The 2024 Paris Olympics saw the addition of four new sports, but fans of the games claim the committee should be scrapping ‘lame’ events instead.
Men’s football, the iconic steeplechase, the 100 metre sprint and walking races were among the least popular sports being slammed by thousands of Olympic fans online.
One post, which asked people to name the sport they thought most deserved to be scrapped, went viral.
Race walking topped the list of the least popular disciplines with people slamming it as ‘legit hilarious’, ‘profoundly dumb’ and rife with rule breaking.
Olympic race walking, where the average speed is 15.2 kilometres an hour, differs from running in that athletes must always have one foot on the ground at all times.
It was one of the earliest sports to be added into the modern games in 1908 and has remained in place ever since, despite popular calls for it to be removed as an event.
‘I find race walking rather silly, and they all appear to cheat without repercussions,’ one man said.
‘The whole sport looks like when you tell a kid “no running!” around a swimming pool,’ another added.
‘They’re nothing but common joggers,’ a third slammed.
Olympic fans think race walking is the number one sport that should be booted from the games
![A competitor in the Paris Olympics steeplechase event](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/08/09/05/88338363-13726171-image-a-20_1723176195877.jpg)
A competitor in the Paris Olympics steeplechase event
Steeplechase was the next least popular activity on the list.
It involves competitors hurdling over 28 fixed barriers of different heights and seven separate water jumps.
One man thought modern steeplechase needed to be replaced with its original version which took place in a natural landscape of rivers, creeks and hedges.
‘There’s no point jumping into a little puddle and saying “oh, it represents a river”, jump into a f****** river then,’ he said.
Men’s football was a surprisingly popular event that people also wanted to see booted from the games – with many complaining that the best players were unfairly unable to complete in the Olympic sport due to strict FIFA rules.
Hundreds also called out dressage and dubbed anything involving horses as an inappropriate Olympic sports due to potential animal cruelty, as seen in the Charlotte Dujardin horse whipping incident which rocked the UK dressage team.
‘Anything equestrian. Multiple scandals around horse welfare, one in the UK leading up to this Olympics and one in the modern pentathlon last Olympics that I know of,’ one woman said.
‘Dressage.. it is a dumb elitist activity – not a sport, that I imagine hides with it more animal cruelty than has been exposed,’ another agreed.
Others called out boxing for the controversary surrounding its scoring system, which people said was too dependent on the judges’ ‘moods’.
One man said golf was ‘dull as dishwater’ to watch, and another thought that surfing had no place at the Olympics because there was too much natural variance in the waves.
While some people thought that more obscure sports such a trampolining should be dropped, others argued that they were what made the games so entertaining to watch.
‘Keep them all, my favorite thing about the Olympics is the weird-a** niche sports I would never watch otherwise,’ one man said.
‘Add more weird sports. Bring on artistic kayak cross or whatever,’ he added.
‘This! Also, sports are really good for people regardless of their level. Another huge purpose of the Olympics is to showcase sports that might inspire people,’ another agreed.
One sports fan rocked the Reddit boat by suggesting that it was the most popular event that the Olympics should do away with instead.
‘The 100m. Just to p*** everyone off,’ he said.
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