laughing wrote:
(1.) They already have that hopping race you talked about: It's called hurdles. Imagine that...the same exact race, but we have them do something additional during: jump over stuff. Kind of like having them do different swimming strokes.
So if you think different swimming strokes are a joke, you eliminate the hurdle events, the steeplechase, and arguably the relays. With the relays, you could say, "Hey, we already have a 400m race, but why not let 4 guys do it instead of 1, and force them to pass a baton so that there are an additional layer of rules that increases the likelihood of DQ?" I happen to like the relays and hurdles, but your argument against swimming would be consistent with hating those races.
This is slightly different from what is happening in swimming stokes. In track and field events such as steeple chase or hurdles, you give the athletes a "course" to race over but they can jump the hurdles any way they want to and run between the hurdles any way they want to and they are basically free to chose the way they move their body get to finish line as fast as possible.
Swimming stokes are more comparable to something like race walking except that they are probabaly more ridiculous. A 200m butterfly race is like having an 800m race on the track where the runners are forced to wave their hands around their heads for the entire race and move their legs in a certain way - they are constrained to move using a certain style of body movement. That just seems too contrived for a real athletic competition.
Track and field events that are somewhat contrived in this way are race walking as mentioned, and the triple jump. I would have no problem if these were axed from track and field.