With the 2020 (or 2021 dependent upon which year you are willing to accept) Summer Olympic Games now in the record books the world begins it’s preparation of the 2024 (or 2025 if you’re just as confused as we are) Summer Olympic Games in Paris. But with every rotation of the 4 year cycle, well with this strange 3 year cycle (oh hell this is confusing) comes discussion on what will be added and what will be removed from the Olympic schedule.
The historically popular sports of Karate, Baseball, and Softball were featured in the Tokyo Olympics due to their cultural relevance to the host country, but are being cut from the 2024 Paris lineup. It’s easy to understand why the French chose not to include these worldly accepted events… they’re just not good at them.
But for every sport removed, light is shed on the hopes of a new sport being added. A Bloomington, MN man has focused that light on his newly presented sport in hopes of it being adopted to the 2024 Olympics. “I call it foam toss,” Bryan Milton said with a wide grin. “I’m not 100% sold on the name yet but I still have 90 days to change the name now that I’ve submitted the proper paperwork to both the Olympic Charter and the World Anti-Doping Code.”
Bryan claims the event was his own original idea after spending countless nights sitting beside the bathtub bathing his 7 children. With wrinkled fingers and boredom setting in, he began tossing foam forms against the tub wall to see how many he could get to stick. “At first it was just letters. But then we picked up a pack of numbers from Target. Eventually, I can see the sport expanding to shapes and animal cutouts too, but we’re just not there yet.”
If by some miracle the IOC (International Olympic Committee) does in fact recognize this juvenile (yet addicting) sport, Bryan will have an uphill battle to bring it to the world stage in Paris. Any sport considered is evaluated on five major factors, each with subdivided criteria. When pressed if this was nothing but a publicity stunt, Bryan simply responded with a tight lipped straight face, “I honestly don’t see much difference between throwing a ball, disc, stick, or foam letter. This sport combines both endurance and finesse at the highest levels. It’s like running a marathon while painting. It takes mad skills.”
