Five-ring circus: A radical plan to modernise the Olympics

Imagine this. The year is 2032. The Olympic Games in Brisbane are three months away and a special ceremony is about to be conducted in preparation for one of the newest and most innovative events on the program.

Nagi Maehashi, the popular leader of the governing RecipeTin Party who is widely credited with ending world hunger, is the newly inaugurated president of the Republic of Australia. She stands on a stage before a crowd of thousands at King George Square; millions more are watching live from around the world. Before her is a large glass bowl, inside which are dozens of small plastic balls, each containing a piece of paper with the name of an Olympic discipline written on it.

Nagi Maehashi, the mastermind behind RecipeTin Eats.Credit: James Brickwood

She reaches in grabs a ball, and opens it up.

“Track cycling,” she says. She repeats the process four more times: “Shot put ... diving ... taekwondo ... badminton.”

A big screen shows the real-time reactions of a bunch of athletes from around the world. Some are grinning. Others look panicked.

“Athletes,” President Maehashi tells them and the crowd. “You can now begin training.”

OK, fine. Back to reality, if we must.

Excitement is at a fever pitch into the second week of Paris 2024, but the truth is the Olympic movement is in a battle for relevance. In this mad, mixed-up, digital world, it is no longer a given that young people are going to care for it when they have myriad other entertainment options at their fingertips, and no capacity to understand the concept of delayed gratification.

The International Olympic Committee has tried all sorts of different gimmicks to appeal to a broader audience, to varying results: from the embrace of “extreme” sports like skateboarding and sport climbing, to shortened formats like rugby sevens and 3x3 basketball (and soon, T20 cricket), to the creation of the Olympic eSports Games, which were announced just last month. They’ll be held for the first time next year in … you guessed it, Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, when it comes to your more bread-and-butter mainstream sports, like golf, tennis and football, it feels like they’re there to boost the IOC’s metrics, and it’s questionable how much an Olympic medal is actually valued by those athletes. That surely degrades the whole thing.

Introducing the random pentathlon.Credit: Matt Davidson

The Olympic movement is caught in a bind. It can’t stay still, or else it will lose relevance. But it can’t stray too far from the traditions and ideals it was built on, or it will lose all meaning.

I have an idea that can set it free.

It first came to me while watching the last Olympics, and immediately I knew it was a game-changer. I was taken by the decathlon at Tokyo 2020, how incredibly versatile a decathlete had to be to compete at such a high level, and how difficult their training schedules must be. And then I considered the modern pentathlon – the predecessor to the decathlon, perhaps the event that best captures the Games’ spirit – and it got me thinking deeper.

The modern pentathlon is a “multisport” contest involving five elements – fencing, freestyle swimming, equestrian show jumping, pistol shooting, and cross-country running – which can trace its genesis back to the Ancient Olympics in Greece.

The modern pentathlon will soon include a “ninja-style” obstacle race.Credit: Getty Images

It was re-introduced for the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who selected those five events to replicate the challenges faced by an imaginary Napoleonic-era courier tasked with delivering a message back to camp across hostile enemy territory.

But the modern pentathlon is not some sacrosanct tradition that cannot be touched. It changes, too. For Los Angeles 2028, the equestrian component has been dropped (a response to an incident in which a coach abused a horse refusing to jump for its rider) and will be replaced with an obstacle race, not unlike something you might see on Australian Ninja Warrior.

In fact, according to a poll of 1500 people in America last year, 45 per cent of Gen Z and 41 per cent of Millennials said they’d be more likely to watch the Olympics if it featured a “ninja-style” race.

But I reckon we can do better.

I have no qualms with the modern pentathlon as it is, or the decathlon; they can stay on the program, as long as there’s room for my idea, which I guess we can call the “random pentathlon”.

What I have in mind would bring the Games into today’s world while still staying true to its core, echoing the original Olympic spirit of holistic athleticism and strategic thinking, and adding a narrative layer throbbing with the cosmopolitan allure of a reality-television show.

My idea? Put the whole thing on shuffle.

Instead of the five standard pentathlon events, pick them at random from the whole Olympic program. Take out anything overly ambitious or unsafe, as well as all the team sports (unless there’s an individual component of a team sport we can go with. For example, instead of basketball, play a game of HORSE). Leave it to chance or, more specifically, the fateful hand of Nagi Maehashi, the woman behind RecipeTin Eats, who selects from a curated pool of tantalising possibilities.

I haven’t figured out the qualification process yet; I am open to all suggestions. Crucially, nations must name their athletes before the sports are drawn. This would add a tactical element to the selection process. Do you go with a strong athlete, in the hope that, say, weightlifting or wrestling is one of the five events? Or a more limber, lithe individual better suited to something like artistic gymnastics? Or do you just pick the best and most adaptable all-round athlete you can find in your country, and hope for the best?

Extreme sports such as skateboarding appeal to a younger crowd, but the Olympics could go further.Credit: Eddie Jim

Do the draw three months before the Games begin. You could do the draw at the Games themselves, just before they’re asked to compete, but that would probably be a little bit too chaotic, as well as impractical for the host nation in an organisational sense. Three months is a good amount of time for a skilled sportsmen and sportswomen to brush up on the basics of an entirely new discipline (or five) and reach some level of mastery.

Does this not have the makings of the most interesting sports documentary series you’ve ever seen? Apparently Sprint was good, but this would be way better. Get some cameras to follow along as an enormously muscular dude from Romania familiarises himself with the nuances of table tennis in a gruelling three-month training camp.

Meanwhile, a Kenyan endurance runner has to master the pommel horse. Both would then have to somehow negotiate their way through 18 holes of golf. And then a race walk. And then some air rifle action!

It’d be like Eurovision, except for sport, and the whole world is invited. The search for the best all-round sportsperson on the planet.

Tell me you wouldn’t watch the hell out of it, and I’ll show you a liar.

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