What If Shopping Became A Sport In The London Olympic Games?

As London is busy preparing for the Olympic Games, set to start in July, I have a proposal to make to the board who decides which sports to include in the Games. I believe that shopping should be added.

Seriously? you ask.

Seriously.

Have you seriously thought about the actions involved in the activity of shopping? The activity would pass many of the criteria that the IOC (International Olympic Committee) Session uses to determine which sports will be included or excluded in the Program for the Olympic Games.

The IOC Executive Board sits down and reads the agenda. Number 14 (random) on the list is "Include shopping on the Olympic Games".

Ahem, yes I have been invited to read my arguments to affirm that shopping is a sport that fits within the eligibility rules outlined by the IOC in the Olympic Charter. Okay, no they have not invited me, but humour me if you will.

The IOC uses the word event to describe an athletic competition to be included in the Olympic Games. An event is a competition that results in the awarding of metals. Okay, boxing and football are straight-forward ones to include for the London games. They are just two of the 26 sports. I say, let's make shopping the 27th sport!

Yes, there could be medals awarded. The shoppers, both men and women, could compete against each other in a mock-supermarket set up in a paved open area.

Each person would have a shopping cart and have to collect items from a list within a certain amount of time. The athlete who returns to the finish line first with all of the items on the list in his or her cart is the winner. This person would be awarded the gold medal, while the second and third places would get silver and bronze respectfully.

Let the competition begin!

Many sports are broken down into branches in the Olympic Games. For example, the discipline of swimming is broken down into the backstroke and breaststroke. For shopping, the branches could be:

• Grocery Shopping
• Clothes Shopping
• Drugstore Shopping
• Costco (I like Costco and I am putting forward the motion. No sense arguing with me!)
• Electronics Shopping
• Budgeting Skills - The athletes would each be given a certain amount of money and asked to shop the store to get ingredients for a specific recipe at the lowest possible price.

Here I prove that there is a lot of variety to the sport. There are many options for shopping so the IOC would not have issues coming up with related competitions. Kinda makes you want to try out for the Olympics, doesn't it?!

The popularity of the sport is another consideration of the IOC. The discipline must be popular by both genders in multiple countries. While not everyone loves every form of shopping, there is so much diversity among the branches of the discipline that spectators would likely be interested in at least one of the competitions.

Perhaps men would be interested in the electronics shopping competitions, while women might be more interested in the clothes-related games. Each branch would have both male and female competitors; the combination of men and women would surely draw crowds.

Another argument in favour of including shopping in the Olympic Games is that it would be new to the event. The Games has never seen a similar sport before in competition. People would crowd around the stands to watch the competitions!

I hereby conclude my speech to the IOC regarding adding shopping to the Olympic Games this year and for years to come. Ahem, I wait for a response from the board members.

Why are they avoiding making eye contact? Should I set up my PowerPoint presentation to further explain my arguments to them?

I do hope that shopping gets added as a sport to the Olympic Games. I wonder how long it will take for them to decide... I wish someone would make eye contact with me...