Should road racing be in the Olympics?

Indeed should any sport where the pinnacle of achievement isn’t considered to be an Olympic title?

Triggered by the news that Pogacar isn’t going to be competing in the Olympics.

If the best in the world aren’t turning up, what’s the point?

Tennis also seems pointless in the Olympics to me too. Any other sports that people can think of?

GOLF

GOLF

Indeed.

Horse dancing (although not necessarily for the reasons above).

Golf is pointless whether it is in the Olympics or not. Football shouldn’t really be in there either, but at least they make an effort to differentiate it from the senior game by having most of the team made of under 23’s, under 21’s would be even better IMO.

The only Olympic events should be the Marathon and gladiator fighting (winky eye emoji). I think that’s what on the original list of events 2000yrs ago?

It’s not really a course for Pog TBF also if I was him I’d be on beer and pizza for a month.

Football

I’d just have it as track and field, swimming, gymnastics and track cycling. Maybe triathlon too.

Swimming needs to get rid of all the different strokes and just have fastest at the distances.

I’d be on beer and pizza for a month.

Is that the Wayne Rooney diet plan?

Horse dancing (although not necessarily for the reasons above)

Dressage? Ah come on have a heart, it’s the only way some of those kids are ever going to make it out of the ghetto…

I think the first just had running in it, didn’t it? and they did it nekkid of course…

As for modern Olympics; isn’t there going to be break dancing? If you’re going to include stuff like that, then trad sports should definitely be in it, and I wouldn’t be so sure that athletes don’t think that an Olympic gold isn’t he very pinnacle of their sport, judging by the lengths that Pauline Ferrand Prevot and Tom Pidcock are putting in I think they’ve very much centred this year around it.

If the best in the world aren’t turning up, what’s the point?

You can only race against the people that do.

“Sports” that need to be decided based on style and/or artistic merit.

@llama

if I was him I’d be on beer and pizza for a month.

And you’ve never won the Tour De France. Correlation or causation?

mountain biking

I’ll add discus and javelin throwing to my short list of old events.

There weren’t any bikes 2000yrs ago so no bike event allowed now! ?

The Olympic road race is a big event in the road racing calendar, arguably on par with a classic or World Champs.

What is the pinnacle or road racing anyway? The TdF GC? There are different pinnacles for different types of rider.

It has a much stronger claim than some of the other sports mentioned here – football seems particularly pointless.

Tennis is OK, as it’s just like another tournament inserted in the calendar and the standard of competition will still be very high.

I’d go the other way, stuff all this gatekeeping and snobbery, let anything be an “Olympic” event.

If the International Tiddlywinks Federation can meet some basic threshold and find a room in Paris to host it then they should be allowed a gold medal.  Or introduce a whole host of obscure local sports, boules, parcour, add the “Gaelic Shrug” to the weightlifting.

And Downhill MTB should 100% be in there IMO.

I don’t care what anyone says, it would be brilliant for the sport.

@thisisnotaspoon not sure if you were serious or not, but that would be awesome.

I’d watch queens (the card game), scrabble, Olympic masterchef, and the one where they are flying around in squirrel suits through canyons.

I’d enter the Olympic make a sandwich while drinking beer event.

“Sports” that need to be decided based on style and/or artistic merit. – I’d go with that.

Any “sport” where you stand in one place and shoot a gun (worded so biathlon gets to stay in the winter Olympics)

If disciplines are too similar (so swimming) or competition is so sparse (para sports back in the day but less now) that an individual athlete can pick up more that say 3 or 4 medals something is way wrong.

And golf, football and tennis can all take their ball and play elsewhere. They get plenty of exposure at other times.

Road cycling is on the cusp for me – the design/style of the course is so dependent on the venue the favourite can almost be designed in, or at the very least you can cancel out people at will if you wanted to. Can’t think of another Olympic event where the organisers have quite so much influence on who the winner would be (or not be).

The UCI are already **** up downhill and enduro, god help us if they become Olympic sports.

The UCI are already **** up downhill and enduro, god help us if they become Olympic sports.

I said I don’t care what you say, Olympic DH would be incredible 😛

And I hadn’t thought of Olympic Enduro, but it might be the only way to get the budget to film the sport adequately for live transmission.

And golf, football and tennis can all take their ball and play elsewhere.

Given all the sports that don’t get any exposure, it does seem on the face of it hard to justify including these, other than being very popular.

not sure if you were serious or not, but that would be awesome.

There used to be art, poetry etc so I don’t see why not.

Basically get rid of the IOC and their rules.

