Track cycling.
There are medals in;
Road cycling
BMX
MTB
BMX freestyle
So overall, probably a similar amount of gold
Up for grabs?
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200/400 free. Wasnât too bad at IM. Quit swimming age 20 and wasnât much use at uni level not being that good at 50s.
Do agree thereâs too many medals in swimming at Olympics by comparison to others even though current distances are completely established and have never changed.
Easy change would be to get rid of one distance in back, breast and fly; currently 100 and 200, either drop one or be radical and drop both in favour of a 150m hybrid.
Then drop one of the individual medleys and the 4x200 relay.
As for freestyle, best solution would be again radical amalgamation, something like a 100, 500, 1000m option.
Thats the most dramatic option though to thin as much as possible. I wouldnât want it reduced that much at all! Most significantly that solution would cut out the 50m sprinters, which are generally quite unique or at best can only do well at 50 and 100m, which defeats the point if the argument for reduction is excess duplication.
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I suppose itâs because there are 4 different swimming strokes.
Swimming will have 37.
Cycling in all formats will have 22 (12 track, 4 road, 2 MTB, 4 BMX)
True, but there are only 47 athletics golds, and that encompasses track and field which are hugely different
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Controversial, but Iâd get rid of all swimming strokes and just have the purity of cover the distance as fast as you can anyway you like.
Iâd get rid of race walking for the same reason.
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Get rid of hurdles as well then? Or perhaps - only freestyle events and add obstacles such as underwater hoops 
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Is it not more a question of them limiting the number of athletes per sport?
Swimmers all tend to do multiple distances (and sometimes strokes), so the same group of athletes can compete for multiple medals. Cycling added the Madison back in, but teams with qualification for multiple events have to use the same pool of athletes across the disciplines, so they might get 5 endurance riders to cover team pursuit, Madison and omnium.
Didnât the Germans famously enter one of their track sprinters as a mountain biker so that they could bring more than 3 riders for the team sprint squad?
Robert Forster? He had legs like tree trunks!
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Throwback to Paris 1900!
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Iâm not familiar with the intricacies of the rules for hurdles (or steeplechase) but my impression is they are covering the course in the fastest way possible (and arenât restricted to an arbitrarily imposed technique).
If it was quicker to dive headfirst, do a forward roll then carry on running would there be anything stopping them?
You canât put your hands on the barriers or deliberately knock over the hurdles, and touching someone elseâs hurdle in the sprint race is frowned upon. But otherwise it is âfreestyleâ.
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It would be so much better if they could, watching different vaulting strategies.
Hah nice! With the popularity of Red Bull Nepture Steps, perhaps something similar will get added in the future!
Sure, thatâs why I suggested only freestyle events - but add in the obstacle variations to go with it!
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Think itâs a safety thing, with most people wearing spikes and putting their foot on the barrier. Typical H&S spoiling all the fun!
I hadnât realised you couldnât knock them over, I just assumed it would slower.
Gymnastics did try to get parkour into the olympics, although I think they were more interested in tricking / freerunning than parkour as simply the fastest/easiest a to b!
âdeliberatelyâ is the key word, like with your hands or kicking with your feet. They are weighted and surprisingly difficult to topple anyway, but every top class sprint hurdler will smash hurdle 1 because it is too slow to be upright out of the blocks that soon after the start.
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Really? That statement just didnt feel right. Below is the video from the Rio final ⌠everyone cleared the first hurdle? Noone âsmashed hurdle 1â??? (lane 2 clipped it)
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And until they added the 10K swim the longest womens swimming event wasâŚ
⌠triathlon 
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A bloke at my college was a 110m hurdler. He had the big ego that seems to be a requirement for sprinters and was fond of telling everyone how he was the best sprint hurdler in the university and he was the favourite to win the varsity match against Oxford. He went further by telling everyone, whether they were interested or not, that anyone who hits the 1st hurdle is fecked and he âneverâ hits the first hurdle.
Everyone got sick of hearing the same story again and again, so they turned it round - whenever anyone saw him, the first thing theyâd say was âSeb, watch out for that 1st hurdle - if you hit it youâre fecked!â
The varsity match came round and it was obviously playing on his mind because he flattened the first 4 hurdles and trailed in 6th, behind the other 3 Cambridge athletes 
Funnily enough, he was a lot quieter in the run up to the next yearâs meet and won easily 
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