Power ranking every single sport at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics
By Nick Villano
We are on the road to Paris, with qualifiers pretty much over and a laundry list of athletes heading to Europe to prove they are the best of the best. We know who we are preparing to see, both American athletes and otherwise. At the end of the day, athletes do drive the games, but the sports themselves tend to bring a constant viewership. There are so many sports that rightfully last a short time at the Olympics (looking at you, bowling, solo synchronized swimming, and competitive architecture).
This year, there are 45 official sports, and we are going to rank every single one. On top of that, we separate a few that are very dissimilar to the other. Track and Field have been together like peanut butter and jelly, but like their delicious counterpart, they could not be more different. So, we separate those events into their own category. We also combined some events that are basically the same thing with different rules (like 5v5 basketball and 3v3 basketball).
In all, 45 Olympic sports will take place at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The end of this list is… interesting. Will it be “so bad it’s good” territory?
45. Breaking
This year for the first time, the Olympic committee added dancing to the list of sports. In general, we’re less excited about sports that require judging, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil. Here, this just feels forced. We’re not just judging dancing, but we’re judging breakdancing. Just like when they added skateboarding a decade after the peak of the X Games, this feels like it should have been added in 2004, if ever.
The description of the sport from the Olympics themselves calls for a “big role” played by the DJ and MC. If that’s the case, just bring some of those competition singing shows to the Olympics. What’s to stop doing the Masked Singer at the Olympics in Los Angeles? The stage is already set up for it.
This isn’t to offend any of the athletes involved in the sport. It looks like this could bring the Americans another gold medal. However, this just opens a can of worms that doesn’t really have an explanation.