Alien Sport

[valiant12]

The human government in my sci fi setting is organizing a sport event in which the best athletes in the known galaxy are invited to participate.
The problem is that some alien races are better than others in certain sports. Nobody can swim faster than the fish race, and humans are really good at long distance running and other sport which involve endurance.
How can you make a fair game if not all participants are vertebrates ?
The moss creatures are particularly disadvantaged.

 

[CupofJoe]

Multi-events sports like Decathalon have point scoring that in theory even up the field between the power and the speed athletes.
Even Triathalons aim to even up good runners vs good swimmer vs good riders... [but the good runners usually win because it is the last of the tri]
Or you could look in to para-sports where each competitor is placed in a competition with people of a similar ability.
There is a biathalon of Boxing and Chess [I've been told]. One round of Boxing followed by five minutes of Chess then another round of Boxing...

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

My thought would be to look at how they do it for the paralympics - loads of athletes of different abilities all competing.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Vaporo]

Well, I'd probably say that some races just don't participate in some events and that there are different "weight classes" within each event. For example, the giant elephant people may compete in a weight-lifting competition with the rhino and and hippo people, but not with the mouse and grasshopper people. The moss people may simply choose not to participate at all.

 

[Viorp]

You can't.
Even in huamn sports every sport which involves running is always won by Black people.
Boxing solved that by having categories.

Having some species be restricted would be unfair in their own right.
Either make all races lore-wise the same or completelly ignore than aspect.
Or have categories like boxing does.

 

[valiant12]

There is a biathalon of Boxing and Chess [I've been told]. One round of Boxing followed by five minutes of Chess then another round of Boxing...

I should watch this sometimes.

 

[TheCatholicCrow]

If it's physical sports I would agree that restrictive categories may work well ... though the multi-event method sounds like there's less room for discrimination. An obstacle course might work well (climbing, crawling, jumping, swinging, running, maybe swimming etc.) Otherwise, (though not exactly a sport) having them do virtual competitions would solve the issue it could either be running like a video game or they might have to exert physical strength (according to their species' preferred action- running or swimming) in order to power up a piece of AI which they move through the course (or to their other side of the room or whatever).

 

[Jsssssssssk]

Maybe a race using vehicles instead

 

[K.S. Crooks]

You could make it a games where different species can only compete in events not native their own world. This would allow beings to be outside their comfort zone and foster understanding between species.

 

[FifthView]

E-sports.

Then each species could have its own kind of technological interface to the main system.