It would also mean a full program of track cycling events was possible, as well as DH or Enduro. Although if you want Enduro on TV I suspect you’ll be disappointed and find it’s like the XC.  Take a fun day out in the hills on a bike, and reduce it to multiple laps of the same small hill so it can all be covered form one camera and a telephoto lens.

Triggered by the news that Pogacar isn’t going to be competing in the Olympics.

If the best in the world aren’t turning up, what’s the point?

More stringent drug testing regime at the Olympics….

I think the success of “sport climbing” and BMX shows that just sticking with “classic” sports is foolish.

And on road racing… hell yes! It’s one of very few events that matches the Marathon for taking over and taking in the host city. I’d miss it if it went.

Slight off topic…..but the thing I’d get rid of first is the **** medals table, and in particular the media’s fascination with it. You’ve got one sport like hockey where 2 gold medals (well loads more than 2 because there are 11 in a team but you know what I mean) will get handed out after 2 tournaments that have lasted days then in swimming 4 get handed out before breakfast for the best arse scratch.

If you got rid of the medals table then Tinas’ free for all would have a better chance.

Anything professional? If you haven’t got a normal day job then don’t bother turning up.

 Although if you want Enduro on TV

Nah, not really. Just thinking aloud.

The XC is fine though IMO.

Don’t think I’d narrow it down just to road cycling, but a lot of Olympic sports that aren’t track and field, set an age limit somewhere in the 16-21 range. For a road cyclist, winning would be a huge deal and would likely come before any full pro one-dayer or multi-day success.

I’ve not really paid attention to previous course profiles, but you would hope the road race profile rotates between favouring different phenotypes at each Olympics, so for example Cav/MVDP/Pog (ignoring my age criteria above) would be favourites in sucessive Olympics.

To answer the OP, no.

I put a thread out there a while ago with my views, which I’ll paste below:

Promoted party by the Darts is not a Sport thread, and also but a discussion I had over a beer last week, what “sports” should and shouldn’t be in the Olympics.

As reference point, the Olympic Movements moto is Citius – Altius – Fortius, or Faster – Higher – Stronger.

So, as a start point, anything that’s scored subjectively and/or judged is out. Dressage, boxing, gymnastics, figure skating, skateboarding, surfing and most martial arts all gone.

In the pub we also argued that The Olympics should be the peak of the sport, if it’s not then it’s out. So that removes things like football, golf, baseball, basketball and road cycling.

Swimming can expect changes. You can’t have 4 different strokes at least 2 of them are just deliberately making life hard for yourself. So they keep freestyle and I’m prepared to discuss backstroke. Butterfly and Breaststroke are out. And they only get 2 relays too. To keep things fair, we’d offer athletics the option to include a second track discipline, ideally running backwards.

I’d welcome others thoughts on this…

I do find it strange that we British covert Olympic champions, no matter the sport of event, with lots of attention regardless of country of origin, yet when we have a British world champion in the same sport they’ll barely get any media attention if at all.

There are many sports I think that shouldn’t really be an olympic event, there are now almost too many sports/events/disciplines held within the Olympics imo. Cirtainly subjectively scored events are a little grey area –  that would throw out most gymnastics which is a ‘traditional’ olympic sport.

Road race at the olympics is pretty much the inly true race craft race left isn’t it? Ie no radios?

If the best in the world aren’t turning up, what’s the point?

There are limits per country, if you can only select two and you have 5 of the top ten… Some of the best in the world aren’t turning up.

“Sports” that need to be decided based on style and/or artistic merit.

apart from breakdancing. That should definitely be in the Olympics.

I reckon they should add sports to the winter olympics rather than summer.

For example breakdancing stick it in the winter olympics.

Maybe Judo, boxing etc could migrate across too, to give more kudos to the winter olympics and stop the summer olympics being so swollen.

’ve not really paid attention to previous course profiles, but you would hope the road race profile rotates between favouring different phenotypes at each Olympics, so for example Cav/MVDP/Pog (ignoring my age criteria above) would be favourites in sucessive Olympics.

Apart from as the Olympics is only every 4 years you might well miss your window when you were at your peak because the olympics that were happening at that point did not suit you. You could easily be the most dominant sprinter for 5 or 6 years and win every race you enter that ends in a sprint finish but never stand a chance of an Olympic gold.

But someone said it earlier and I’d not really considered it – the road race is one of those races able to show off the host city and it’s possible for many more people without a ticket to watch it. So for that reason alone – it’s in.

I think sports such as the road race are great, not everyone in the host city will be able to afford tickets to go to the actual stadiums, and so few sports actually showcase the city itself.

Whereas road race, the marathon etc, actually show the city itself and give everyone a chance to part of it