A friend debated about curling being an Olympic sport; while soccer is not.

Should the sport of soccer be elevated to the stature of curling and be included in the Summer games?

I thought "hurling" was more popular in Europe, especially in the UK after midnight.

Actually, there is a hurling club in the Milwaukee area:

http://www.hurling.net/hurling.html

As for the OP's question, I'm not sure that having a particular competition as part of the Olympic games is necessarily elevating its stature. In some cases, it might be one of the few things keeping an activity alive (although that doesn't really apply to curling, which is pretty popular in some areas.)

What am I missing here? Both are featured in the Olympics.

Soccer was an Olympic sport long before curling It still is..and one of the most followed here in Spain of all the events.

Flyboy, sorry, I was referring to what many drunks do when they have had too much to drink and must expell some of it rather forcefully!

Add as many Oluympic events as you want - and none of them will ever capture my imagination as "ski, stop, shoot something... ski, stop..." has.

Gosh darn it, I <i>really</i> love Olympic Ski, Stop, Shoot Something.

I suppose if they combined the shooting with the ski jump/multiple flip yourself over event... I could be won over by that. Can't say for sure that I'd buy tickets though.

degas, hurling and football can be combined as beckham proved yesterday.

Why don't they combine soccer and curling? That could be fun to watch.

As kenderina pointed out, the thread is obsolete as <b>football</b> is already part of the summer Olympic Games.

Except it's not a proper football competition as it's some sort of under 23 competition and the people who invented the game don't take part.

The olympics is rubbish isn't it? Who watches gymnastics other than nonces? Greco roman wrestling? Walking races? Pants, the lot of it.

Even though Clifton's post was facetious, we are in fact big fans of the Biathlon, our favorite winter Olympics sport. It wasn't until we moved to Europe and started watching it on German TV and then going to watch it live that we began to appreciate it as much as we now do.
It's a very physically demanding sport (a LOT more demanding than soccer/football--top biathlon athletes have to consume 9000 calories a DAY just to maintain their weight during competitions). To nordic ski at top speed and then be steady enough to hit the target takes a great deal of skill, stamina and concentration.

If we were younger (and more fit), we'd take up the sport ourselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon