After watching and keeping track of standings in the Olympics, I have come to the conclusion that there are too many sports and too many participants.

Every Olympic year they add new sports, which in turn adds more so called “athletes” to the games. It seems to me that we are trying to make the Olympics more accessible to athletes all over the world by adding more events.

I thought that the whole point of the Olympics was that these are the best athletes in the world, and it is hard to get in. It seems that if you want to get into the Olympics now, all you have to do is move to some small country and start playing badminton.

There are many sports that I feel should not be in the Olympics.

We’ll start with water sports. There are currently four water sports in the Olympics: water polo, synchronized swimming, swimming, and diving. Of the four, only two should actually be Olympic events, swimming and diving.

Why, for the love of all things Holy, are water polo and synchronized swimming in the Olympics? What is the next swimming event to be added to the Olympics, Marco Polo?

Keeping with the water theme, we move to boat sports.

There are currently three boat sports, but in total there are 40 events involving boats. There is canoeing/kayaking (16 events), rowing (14 events), and yachting (10 events).

Yachting? You have to be kidding! And 10 events no less. This is ridiculous.

How many different types of yacht races do you have to have and why put them in the Olympics? It won’t be long before we have people sitting on those floating alligators and whales and seeing who can cross the pool first.

Next, we talk about bicycle sports and the recently added mountain biking event.

Come on! Who is the person that didn’t think watching all those 10- speed races was enough biking excitement for the whole world?

Recreational sports take the next cut. This year we added beach volleyball and softball.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like both of these sports, but they just aren’t Olympic caliber when you compare them to the more traditional events like the high jump and weightlifting.

The final area of cutbacks comes in what I like to call the lame sports category.

In this category there are four sports that must go: badminton, table tennis, shooting, and handball.

Do I even need to say anything else?

Table tennis is really ping pong, but that sounds so lame that it would never have gotten in the Olympics unless they changed it. Shooting has 15 events and zero excitement.

Who watches this besides the relatives of the participants?

The Olympics is the greatest sports tradition in the world. We should not try to water down the competition by adding more lame events each Olympic year.

Pretty soon we will have fat, out of shape old men sitting in lazy boy chairs, trying to see who can click through all the cable TV stations with the remote control the fastest.

Brandon Belisle is a sophomore from Bolingbrook, Illinois.