The List

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Any athlete worth his salt has clearly defined objectives. We see this time and again as the winner announces that he has done what he “came to do” and the losers make feeble noises about having vaguely “done their best.”

The list below provides a clear definition of my objectives. I want to compete in all of the events contained in it. If you want to see what the IOC has to say on the subject, check out its list of sports on the Olympic programme. A few things that appear on the IOC’s list are excluded from mine.

I have divided the team sports into three categories.

The first category contains team events that have no equivalent individual event. The second contains team events that do have an equivalent individual event, but for which there is a significant difference between the two. The third category contains team events in which the team score or result is achieved simply by adding together the individual scores or results from the individual team members.

Confused yet? I will elaborate.

Category one contains events for which being part of a team is strictly necessary in order to participate in the sport – for instance, there is no such thing as individual football (or solo soccer, as the Americans would no doubt chose to call it); to play with a basketball is not the same as to play basketball, and to throw a ball across a field is not to have experienced a game of baseball.

Category two contains disciplines where the equivalent individual event is very similar to the team version, but there is enough of a difference between the two to merit the inclusion of both on my list – in the 400m, the athlete runs one lap of the track. In the 4 x 400m relay, four athletes run one lap of the track each in turn, but in between, there is the added skill involved of passing and receiving a baton.

Category three contains those team events where the team version is physically the same as the individual version in almost every respect – the only difference being that, in the team version, your score or result is contributing to a team total instead of standing alone. Essentially, these team events are duplications of their respective individual events, and as such they are coming off my list. The casualties are:

Archery (team event)
Equestrian (all three team events)
Fencing (all three team events)
Gymnastics (team event)

If the men’s rowing eight consisted of eight men sitting at individual rowing machines and then combining their times to produce a team score, then all the team rowing events would be in that list too. Conversely, if the team event in the equestrian show jumping consisted of William Fox-Pitt, Pippa Funnel and Leslie Law all mounting the same horse at the same time before trying to coerce the poor creature to jump over a scale model of the Great Wall of China, then the equestrian team events would come off the list (and probably go straight onto another list compiled by some animal rights activists).

I started with 136 events. Removing these team disciplines reduces the list to a mere 128 events. Less than a week into this four-year adventure and I’ve already dealt with 8 events. At this rate, I’ll be finished by Christmas.

I had trouble deciding where the line between team and individual lay in cycling - Lance Armstrong’s a hell of a guy, but he wouldn’t have won all the “individual” honours he has without the help of his US Postal Service team. For now, I have left all the cycling events in the list, but perhaps, when I come to do them, some kind-hearted cycling expert might take pity on me and let me off one or two of them to avoid repetition.

Some individual events also have team versions that require collaboration with a partner, but I am satisfied that there is enough of a difference between the skill involved in playing, for example, singles tennis and doubles tennis to merit the inclusion of both.

Other events require a partner but have no individual equivalent – the individual single oar rowing or the horseless dressage, for example, simply wouldn’t work.

Certain events divide their competitors according to weight. For these disciplines, I will only be participating in the category for which I am eligible at the time, rather than starving or binge eating as appropriate in a futile attempt to make the weight in every available category.

Some of the events I have done before; some I’ve never even seen on TV. Some I could do on the beach in my underwear; some require so much specialist equipment that it can be hard to know whether the winner was the best rider or just had the best bike. Some I’m looking forward to; some I’m absolutely dreading. Here they are:

Diving
10m Platform
3m Springboard
Synchronised 10m Platform
Synchronised 3m Springboard

Swimming
50m Freestyle
100m Backstroke
100m Breaststroke
100m Butterfly
100m Freestyle
200m Backstroke
200m Breaststroke
200m Butterfly
200m Freestyle
200m Individual Medley
400m Freestyle
400m Individual Medley
1500m Freestyle
4 X 100m Freestyle
4 X 100m Medley
4 X 200m Freestyle

Archery
70m individual

Athletics
100m
200m
400m
800m
1,500m
5,000m
10,000m
110m hurdles
400m hurdles
3,000m steeplechase
20 km walk
50 km walk
marathon
4 X 100m
4 X 400m
decathlon
discus
hammer
javelin
shot put
high jump
pole vault
long jump
triple jump

Badminton
singles
doubles
mixed doubles

Canoe/Kayak
Flatwater C-1 500m
Flatwater C-1 1000m
Flatwater C-2 500m
Flatwater C-2 1000m
Flatwater K-1 500m
Flatwater K-1 1000m
Flatwater K-2 500m
Flatwater K-2 1000m
Flatwater K-4 1000m
Slalom C-1
Slalom C-2
Slalom K-1

Combat Sports
Boxing (75-81kg)
Judo (73-81kg)
Taekwondo (68-80kg)
Freestyle wrestling (74-84kg)
Greco-Roman wrestling (74-84kg)

Cycling (Road)
Individual Road Race
Individual Time Trial

Cycling (Velodrome)
1km time trial
individual pursuit
team pursuit
keirin
madison
sprint
olympic sprint
points race

Cycling (mountain bike)
Cross-country

Equestrian
Dressage
Show Jumping
Eventing

Fencing
épée
foil
sabre

Gymnastics
floor
horizontal bar
parallel bars
pommel horse
rings
vault
individual all-round
tramploine

Modern Pentathlon

Triathlon

Rowing
single sculls
pair
double sculls
four
quadruple sculls
eight with coxswain

Sailing
board (mistral)
double-handed dinghy (470)
high-performance dinghy (49er)
multihull open (Tornado)
single-handed dinghy (Finn)
single-handed dinghy open (Laser)
star

Shooting
10m air pistol
10m air rifle
25m rapid fire pistol
50m pistol
50m rifle prone
50m rifle three positions
10m running target
trap
double trap
skeet

Table Tennis
singles
doubles

Tennis
singles
doubles

Volleyball
Beach
Indoor

Weightlifting
77-85kg

Team Events
Water polo
Baseball
Basketball
Football
Handball
Hockey