New Winter Olympic Sports

We Canadians love the Winter Olympics. Let's face it, at the Summer Olympics, we suck. But at the Winter Olympics, per capita, we outpull our weight. We're always happy to see a new sport get added to the Winter Olympics because... more medals for us!

That's why while the Olympics are on, we often find ourselves asking what possible new sports could be added? What winter activities could be turned into international competitions?

Here are several that I'm aware of:

The Ice Walk: Competitors race each other while carrying two full garbage bags down a 5-degree icy slope, returning with a newspaper and handful of mail.

The Windshield Clearance: Competitors have identical cars covered in a 2mm thick layer of ice. They must enter the car, start it, clear the windshield and drive through a complicated set of pylons and then parallel park in 15cm of mixed snow, slush and ice. [The clearing of ice is Dave T's idea, I came up with the driving part because I want to see how many Olympic athletes can drive with as small a hole in the ice on the windshield as my father could when I was a kid.]

The New Winter Driver Assist: Many people have already suggested a whole series of competitions for stuck cars (for example: the one-, two-, three- and four-person pushes). I'd like to add to that my idea that would not only give Canada a good shot at a podium sweep, it would allow some non-winter countries to participate. The ingredients:

• A car that is stuck, but not so stuck that it actually needs a push;
• A recently-licensed driver from a tropical country who has never experienced winter; and
• A winter driver who uses words and gestures but no physical contact with the automobile to help the driver get the car unstuck.