Kids Create New Sports For Olympics

The children have spoken, and they have some unconventional ideas about what kind of sports should be in future Olympic Games.

But then so do the grown-ups who actually decide such things. Ballroom dancing has been recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee, the first step toward making it part of the Games.

Ballroom dancing has nothing on some of the winning entries in a contest that asked kids across the country to create artwork depicting their vision of a futuristic Olympic sport. Among the winners: Underwater Tug of War.

“I was just thinking that would be really different,” said Katie Ornelas, 12, a sixth-grader at Walnut Hill Elementary School in Dallas.

In the sport, two swimmers are tied together at the ankles. As they swim in opposite directions, the winner drags the loser, said Katie, a swimmer and one of five children who won a trip to the Atlanta Games in the “Olympics of the Imagination” contest sponsored by Visa.

The other winners:

Maze, in which teams compete by working their way through a human-sized maze, created by Jessica Der of San Francisco.

Skin diving in the New Frontier, a combination of physical skills and environmental awareness, created by David Merlis, 12, of Atlanta.

Glide Bike Sandhill Slalom, in which competitors race futuristic ski-equipped bikes down sand dunes, created by Brandon Smith, 13, of Alta Loma, Calif.

The artwork, along with essays explaining how the imaginary events would promote peace and unity, will be exhibited during the Summer Games.

Room at the inn

More precious to some than a gold medal, hotel vacancies in and around Atlanta for the Olympics are starting to pop up.

Though prospective Olympic visitors have been told for months that all rooms in the area were already taken, at least 1,000 rooms are available, an Atlanta paper reported.