I'll make this (by my standards) brief. Three events are in progress today that simply should not be Olympic sports. One is dressage. One is synchronised swimming. And the other, which Channel Nine has unaccountably been screening for most of Thursday evening, is rhythmic gymnastics.

On the other hand, the BMX competition is under way. This, and other "extreme" sports, should be the future of the Olympic Games.

But if there was one, just one, defunct Olympic sport that I would love to see resurrected, it's the tug of war, held in five Olympiads, last being Antwerp 1920. The earliest that it could conceivably return is now 2024. Sadly I suspect we will be waiting longer while women twirling ribbons retain official recognition.

Here is some amateur footage from the Men's 560kg final of this year's World Indoor Tug Of War Championships.

Maybe they could replace those ribbons with ropes and merge rhythmic gymnastics with tug-of-war...