All the events we absolutely need to see if Durham hosts the 2028 Olympics

The 2024 Paris Olympics has been a joy to watch this past week, although with celebrating the success of world class athletes comes a sense of internal dissapointment.  However, being a Durham student doesn’t only grant you a bachelors degree over three years, but also a profound athletic ability that only Durham students are (un)lucky enough to acquire.

House hunting

It’s no surprise that finding a house in Durham is more than a challenge, and such perseverance is only matched by Olympic athletes. Hours, days, weeks of searching for a house under £170 per week is laughable. Durham landlords are raising their prices more than Mondo Duplantis on the pole vault, and its hard to keep up. Once you sign that contract, regardless of what the house is like, a secured home with four walls and a roof deserves a spot on the podium.

Hill walking

Durham’s infamous hills would make any olympian break a sweat. Walking from Tesco to your hill college, shopping bags in hand, seems almost impossible. Durham is a revolving treadmill at all corners which shows no mercy, but at least we’re all guarenteed calves of steel. The tough test of endurance seems less of a task walking home from Jimmy’s, and suddenly you’re breaking every world record running back to your accomodation. Maybe alcohol is the key to Durham athleticism, and given our track record, we’re already olympic champions.

Cobble walking

Come rain or shine, the uneven texture of Durham’s grounds have quite literally been my downfall. From broken ankles to faceplanting in the middle of Market Square, this place is unforgiving. If you survived Durham’s snowy winter without any close encounters to the ground, Dancing on Ice is waiting for you. As is an Olympic gold.

Day drinking

It takes a certain type of stamina to sustain 6 hours of drinking, and when you’re trapped in Durham what better to do than a cheeky pub crawl? The promise of Jimmy’s at the end of the night is better than any olympic medal, and DJ Dave B singing Angels is the Durham national anthem which fills everyone with pride. However, it is not for the weak. Often you will see some of the unfortunate contestants sprawled around Durham with a takeaway unable to make the next pub. If you manage to survive a bottomless brunch, this immediately deserves a medal; some of us aren’t so lucky. I haven’t even rotated this photo the wrong way round it is literally just my photography skills after trying to win a gold medal in day drinking x

Interview dodging

The queue for Durham clubs is torture in ways more than one: Waiting 45 minutes to be vaccuum packed in a dungeon can only get worse by the harrassment of a mysterious, blurry figure with a microphone. What’s even harder is to keep your mouth shut upon their arrival. If hangxiety warranted an Olympic medal, seeing yourself on your own for you page the next day will definitely do the trick.

All nighters

The only five Olympic rings to be seen here is the birds eye view of  five empty Red Bull cans as you are hunched over your desk in despair. Exam season is the ultimate test of survival, and if you manage to complete your 24 hour exams without watching the sunrise in the Billy B, collect your medal immediately.

Seat scramble

Forget the men’s 100m final, the level 3 individual booths see a closer sprint to the finish line than that of Kishane Thompson and Noah Lyles last week. Unlike Olympians, your stretch to the podium is far from a celebration. Instead of recieving a glistening gold medal you are condemned to hours of solitary study, staring at an empty Word document thinking about the acceptable time to venture to the cafe for an expensive  ’10 minute’ lunch.

Even worse, failure to find a seat within the first 5 minutes walking through the gates of hell leaves you doing an unfortunate number of laps of all four floors, climbing up the central stairs and scanning for the promise of an empty seat; if only the library was as empty as this promise. Adding to the heat and sweats of all that walking, if you’re brave enough to enter the level 3 computer room, the vacated seats and firepit screens ascends the Billy B from a mental to a physical hell, finding yourself burning amongst the computer screens. After all that, if your quest continues you deserve more than a gold medal, more so a nobel peace prize.

Sunday reset relay

It’s the day everyone’s been dreading, and its a team effort. Although if you actually manage to get your whole flat/house involved, you receive an immediate medal. This is impossible. Scrub daddies at the ready, rubber gloves on, flatmates lined up against their will: now, its time to take on the silverfish. Ready, set, scrub!

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