Today marks the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and while they have, so far been slightly marred by #SochiProblems, we can still enjoy the games as well. My personal favorite for the winter sports is curling. I enjoy a lot of the freestyle snowboarding events as well, but there’s something about curling that draws me in.
Regardless of my preferences, we all have an event that’s our personal favorite and we make sure to watch as much of it as we can. The arrival of the Olympics got me thinking what kind of sports we would have if we had the Boulder Olympics. Here’s a beginning list of events I think we could expect.
Speed Hackathon: The art of finding collaboratively creating newer and better software gets taken to a whole new level in this geek sport. Participants are given nothing more than a MacBook and a coffee shop Wi-Fi password. The first programmer to solve the problem wins gold.
Sanitas Relay: This is more than a trail run; it’s a snowshoe relay race to the top and back. Athletes race to the top, where they take a photo of the view and post to Instagram with a message of either inspiration or civic pride. While the photo uploads, the partner sprints to the bottom, where they take a selfie and post humble brag messages of a morning work out. Bonus points for proper use of photo filters.
Craft Beer Freestyle: One of the most popular events in the Boulder Olympics, athletes are given 10 different craft beers from around Boulder County and tasked with describing each beer in the most verbose way possible. This event can become something of a marathon once participants begin describing the IPAs as descriptions can last more than an hour a piece.
Couples’ Petitioning: Teams are given clipboards and choose two pens, half of which are nearly out of ink rendering them useless, and race to be the first two person team (they can be the heteronormative male-female couple or they can be same sex; this is an inclusive Olympics, embracing all lifestyle choices) team to reach 100 signatures from voters registered in Boulder County. The teams can choose to work individually, though in the past, the double approach has been favored heavily since citizens have less luck dodging both petitioners.
Entrepreneur Moguls: Lean startups are given one week to create “the next big thing” in Web 3.0 and revolutionize the way the public currently uses the internet. But this fast-paced sport requires agility since the path to gold is covered in speed bumps including critical venture capitalists, lack of more than 24 hours each day and the occasional Speed Hackathon bulldozing right through the course. Gold goes to the startup that lands an available space at TechStars Boulder.
The Boulder Olympics would be diverse challenging and, above all, there would be plenty of delicious farm-to-table food for all foodie spectators and 100% cruelty-free French pressed coffee for everyone.
And our hotels would be completely finished before journalists begin arriving.
