15 events for your next beerlympics

Sometimes sitting and listening to music and having a good old-fashioned chat with friends isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to get serious. Sometimes you need to feed the fire of competition and piss on it with gasoline (aka pee that is 80% pure alcohol). Sometimes, you need to find out who is the greatest drinking gamer, drunk athlete, and all-around legend amongst your crew. Sometimes, you need to throw a Beerlympics.*

Now, a Beerlympics is not for everyone. It is for the dedicated. Fortunately, we are the dedicated... So, if you need some inspiration for Beerlympics, read on. Let the cooked folks here at The Booze Games HQ point you in the right direction of some ground rules, and then more importantly some events. 15 of them, to be precise.

Some pointers, before we dive in:

• While you can compete solo, we recommend playing in teams. Ideal number of teammates: four to six... Optional: pick countries and come wielding their liquor, flags, and potentially theme songs. 
• We are going to assume you know the rules for some of the more well-known games. If not, we’re working on our guide to classic drinking games that will be up soon, and we’ll link you through to the rules there eventually and for now send you to similar resources.
• Recommended: each player should tape all their used beer (or other) cans together to form a staff over the course of the day. This can be used for Jousting later.
• Points: feel free to design your own point scoring system. Too lazy? Here’s a rough one: for events that are one team against each other, all players on the winning team get 10 points each (so teams will score 20). For more individual style events that involve places (first, second, & third) first place gets 25 points, second place 15, and third place 10.
• Ideally, play at your fancy friend’s house that has a basketball hoop and a pool. Or at any friend’s house who lives near a hoop and a pool. If neither of these are an option, improvise and adapt.

BoozeGames head of athletics.

Enough. Let’s go already. Events time. We start on the pong table and with track and field.

1. Beer Pong – if you don’t have the most classic drinking game of all time on your Beerlympics events list, rethink your life. You should know how to play this already goddammnit. Fine, if you don’t read this.
2. Beer Baseball – beer pongs sexy sibling. It’s like beer pong mixed with flip cup, mixed with classic catches. Rules are a little longer but still easy to learn for this one, check them out here.
3. Cross country relay – things get real here. Set a longer loop (say, around the block or around the park). One person from each team races to complete the loop on foot as fast as possible. However, players must chug a full beer before they start running. Whenever the first player completes the loop they tag off to the second player, who then races to do the same thing. The first team to have all players complete the loop wins!
4. Flip cup – Olay, olay olay olay… We think flip cup rules are fairly common knowledge, but check them out here if you need to brush up.
5. Sprint – a personal favourite. The plain old footrace. Set your distance (this is a sprint, so 100m or less), decide to do it as individuals or as relay teams, and on go, hit that gas pedal baby and race to the finish. If you ain’t first you last. Pro tip: an easy way to ensure an even start is to throw something in the air, and go is when it touches the ground.
6. Shotput – now… we’ve had all this track, we need some field. Using the same competition rules as shotput (found here), compete in a shotput throwing competition with a crushed up beercan from one of your used beers.
7. Boat Race – there can be no Boozelympics without a chugging race. Rules here, suckers.

You should be sufficiently in form by this point. Time to do some aquatic recovery for those legs. Time to get wet and go to the pool.

8. Swimming relay – you can’t win any argument about who the best all around Beerlympics competitor is without getting aquatic. Same rules as the cross country relay here, except with swimming laps of a pool. Drink chugs optional but strongly recommended.
9. Synchronised diving – for this, you’re going to need an unbiased panel of judges. Call in the services of any non-competitors hanging around. Start a zoom call. You’ll figure it out. Then, in pairs, you each execute some synchronised dives. Each pair has three dives, and the judging panel scores each dive from one to ten. Your combined total is your overall score. Winner has the highest score, and in the case of a tie… it’s a dive off. PS: for each point you get under ten on each dive, take a drink (e.g. if you score a 7, drink 3 sips).

Let’s get you home and dried off and into some more skills challenges.

10. Darts – plays some gosh damn darts. We suggest doing a moderated version to speed up the time this takes. Our suggestion: elimination. Set a target, and if you miss and the player behind you hits it, you’re out. Last one standing wins. Obviously, take a drink every time you miss and finish your drink if you get eliminated.
11. Beerio kart – compete in a full Mario kart cup on one console. Each team must nominate one different driver per race. Double up if teams aren’t four players or more. The rules are simple: you can only drink during the race, drivers must open a beer after the start of each race and finish it before the end of that race, and whatever team wins the overall cup wins! 

We assume by this point your bodies are refreshed again, and you’re sufficiently hydrated to get into some highly aggressive team sports play for an hour. So, move on to: 

12. Soccer – this is a 20-minute game of soccer. An Olympics is not complete without team sports. If 20 minutes is up and it’s a tie, it’s golden goal.  
13. Basketball – this is a 20-minute game of basketball, if you have a household hoop or a court nearby. If 20 minutes is up and it’s a tie, hold an elimination 3-point shooting contest for the win.
14. Limbo - Get a broom handle or some similarly shaped object or rope to be used as a bar, held up by two players. You must get all the way under the bar by bending backwards but without any part of your body except your feet touching the ground. If you fail to do so you are eliminated. Once all players have attempted one height and if there are two or more players remaining the height drops down lower and you go again. At the beginning replace the bar holders after your attempt so they can go, and then as the rounds go by eliminated players can replace them permanently. Continue until one player is left or all players fail the same height.
15. Jousting – this is the dumbest event. Please use caution and common sense. Indeed, nothing we are saying here should be tried at home unless you’re a professional. Joust at your own risk... To Joust, either compete in teams of two and do a knockout tournament or nominate two combatants to represent each larger team. One combatant (the rider) should be armed with a staff. They get piggybacked by their partner (the horse). In an open space, on grass, line up facing the other pair, and on go the horses should charge at one another as fast as they like. The riders attempt to break their staff on the other rider and unhorse him (knock him off his partners back). Unhorsing the other rider scores an automatic win. If neither rider is unhorsed, the joust then becomes hand fighting: handfighting means the horses and riders wrestle each other to try and knock the other pair to the ground. Whichever rider is left last on his horse, that team wins.

There you go. A full 15 event Beerlympics to destroy your world. Proceed with caution, proceed with aggression. Stay safe and let us know how you go!!! Or, if you can't be bothered to set this all up for yourself, just go ahead and get a copy of The BoozeGames. It will most certainly get the job done, and then some.

*Fun fact – The BoozeGames was originally supposed to be called the BoozeLympics, until lawyers strongly suggested that we did not. Unfortunately, the International Olympic Committee apparently don’t take kindly to anyone adopting any part of the sacred name, and with our budget, a budget that’s comprised mainly of peanuts and a sexy attitude, there’s about a -69/10 chance we could take them on.