Renaming Olympic Sports

By Courtney BirnbaumFrom the Desk of FINA: Water Polo is the oldest team sport in the Olympic Games, making its appearance at the 1900 event in Paris. With the advent of women in 2000, the sport doubled in size, but it still does not get the respect it deserves. In light of this, the Fédération International de Natation politely requests the IOC to rename the other Olympic events as follows:Football will now be Grass Polo, with the additional advantage of no more arguments over soccer, football, or futbol. Hockey will now be Field Polo. Handball will now be Land Polo, while Volleyball becomes Hand Polo. Of course, that makes Beach Volleyball: Sand Polo. Swimming, perfect as is, but Athletics is now Landing. In a similar way, please rename Gymnastics to Artistic Walking, and Rhythmic Gymnastics to Artistic Artistic Walking. Sport Climbing would be improved as Artistic Crawling. Our delegation agrees that Surfing must now be Wave Boarding, as Water Boarding was already taken. Pave Boarding rhymes, so replace skateboarding, too. As the French invented Tour de France, our language should get to name the other events as well, so please refer to all bicycles as Vélos. Boxing and Wrestling must be combined under the singular title Fisticuffs, and we advise rebranding Softball as Baseball XL. You are fine to simply call Equestrian events Polo, as we are not fully sure what the difference is anyway. Furthermore, we would like to replace the fencing portion of Modern Pentathlon with artistic swimming. These James Bond wannabes need more finesse. Much obliged, Micah L. Phelps