Olympic Auto Racing

[Nick_Crenshaw82]

I recently discovered this thread for Olympic Auto Racing which led me to doing a little bit of research on the subject and I kinda love the idea of Grand Prix style racing as an official Olympic sport and wonder what the history of this would look like?

 

[Alex Richards]

I kind of think this might end up like Cricket, Tug-of-War or any of the other myriad early Olympic sports which get tried out and then dropped.

In this case, an early street-circuit might be feasible, or something like the London-Brighton run as a competitive race, but I suspect once cars start getting faster and more common and it becomes clear that a separate circuit is needed it'll end up being dropped.

 

[Nick_Crenshaw82]

I kind of think this might end up like Cricket, Tug-of-War or any of the other myriad early Olympic sports which get tried out and then dropped.

In this case, an early street-circuit might be feasible, or something like the London-Brighton run as a competitive race, but I suspect once cars start getting faster and more common and it becomes clear that a separate circuit is needed it'll end up being dropped.

But I imagine they might follow Formula One with races on closed courses.

 

[Alex Richards]

But I imagine they might follow Formula One with races on closed courses.

It's one of those cases where the expense of potentially having to build something like that means it's likely to just go off and be its own thing.

It's a much higher barrier to entry for smaller countries as well.

 

[Charles EP M.]

It's a much higher barrier to entry for smaller countries as well.

This seems the biggest barrier to it being an Olympic sport: the idea this is the Rich Big Country sport and most of the world will never get a fair shot, when the foundational myth of sporting contests is it takes skill and hard work and anyone putting the effort in might get a shot

 

[Coiler]

At least it's not as weird as my thoughts on how to make professional wrestling a viable Olympic sport.

Basically, it'd be treated like a gymnastics routine. Two competitors from the same country have a pro wrestling match. The outcome of that match (who pins who) doesn't matter, but the execution of it does, and that's what the judges look for.