Swimming to add 3 individual events for LA 2028, Track to add zero. What 3 track events should Track and Field add?

Nike tried to ask NBC Hollywood for Hayward Field to host the M & W 10K in exchange for Mt Sac hosting the WC 2022 M & W 10K but NBC Hollywood had no responce to such a rideculous offer. Stanford should be hosting Soccer. USC the main host of its 3rd Olympics (1932, 1984, 2028) approved Oklahoma City for Softball.

Exhibition 8x400m with 60 sec send offs

2x30min tempo

Ekkiden

12k team XC

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No question you are correct. Current events are 100,200,400,800,1500,5000,10000.

Distances increases by 100% in 4 instances and by 87.5% in the other.

Why have a 233% increase from 1500 to 5000? Makes far more sense to jump up by 100% in distance to 3000.

You can say goodbye to Hocker, Kessler, Nguse and gift wrap the 3000m Gold Medal for Ingebrigtsen.

Olympic track is awesome and there’s no reason to mess with it.

Let's not add anything that will make people think we are a joke, like "three-legged racing" or "the backwards mile." As it is, we are the ancient and noblest of the Olympic sports. Let's keep it legit.

And honestly, we don't need anymore track events. Fans are barely watching what we already have. I love the track but more events would just spread out the athletes and make the races worse. Don't add a 3km to the track for that (obvious) reason.

That said, I would 100% support an 5M cross country race with good features like water ditches and hay bales. People would gobble that up. But the course has to be totally runnable (not like a Tough Mudder race) yet hilly and wild enough to evoke awe from the fans.

The other race I would add would be a 24 hour run. Everyone wants to see how extreme we can make something. It would sell. They would start the run and then NBC could come back for updates all through the day (and night). The winner is simply whoever can go the farthest in 24 hours. Simple. Everyone gets that and it is badass. Do NOT hold this event on the track. Just run it it through the host country. If someone almost dies trying to win this, that is something that fans can understand.

Swimmers are spoiled. The spectacle of people like Phelps, or anybody chasing 3+ golds is only possible in swimming due to the breath of events / relays coupled with only moderate degrees of specialization required to be serviceable across many strokes for the latte and narrow recovery window required between races. The MOST medals a track and field athlete could ever receive is three, and it would required generational talent like Bolt or Hasan in disciplines that are close enough together. Swimming getting even more events is insane. Swimming doesn’t even feel like a race, it’s like 9 people just time trialing— hence why world record and what not are so common at the Games in swimming but not in track. Seriously, even in the longest races in the pool I cannot discern strategy, it’s boring as hell.

Before we add the 24 hour run, we should do a test run to see how big of a TV draw, a few hours of watching paint dry would be.

I'm a Swimmer and I mostly agree with this post. (I think many races are tactical. Distance Swimmers can look left/right and adjust accordingly. )

Something that will always stick with me: Phelps going from medal ceremony to another swim in a very short time span....and then another medal ceremony. It was ridiculous/embarrassing.

The sarcasm in this thread is asinine. Swimming established the 50s of stroke in world championships decades ago. It's actually an upset that it required this long for all of them to be included in the Olympics, whether I agree with it or not.

Hardly a coincidence that it happens when the world's two dominant swimming powers are hosting the next two Olympics back to back.

Track had the same opportunity. It's been obvious for more than a decade that the IOC wants mixed events and shorter events. I guarantee something like the 60 dash and 60 hurdles would have a huge chance at Olympic inclusion. Those can be held outdoors as well as indoors. But instead of clarity on that matter we've had calls for a half marathon. In other words, exactly what the IOC doesn't want.

300 hurdles might have a chance, especially when the public gets a look at how much it varies from 400.

The difference is the level of suffering. That is the sick fascination of something like that.

Have you read the Steven King (alias Richard Bachman) book called The Long Walk? It is about a race where they kill the people who can't maintain a 15 minute mile. The last athlete running wins. In the story, the whole nation was following the event as it progressed! I know that it is fiction, but it speaks to our human nature.

That book was so raw and powerful. I loved it.

en.wikipedia.org

The Long Walk (novel)

The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several repr...

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I think Rojo was just poking fun at swimming having all the different strokes and racking up massive medal counts. People always try to compare them to track medal counts where they aren't analogous.

100m egg and spoon race, 100m sack race, beer mile

Shuttle Hurdle Relay

800 medley 100, 100, 200, 400

1600 medley. 200, 200, 400, 800

I could see a mixed SHR. Would USA ever be beaten? W, M, W, M. Women run extra 10m distance to exchange zone.

3 person field event relays, 3 attempts each only, add up best distance by each athlete.

Oops did not see ROJO's original Post, where its already mentioned.

Am I alone in thinking this would be soul crushingly boring?

A bunch of time trials in preference to an actual race?

At some point I expect WA to remove the single sex 4x1 and 4x4's from the programme, to be completely replaced by the mixed versions. I believe that is their long term aim.

I think something will be done with the multis at some point: either the decathlon for women, or they replace both the decathlon and heptathlon with the octathlon for both.

At some point they will remove the hammer throw. And possibly all of the walks from the World & Olympic programmes, initially by holding a walk Champs and then by removing them altogether.

I don't see any move to the 300mh whilst tracks are 400m and they retain the 400m. Maybe they would add a 200mh, but I doubt it.

So, if anything, we are going to be removing events.