The Paris Olympics are over, but the 2024 Paris Paralympics will soon start. Several MotoGP riders would qualify as Paralympians. Certainly, the trio of Marc Marquez, Alex Rins and Cal Crutchlow can barely muster 8 fully functioning limbs between the three of them. Paddock rumours suggest that Liberty Media is on the brink of closing a deal with the Olympics Committee to include MotoGP in a similar form to Modern Pentathlon. In this article, we investigate how the top class of motorcycle racing could become an Olympic sport as early as Los Angeles 2028.
What is Modern Pentathlon?
It’s a stupid, made-up sport that nobody ever watches. Modern Pentathlon was officially the least popular Olympic sport until Breakdancing came along and sank faster than a totally non-dodgy millionaire’s yacht in the Mediterranean.
As the name suggests, Modern Pentathlon consists of 5 events. These are supposed to represent the skills a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars would need to escape from behind enemy lines and fight his/xher way back home. Swimming, fencing, riding a random horse you’ve never met, shooting and running. (They didn’t include drunkenness, slavery and dying of smallpox because “Octathlon” just doesn’t have the same ring to it).
The horse riding part, which consisted of show jumping in Paris 2024, will be abolished in favour of a Ninja Warrior type obstacle course for LA 2028 on the grounds of animal welfare. Which is pretty ridiculous, really. The horse in the clip below seemed to be having a great old time at Paris 2024. Just look how pleased with itself the magnificent beast is as it struts majestically away!
That’s what you get for naming a horse “RC213V”, I suppose.
What’s this got to do with MotoGP?
Well, up until now at least, Modern Pentathlon has had horses in it. And as everyone knows, there are 3 kinds of people involved in horses:
1. Rich idiots with more money than sense.
2. Poor idiots who re-mortgage their houses so their talentless kids can ride instead of getting an education.
3. Professional riders who are reasonably normal apart from being extremely small and barking mad.
Clearly, equestrian sport is an exact match for motorcycle racing in every way, except that horses are much more expensive and dangerous than motorcycles.
What will MotoGP Pentathlon look like?
The 5 events are thought to be up for inclusion in Olympic MotoGP Pentathlon are as follows:
Event 1: Paddock Scooter Taekwondo
Skills: Riding/Fighting
Pairs of riders will ride around a Long Lap Penalty lane side by side on paddock scooters whilst trying to punch and kick each other to the ground. This is in honour of the greatest race of the MotoGP era: Sepang 2015.
Event 2: 50 Metre Sprint Through Deep Gravel
Skill: Running
Riders will start from lying down on their back, then jump up and sprint 50 metres through gravel. This will represent running to turn their bike engine off before it destroys itself from running on its side for too long after they’ve crashed it.
Event 3: Picking Up Fallen Bike
Skill: Weightlifting
Riders will lift several fallen motorcycles, starting with a Moto3 bike and building up to a Harley-Davidson Bagger (provided that H-D haven’t managed to “Bud Light” themselves out of existence by 2028, exactly a century after their current range of engines was designed). Points will increase with increasing bike weight. This will represent picking up a machine after Marc Marquez has passed a rider with his trademark “spirited overtake”.
Event 4: Helmet Throwing
Skill: Shot Put
Riders will have 3 attempts to hurl a crash helmet as far as possible. This represents what riders do when it was their own stupid fault that they fell off but they blame the bike or an innocent rider who happened to be in the vicinity when they crashed (Usually Zarco).
Event 5: Sumo
Skill: Wrestling
Wearing sumo suits, riders will wrestle each other. This represents having a verbal battle with an insufferably woke, tub of lard journo in the post-race press conference.
Conclusion
It’s about time that motorcycling was represented in the Olympics, given that the games already include cack like golf. The new MotoGP Pentathlon event will show the world all of the skills that it takes to be a top MotoGP rider.