Comment by MengerSponge

Olympics have different 'strokes' used between sprint, middle distance, long distance, hurdles, steeplechase and walking races - so there is some variety in the locomotion forms unlike your strawman.

It is annoying that rules were added to the “freestyle” race, to preclude these new better underwater forms of swimming. Freestyle ought to mean you are free to pick any style.

I think there are too many swimming events in the Olympics. If the same few people win most of the medals then maybe the events are too similar.

Please eliminate two. PS I am NOT a crackpot

The jumping events do have different "strokes": long jump, (standing) broad jump, triple jump, possibly-etc. As far as I know, there is no generalized "transport yourself X distance without touching the ground" event. (Although I could be wrong.)

Each of the major strokes has a distinct functional example: front crawl is fastest, breaststroke lets you sight directly in front of you with each breath (which is useful in general open water), and backstroke allows you to breath uninterrupted.

It makes sense to me to have different stroke events, although I wish there was a true freestyle that allowed for anything, including underwater.

There's at least a couple of different runs, relay and hurdles are examples of variations on pure running. And if you squint, ice skating in a lot of ways is just a different style of running (with blades on the feet). Though you might then argue that rowing is a type of swimming with oars and a boat :)

Swimming needs a corkscrew race!

Butterfly is my favorite. It’s so fun to fly through the water like that.

I can't wait for you to find out there are different kinds of track competitions.

Seeing backwards running races would be impressive. Seeing the fastest human runners is also very impressive, but it’s also less interesting in a sense because they’re doing exactly what our bodies evolved to be able to do. It is interesting to see that ability pushed to its natural limits, but I think it’s a bit more interesting to see people excel in things we didn’t evolve to do: like swimming or running backwards.

> I get that it's a quirk of the sport's history, but it's funny and dumb that swimming awards medals and records for being the fastest at a slower stroke. It's like if track meets would have a 100m sprint, a 100m skip, and a 100m run-backwards.

This is arguably what race walking is, though it's over longer distances.

1500 meter running and 1500 meter race walking are two track events with different ambulatory styles.

Well, race walking is also a thing. And, although not fully analogous, track and field has hurdles.