Sports of the 2016 Olympic Games - Official Power Rankings, Part One

I like to power rank things.

So here are the Official Power Rankings of all the sports at the Olympic Games.

Sports ranked from last to 25 are here in part one, and the top 24 sports will be in part two.

These Official Power Rankings are rigorous and scientific.

The basic principle to determine these rankings was, should this sport be part of the Olympics? To answer this question, I have scored each sport on five criteria to determine the rankings.


Those criteria are:

1. Tradition - the sport is historically associated with the Olympics. For example, fencing is, and golf isn't.
2. Prestige - the sport considers the Olympics as its main international competition. For example, archery does, and golf doesn't.
3. Inclusiveness - lots of countries participate and are competitive. Both genders compete. Also the sport is easily accessible in that it doesn't require expensive equipment like golf or have complicated rules like golf.
4. Popularity - the IOC already has a classification for this based on TV coverage, internet clicks, media coverage, ticket demand etc. to determine revenue sharing between sports.
5. Personal - do I want to watch it? As it turns out, I mostly don't. Especially golf.

Where, after adding up the scores, there are ties, I've done what happens in all Olympic sports involving judges and fixed the outcome.

But before all that I had to find a definitive list of all the sports, as it's hard to keep track since they let anything in these days.

I went to the official Rio 2016 Summer Olympics website. It states:

Get ready for the intense excitement of 42 Olympic sport disciplines in one place

Except then I went down the page, to the list of sports, and there are 39 listed.

This uncertainty about something as basic as how many sports they are hosting helps explain all the stuff going wrong with the Rio Olympics.

To resolve this confusion, I went to Olympic.org and Wikipedia and they both list 41, which is a different number to both answers from the official hosts. This is the number I'm going with.

So without further delay, here comes number 41...


41. Synchronised Swimming
I've made all these jokes about golf in the preamble, and I still can't rate it lower than this abominable sport. I'm not even sure it is a sport, it's more performance art, a second-rate Busby Berkeley production in water. Not traditional, nobody seriously competes outside of women from about six countries, and nobody watches.

The Olympic golf course (not to scale).

40. Golf
The good walk spoiled. In most of the world it is associated with elites and exclusive country clubs, and it will never be the dream of any extremely rich golfer to win Olympic gold. This explains why the worlds best golfers appear particularly susceptible to the Zika Virus.

39. Rhythmic Gymnastics
Is it really even a sport when a component of the judging is music choice? I'm not prepared to say no, as there is definitely athleticism and physical skill involved, but it certainly blurs the line. Suffers on the inclusiveness score by being women only.

38. Sailing
The inclusion of sailing indicates that there aren't enough wealthy white people with coastal residences represented in the Olympic movement. Sailing is also the worst spectator sport imaginable.

Captivating.

37. Mountain Bike Cycling
The inclusion of mountain biking indicates that there aren't enough wealthy white people with hilly residences represented in the Olympic movement either.

36. Triathlon
Because having separate events for swimming, cycling and running wasn't enough.

35. Beach Volleyball
I'm just going to come out and say it - if you really like watching beach volleyball, you are probably a pervert. In which case you should probably realise there are more effective means of looking at girls in bikinis than watching a substandard variant of volleyball. Note the men still wear baggy board shorts. 

34. BMX Cycling
Radical!

33. Modern Pentathlon
This sport was invented by modern Olympics founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin for the 1912 Olympics, and its five disciplines - fencing, pistol shooting, swimming, showjumping on a random horse, and cross-country running - were designed to emulate the critical skills of a modern soldier.

Which they successfully did for about two years, until World War I kicked off with its machine guns, tanks, airplanes and chemical warfare.

This is the only sport in the Olympics that would not exist without the Olympics. Australian Chef de Mission and Nick Kyrgios trolling victim Kitty Chiller was a modern pentathlete. So I don't think Kitty Chiller would exist without the Olympics either.

I think this is the most words ever written about modern pentathlon in its 104 year existence.

32. Equestrian - Dressage 
31. Equestrian - Jumping
30. Equestrian - Eventing
Man has ridden horses for centuries. The addition of silly clothes and making them perform ballet (dressage) is a relatively new invention. Equestrian scored strongly on the criteria for being a very inclusive sport where men, women, animals and really old people compete together. 

29. Trampoline
I assume it's a bit different from the one in my childhood backyard.

28. Taekwondo
Taekwondo is the most popular form of self-defense in the world, having sold its spiritual soul for dollars so that the Olympic sport hardly resembles the traditional martial art. It still looks silly compared to boxing or UFC or a Jackie Chan film fight sequence.

27. Canoe - Slalom
26. Canoe - Sprint
Slalom is the time trial on the rapids, sprint is the race across a lake. The slalom got more personal points, but the sprint events are more traditional.

25. Rugby Sevens
Rugby sevens would be much higher ranked but scored the minimum for tradition and popularity due to being its first Olympics.

Not pictured: William Webb Ellis
 spinning in his grave.

It's ironic that after years of outrageous claims about the global significance of 'the game they play in heaven expensive private schools', it's going to be the cutdown version that most rugby snobs treat as a novelty act that will actually make the sport relevant of a world stage. Big nations like the United States, Russia and China are suddenly interested, and the women's game is going to have a profile. 


Next time: the top two dozen!