Speed Walking: The Olympic Oxymoron

So you won a gold medal in speed walking, eh? Well congratufuckinglations. I'll bet I can kick your ass at power sitting.

If I were in Jacques Rogge's shoes for a day, the first thing I would do is strike "walking" from the next Olympics, and here's why:

1. It's impossible to officiate. The walkers move their feet so quickly that even if you're looking carefully it's difficult to tell if they have both their feet off the ground for a fraction of a second. Over a 20km course, there's absolutely no way you can properly monitor all "racers". I am sure they cheat their assess off when they're in the middle of the course without any judges near by.
2. It's a poor spectator sport. Really. Marathon is boring enough, but this is like a marathon in slo-mo. Not only that, the racers look ridiculous. Imagine if you will, a worm dancing upright on the pavement. That's about what they look like.
3. It's a fringe sport. Very fringe. There are other fringe sports in the Olympics, like two man luge, but you need to draw a line somewhere.
4. The sport just fundamentally doesn't make any sense. If you want to get from point A to point B quickly, what do you do? You run! You don't fucking walk, you idiot.

If you're going to have a contest for who can walk fastest, why don't you also have a hurdles event for walkers? The racers will speed walk up to each barrier, and them climb over the barrier without jumping. To make it really authentic, you can give each racer shopping bags and hold the event in an Impark lot. That's something I'd be more likely to watch.