The Lethargy Olympics

Posted on 2004/08/11 07:59:52 (August 2004) by john.

It's not the winning that counts, it's the not being arsed to take part.

I got into one of my bizarre trains of thought yesterday, as I pondered with dread the forthcoming Olympics, yet another reason for me to have to strategically avoid large swathes of television (a la Big Brother and Euro 2004).

Whenever you see athletes interviewed about the Olympics (or any other sporting event) there will almost always be some lame question along the lines of "What does it take to succeed at the Olympics?", and they'll come up with some tripe in return about "postive mental attitutde", or my own personal most hated "You've got to give it 110%". Then they go on about how you have to be so motivated, dedicated and focused.

So it seems in many ways the Olympics is a celebration of personal drive and ambition. It is full of people who are brimming with "get up and go". The sort of people I really can't stand. This got me to thinking: if we have an international event celebrating people pushing themselves to their limits, people at the very pinacle of their field, why can we not also have one to celebrate people who are the eptiomy of laziness, sloathfulness, apathy and downright lethargy.

Enter the Lethargy Olympics, or perhaps the Lethlympics for short. So, I am posting an article here in an attempt to set up a steering commitee, who can (presuming they can be arsed) work out the format of the Lethlympics, particularly which events are to be included.

I have a few suggestions of my own to get the ball rolling.

Perhaps the most obvious is the moving as slow as you can race. Which is, by definition I suppose, not really a race. Not moving at all is going to be a popular tactic I can imagine. As a result, we have a sport which is far more open and widely applicable compared to the highly elitist (some might even say prejudiced) events in the regular Olympics. For example, being already stone dead at the start of the race is nothing like the hindrance it would present in the regular Olympics. In many ways having already snuffed it would be a positive boon, accepting the potential flaw that you could be moved by someone else, and would be less effective at resisting this. Of course, purists may argue that resisting being moved by someone else is in fact demonstrating a kind of effort, and therefore not really in the spirit of the Lethargy Olympics, so I can see a potential grey area in the regulations developing here.

One of the other bones of contention I have with the regular Olympics is that it is somewhat biased towards those athletes who actually turn up on the day of the event. Seldom, if ever, are athletes allowed to win by proxy, regardless of how good their reason was for not being there. What if they woke up on the morning of the big day with a bit of a dicky tummy, or a steaming hangover? What if they had to stay at home to let the gas man in? Therefore we have the somewhat non-descript not turning up event. The actual content of this event does not necessarily need to be defined, other than the fact that the objective is to simply not turn up for it. I'm not quite sure how the winner will be chosen, should more than one person not turn up. Perhaps again this could be a good opportunity to deviate from the out-dated elitist conventions of the regular Olympics - why should there only be one winner...? I don't want to approach this from a sickly sentimental "everyone's a winner" kind of point of view, typically adopted by school teachers who were formerly hippies. More the argument here will be that nobody cares who wins in the first place.

As an extension of the above, we could also have a kind of champions' league version, in the form of the not having registered for it in the first place event. In the case of tie, arbitration could be done on a judge's decision of who is generally most oblivious of the event, or indeed the Lethargy Olympics as a whole. I'd anticipate this would increase the gold medal ownership of goat herders in remote parts of Siberia somewhat exponentially.

As well as the high profile "track and field" events, any good Oympic style gathering also needs to have it's speciality sports. One good example could be the remote acquisition event. Here the athletes (or shall we say "lethletes") have to get the remote control, which is almost out of reach, without getting up off the sofa. The use of feet, long stick-like objects, bits of string, pets and other (less lazy) people is not only permitted but actively encouraged. Rather than trivialising this by making it a timed event, I'd prefer it to be judged by a panel of experts, with marks awarded for style, presentation, and general lack of effort expended.

One of the more artistic events could come in the form of synchronised slouching. Here a team of lethletes will be arranged on a number of sofas and will be required to move from one untidy slothful posture to another, at roughly the same time as everyone else. The consumate professionals may even want to attempt dozing off at the same time as each other.

As highlighted by the remote acquisition event, an important part of the art form of lethargy is getting other people to do stuff for you, which could be an event in it's own right. This would be particularly pleasing to me if the unwitting slaves are in fact athletes from the regular Olympics. We could have high jumpers and hurdlers hoovering, swimmers doing the washing up, and marathon runners nipping round to the newsagents for twenty Benson and Hedges, all whilst our lethletes lay about on the sofa, or perhaps just stay in bed.

Any further ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Always loved a comment I read somewhere: You are never a loser, but simply winning impaired!

Posted by Mad Mumsie at 2004/08/11 08:48:23.

It occurred to me just now we could call this area of sport "apatheletics", with individuals "apathletes", which would also be a good every day term for motivationally challenged types.

Posted by John at 2004/08/11 09:02:20.

Can't be arsed to comment.

Posted by dsp at 2004/08/11 09:06:40.

A further discipline I've thought of is the Nonatholn. The presence of things like triathlons, pentathlons and heptathlons in the regular Olympics presumably stems from the belief that the truly perfect athlete is able to turn his or hand to more or less anything and still succeed. By contrast in the Lethargy Olympics, ithe goal is to find people who have as narrow a base of accompilshment as possible, thus the Nonathlon (or should that be Zerothlon) in which apathletes take part in a combination of no gruelling challenges whatsoever. Not too sure how we elect a winner. Maybe shoe size?

Posted by John at 2004/08/11 13:46:52.

Alternatively, we could enter the only event we're good at: the beerathon.

Posted by tom at 2004/08/11 20:56:41.

Do you think it ironic that a topic on lethargy has inspired one of your longest posts John?

Posted by Karl at 2004/08/13 02:18:43.

Mind you, you went an awfully long time doing fack all on this site!

Posted by Karl at 2004/08/13 02:19:44.

Quote - "Euro 2004"

This did mean you missed the opportunity to witness a bunch of part-time Greeks stuff a load of over-paid prima donnas.

There is still a little but of justice in the world.

Posted by Karl at 2004/08/13 02:24:58.

Re: last post

Read 'bit' in stead of 'but'.

Posted by Karl at 2004/08/13 02:26:04.

Karl ... I strongly suspect you've just stunk-out the enitre top floor by nuking a curry.

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/08/13 13:34:06.

A new sporting arena for those who cannot be bothered.
In "You Are What You Eat" by Gillian McKeith she say that it take approximately 6 hours for any food put in your top hole to make it out of your bottom hole. Now bear with me....she says that sweet corn is not fully digested so is visible in your mud sharks. So with a careful eating you can time how long food takes to make it through your system. I can see some of you are already ahead of me on this. Yes, the Poolympics!! We already have a measurable sprint event, though with the average length of a colon it probably more of a marathon. Anabolic curries would have to be banned of course. Can any one think of more events. I'm sure there would be one involving presentation in there somewhere. As is producing the longest chod with out breakage...

Posted by Mike at 2004/08/17 09:49:00.

If we entered the Lethargy Olympics, we'd simple Not Turn Up, thus winning all events by default.

Posted by Rob Lang at 2004/08/17 13:07:50.

Hmmm, errr... well, interesting, Mike.... I wonder if this already exists as a kind of sister sport to competitive eating (or speed eating or whatever it is called). As a spectator sport, it could give a whole new meaning to the phrase "the shit hits the fan".

Posted by John at 2004/08/17 13:53:38.

qocqtpcctub1iq7y

Posted by Billie Cox at 2008/11/12 23:10:13.

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