New Olympic Event - The One Hour Run?

X-Country in the Olympics is a better idea than watching guys sit for 59 minutes before kicking the last minute. Better yet, put the x-country in the Winter Olympics - then you'd finally get some African countries there as opposed to just N America and Europe. It should include a team race as well. It seems like a great, inexpensive way to bring many more countries into the winter olympics.

doopey wrote:

X-Country in the Olympics is a better idea than watching guys sit for 59 minutes before kicking the last minute. Better yet, put the x-country in the Winter Olympics - then you\\\'d finally get some African countries there as opposed to just N America and Europe. It should include a team race as well. It seems like a great, inexpensive way to bring many more countries into the winter olympics.

The Kenyan olympic comitee proposed this in 1992-1993. The argument against it was \\\"no room for new events...\\\". The Kenyan delegate did not give up and he said: XC is ran in winter why don\\\'t we put it in the winter olympics? We could try in the 1994-games in Lillehammer-Norway. Fortunately, one could say, because there was temperatures as low as -25 (degrees C) even downtown Lillehammer and more than 1 meter of snow (which is not unusual) - Our Kenyan friend was at Lillehammer and I have never heard anything from him since.

wineturtle wrote:

Sure.a distance is set (like an A or B time qualifer) as a cut off and to score you must run that far,say equal or better than 20th longest distance of the year.That would tend to keep the pace fast.

Runners not meeting this Honest Effort Rule would be subject to a very harsh penalty...say a 10 min. interview by Carol Lewis.

I like your idea. Xcountry was in the first few Olympics. It is run now as part of the modern pentathlon. Easily, it could be turned into both a team and individual sport. I like the idea of running 12km or 15km with team scores as part of the mix. Tinman