Hopara

Well, it’s been almost a week since the Olympics ended, and we have to say — we miss it!  It’s had us thinking — if we could be Olympians, what would we want to be?  Swimmers besting Michael Phelps’ records?  Nah.  That’s fun, but it’s not necessarily hopara fun.  Being a professional beach volleyball player has some appeal, as does being the world’s best athlete in the decathlon… but we think that we’d go in a different direction.

For us, it really comes down to two sports in which we’d like to be Olympians.  First, it’s the Modern Pentathlon.  We love this event because you have to be so good at so many different things to win — you have to be able to both run and swim fast, but you also have to shoot well, know how to fence, and be able to ride an unfamiliar horse through a jumping course.  Oh, and you’re doing the running and shooting at the same time, like a biathlon.  This has its roots in being Napoleon’s test for his field generals, and we think that, if you can do this at a high level, you can do almost anything.

The other one?  Come on, now.  If you’ve been reading our blog, by now you must know that we love the water.  So we’d want to do the kayak and canoe slalom course.  We don’t even understand how these guys would start training — do you just jump into a river and keep paddling against the current?  And how is it even possible to control a kayak going through gates at those speeds?  It boggles our minds!

Which Olympic sport do you wish you did?