Harold Winslow

Sports

Minimalist Olympics

Take all the standard Olympic sports, but now require all competitors to train and compete in a truly minimalist fashion - the point is to see the peak of human performance with all conceivable performance enhancers removed from the training process. All clothes must be made from animal hides. No 'drugs' of any kind are permitted, including caffeine and sugar. Even better, only foods native to the site of the Olympic games can be eaten in the 4 years prior to the event. The use of hot water to bathe, relax, or recover is only permitted if the competitor builds their own fire to heat the water. Only rocks, logs, and the official event equipment (e.g. javelin, hurdle) can be used in training. How fast could you run a mile under these conditions?

The Canonical Sport

The field is roughly soccer or football-sized. There are two teams of 5-11 players. The field is littered with obstacles: hills to run over, monkey bar contraptions, walls which obstruct visibility. The two halves of the field are symmetric. Each team is equipped with three balls for hitting the opposing team or throwing into narrow targets on the opposing side of the field. If you are hit with a ball you must exit the game for two minutes and no one can substitute in for you during that time.

Near the baseline of each team's portion of the field is a 100-lb Atlas stone whose capture and successful return to the other side yields a victory. The game is played for 60 continuous minutes, with no timeouts except for injuries. Players can substitute in for one another at any time.

Players may wrestle opposing players if they wish and can catch them; pinning an opponent sends them out of the game for good.

There is a pool in the middle of the field. No wrestling is permitted in the pool, but it is legal to push someone into it as a way to slow them down.

If neither team has managed to move the opposing team's stone to their side by the end of the 60-minute period, the winner is the team who has hit the opposing team's target more times.

Players of various sizes and skills may find roles in this game. Fast players will more effectively retrieve balls after they have scored or hit another player. Larger players will be more effective wrestlers and more capable of moving the Atlas stone. Teams may bias towards speed and throwing ability to score points or towards size and strength to end the game quickly by pinning their opponents and retrieving the stone.

The game has elements of war, individual fighting, and hunting. It is roughly the canonical sport, and I imagine it'd be great fun.

The Survival Medley

An athletic event, designed to mimic performance in a variety of emergency/survival scenarios. The medley consists of the following components:

No food or water are permitted during the medley. Each competitor must weigh in before the event and wear a heart rate monitor throughout the medley. This should allow you to estimate the number of calories burned by each competitor; the winner is the participant who burns the fewest calories. Some emergency scenarios are about raw short-term performance (like escaping an attacker), but many are just about doing things efficiently and saving your energy for another day. So the winner of this event may not be the biggest or fastest, but they will the most efficient at this selection of tasks.

Evolution

The field is 30 yards by 30 yards. Teams of three begin the game with only one member in play. That member is blindfolded, earplugged, and restricted to moving around on their belly like a worm. Three balls lie scattered across the field, and in the middle of three sides there is a small goal that the ball can be thrown into. After one goal is made, the referee will remove the earplugs from that player's ears, allowing their teammates to instruct them regarding the location of balls and goals. Once another goal is made, the blindfold will be removed. Yet another goal will allow for crawling, and a fourth for running. The sixth and seventh goals allow for additional members of the team to enter the field. Once both teams have two players on the field, one ball and one goal are removed from play (three balls is really too many, but it is necessary to prevent the team that is initially behind from staying that way forever). And once both teams have three players on the field, a second ball is removed from play, leaving just one. At this point the rules of rugby take over, and the game continues for a total of perhaps 30 minutes.

Hurry-Up Rules

This could be applied to any sport, but would be especially interesting for a game like soccer which is long and low-scoring. Let the value of a goal be tied to how long the game has been played. Making goals in the first minute worth 90 points and those in the final minute worth 1 point would encourage a frenzy of activity in the opening half, while doing the reverse would lead to very exciting finishes. Strategy in terms of training, game play, and use of timeouts would all change as well.

Ambidextrous Golf

In the name of balance, play two balls at each hole - one left-handed and one right-handed. You're still limited to 14 total clubs, so choose 7 for each hand. Player with the lowest total score wins.

King/Queen of the Track 1

Begin with 8 runners, perhaps one per school or something similar. Have them race 50m. Eliminate the loser. Rest 1 minute, during which time they return to the starting blocks. Race 100m and eliminate the loser again. Now rest 2 minutes. Repeat with the 200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, and finally the 3200m, resting an additional minute after each race.

King/Queen of the Track 2

Take the top two finishers in the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, and 1600m from a track meet. There may be repeat winners; that is okay (this is a tournament, so the ideal number of contestants is 8, not 10).

Two racers line up, one (the hare) perhaps 25m ahead of the other (the hound). They race to see how quickly the hound can catch the hare. The race ends when the hare has been caught or when the hare makes it a mile, whichever occurs first. After a 5+ minute rest, they switch spots. The winner is the racer who caught the other in less distance. Ties (which in practice should only occur if each race ended after a mile) are broken by a 40m dash. Repeat the races tournament-style to crown a king/queen of the track.

The 25m gap is a critical parameter to get right. Make the gap too small and the sprinters will always win; too large and it will always be the endurance athletes. You'll know you have the gap set properly when the 400m runners win most of the time but you're never sure how a race between a 100m runner and a 1600m runner will turn out.

This version of racing introduces a bit of strategy since you have to guage your own sprint/endurance profile against that of your competitor. Can you close a 25m gap in 200m with an all-out sprint? Or are the two of you close enough in sprint speed that you need to pace yourself more? And as the hare, should you jump out to increase the gap quickly, or should you run at a steady pace until the hound is closer? Most races would probably start near 100% and fade as the athletes tire. It would likely be more grueling than a 400m or 800m run and would introduce some drama not normally found in track.

As a variation, route the course through the surrounding area - over hurdles, through the sand pits, up the bleachers, etc - for a more dynamic and well-rounded race.

Heavycatch

Two players stand on opposite sides of a tennis court, one holding a medicine ball. He throws it over the net and scores a point if his opponent can't catch it before it hits the ground. The boundaries are the net, the outside of the court, the baseline, and the midline of the court. The returner is allowed to take two steps before throwing the ball back over the net. Follow traditional tennis scoring. This is a good sport to train power endurance.

Tug/Push-of-War

Tug-of-war is the familiar children's game. Push-of-war would require two parties to grasp a common bar and push against each other until one falls over or is pushed behind a set line. Pair the two together in a round robin tournament to find the overall champion in this full-body test of strength.

Space sports

The idea of sports in space is not original to me, but there is undoubtedly room for innovation in this domain. Low to no gravity environments permit much greater vertical movement, and no atmosphere means that you can send projectiles over vast distances. There are lots of options here, with even the most rudimentary activities sounding appealing (e.g. catch over hundreds of yards). What is even more exciting than the sports themselves is their potential to facilitate space colonization. Colonizing the moon and then Mars has always been interesting from a scientific and existential risk mitigation angle, but both of those reasons are pretty boring. Space sports provide an exciting reason to go to the moon. Build a sports complex on the moon and you'd soon have regular visits by the global rich. Think of the Instagram opportunities!