5 Weird and Wonderful Sports to Watch During the Tokyo Olympics

Swimming is nice and all, but there’s not a ton of romance in splish-splashing back and forth in a straight line while gasping for air. Do you know what has romance to spare, though? A race to the sky. Although speed climbing is just one component of the larger sport climbing program, it’s undeniably the most exciting, with competitors scampering up a 50-foot climbing wall, ascending side-by-side as they vie for ethereal supremacy. The best climbers summit the wall in about six seconds. Making its Olympic debut this year, speed climbing represents a new racing frontier, one freed from the shackles of the X-axis.

There’s probably a reason that handball hasn’t ever caught on in America, but it remains a mystery. Whereas other Olympic sports are relegated to obscurity because they’re inaccessible (the aforementioned dancing horses) or complicated (rhythmic gymnastics) or torturous (marathon swimming), handball seems like the creation of an enterprising P.E. teacher. A cross-section of basketball and soccer, the game has a simple premise: two teams of seven players try to yeet a fancy little dodgeball into their opponent's goal. The game is fast-paced as teams quickly alternate ends of the court, hurling the ball at frightened goalies. The throws are calibrated with finesse and power, beauty and fury. There are worse ways to procrastinate than to disappear down a handball highlights YouTube rabbit hole; the rest of the world should pray that Patrick Mahomes and Jacob DeGrom never decide to do so. 

Badminton is whimsical tennis, the wiffle ball of racquet sports, if you will. If tennis is a protracted land war between exhausted combatants, badminton is its ditzier little sibling. The tennis ball is replaced by a shuttlecock, which flutters more than it zooms; big heavy racquets are substituted for little racquet faces perched on a giraffe-necked handle. But unlike tennis, where the sheer power of the players can stifle rallies before they begin, badminton is non-stop action. Rallies are long and frantic as players scramble after the happily floating ‘cock while trying to outwit their opponent. This isn’t your grandparents’ badminton.

In recent years, bike riding has been co-opted by middle-aged dads who need a hobby on the weekends and don’t pull off a spandex bodysuit as well as they think they do. BMX racing, in turn, offers a more hardcore alternative to idly pedaling down uninterrupted stretches of level road. The concept: American Ninja Warrior, but on bikes. Each race pits eight riders against each other as they’re forced to navigate a dirt track packed with moguls, jumps and hairpin curves. Like a Dan Flashes shirt, the reason this sport is so interesting is because these courses are soooo complicated. 

Most Olympic sports have a very clear purpose. The 100 meter dash reveals the fastest person alive; gymnastics shows who can do the most perilous flips; weightlifting determines which person is the strongest. Modern Pentathlon, though, seems to be purely based on vibes. Composed of fencing, horse jumping, swimming, and laser-running (a combo of pistol-shooting and running), the modern pentathlon is what happens if you put the Olympics on shuffle. There’s no discernible purpose for its existence—besides, of course, finding the best horse jumper, who can also run and swim really fast while also being an accurate marksman who can fence—and that’s the beauty of it.