bashing either of those two, only saying that they don't take half the athletic prowess than all of those - plus wrestling.

The core 25 sports are included at every games. The "additional sports" have to apply for inclusion at the discretion of the host country's Olympic Committee (as I understand it).

So yes, a trial run. Archery > baseball. Suit yourself, IOC.

The only reason for Summer Olympics is track and field, gymnastics, swimming, soccer, volleyball, basketball... Seems there are a few valid and serious sports involved int he summer games.

Moreover, bo, you are clearly wrong about archery, despite your name. Have you ever drawn a compound bow? The accuracy is mroe than just a stable frame. Your muscles twitch in your arms and your fingers release at slightly different speeds, you have to account for even the slightest breeze and correct for the arrows flight as well as gravity over the distance. No, archery is as much sport as bowling (and I agree that bowling is sport).

The Summer Olympics have an excellent roster of sports. Yes, it's a shame that the IOC got rid of wresting, but lets be honest, nobody watched it anyway unless you're from Bulgaria or Kazakhstan. Everybody is focused on basketball, track and field, gymnastics, and swimming anyway. Everything else is periphery.

Some of it has to do with politics. Table Tennis and badminton got saved because they're tremendously popular in Asia. Europe saved football, and British Commonwealth nations saved field hockey. Wrestling has long been dominated by Russia, Iran, and the former Russian republics, so there's not a real diversity of geographic support.

I would like to see the introduction of MMA in a few years. Also, they need to take away the headgear and increase the number of rounds for boxing. If you're in the Olympics you damned well better be able to fight for at least 12 if not 15 rounds; none of this 3 round pussyshit.

Crown Green Bowling, perhaps, could be called a sport. Ten pin bowling is a glorified pub game that is almost impossible to watch when televised as it's just a constant stream of strikes.

Part of me feels sad that wrestling's gone because of its history, but the rest of me knows full well I never liked it, and neither did anyone else.

I liked wrestling, but you could only ever see it on, like, Telemundo 7 from 4:07 AM to 4:26 AM on a Tuesday morning.

It does seem terribly ironic to cut "greco-roman" wrestling from the Olympics, which was founded by...the Greeks!

Archery would be a lot more cool if they had to use longbows made out of wood instead of these new-fangled contraptions that can hardly be called a bow. Not that I can draw one, mind you.

By that same token, javelin would be much cooler if they were throwing a wood shafted, steel-headed pilum instead of a titanium-alloy thing that weighs as much as a toothpick.

Gymnastics is good for the same thing as ice skating in the winter games - my wife likes it and feels loved if I watch it with her, and when she feels loved, good things happen.

Track and field is fine, though the coverage of the distance events in the U.S. sucks, but I would LOVE to see team cross country brought back. First of all, you don't have to watch people run in circles, and you get to see nice landscape. Also, the team aspect would be really cool and would give eastern African nations another chance to win medals. Who wouldn't love to see Eritrea kick the crap out of the U.S. and China in a team sport?

Also, knowing the IOC, there were probably some bribes tossed in there on behalf of modern pentathlon, which everyone assumed was going to be cut.

@Draug ... I've drawn compound bows... I can't get a bullseye but I don't expect to do so.. no reason I'd be able to. Like I said, I'm not bashing archery as a sport. I'm not bashing any of these sports - everything the Olympics *does* have is as much a skillful sport as any other. I am simply saying that bowling deserves as much recognition as drawing and shooting a compound bow. Baseball deserves more than bowling, and softball deserves more than baseball.

BAseball clearly deserves more than softball. Get reall. Hitting a softball is easy compared to a 100+ MPH fast ball off Aroldis Chapman. The infield and outfield is much smaller because the ball can't travel as far so the fielders have it easier as well once the ball is in the air. Softball is about power hitters who can clear the fence every time, so much so that the league I play in has a three homerun pre player per game rule. After that, every home run hit by that player is an out instead.

"The league I play in" ... No, dude, this is real softball. Olympic softball. If you've ever played real softball with dropball curves siding on with a riseball changeup at 70 MPH from 40 feet away, you know what I'm talking about. Till you see something like that, don't tell me about softball.

The baseball team at my school has practiced with the softball team for years and softball is more difficult than baseball. Some things within the game aren't - most are. That's all there is to it.

I'll put a professional baseball team up against *any* softball team you chose anyday. Seriosuly dude, try hitting a 100+ MPH pitch. They are different sports. Period. And the last I checked, there aren't any professional softball players making 10s of millions *per year*.

For Olympic purposes, Baseball/Softball is treated as a single sport. Men compete in baseball, women compete in softball.

Draug, I play players that throw 90+ pretty regularly and I hit against them. High school baseball has future pros in it. Evidently you think I play with three year olds. I've hit 100 on machines - it's no easy feat, no shit, who knew.

By the way, comparing the fastest pitches in each sport: 106 MPH/60.5 feet = 1.75 ... 73.4/43 = 1.71 ... case in point, in comparison to the change in length, softball is about the same speed as baseball. Added movements counter the change in size, and you should know that a softball is harder to square up on than a baseball. So, yeah, you are giving a bunch of moot points here about 100+ MPH.

"And the last I checked, there aren't any professional softball players making 10s of millions *per year*."

There aren't any WNBA players making 10s of millions per year either. It's called business. Just because the players in the NBA make $5,000,000 on average doesn't mean Candace Parker couldn't beat many of the players making that amount and she made $3,000,000 in 2011. Money differentials don't mean they aren't pros.

They should replace amateur wrestling with pro wrestling as an olympic sport, haha.

My guess would be that wrestling is out to make it less violent, can't think of any other reason... If that's the reason it's a valid argument, but still a bad decision :)

Also, NOT to offend anyone, but I'm curious: who thinks darts/dart throwing/however you want to call it is a sport? and who doesn't?

"My guess would be that wrestling is out to make it less violent, can't think of any other reason... If that's the reason it's a valid argument, but still a bad decision :)"

I don't buy that argument at all, given that boxing made the cut. Also, I wrestled in high school and college. It's not an especially violent sport, and its injury rates are lower even than sports like basketball, track, and soccer.

Good point... Then maybe the combination of looking violent (not being apparently, just looking...) and looking simple (again, not saying it is, it just tends to look that way) could be the reason it got voted out... I think that could make it less popular... Don't know though, just guessing around :P

Simple, huh? I always thought that the problem (especially with freestyle) is that the scoring system is unnecessarily complex, and the broadcasters don't generally try too hard to explain it to people. A pin is easy to understand, but the scoring technicalities of back points, rolls, throws, escapes, takedowns, and reversals can be a little esoteric. I always figured that and the Russian/post-Russian Republic dominance accounted for the poor TV ratings.

Also, I don't think the appearance of violence had anything to do with it, considering the survival of boxing, taekwondo, and judo, along with the fact that there's been serious discussion of adding mixed martial arts.