1912 New Ricroal (New Canciona) Olympics

The 1912 Olympic Games were held in New Ricroal, New Canciona. [The following sentence has been censored by the anti-spoiler police, but it should be clear what sort of sentence it is from the fact that the author thought it necessary to put it in in the first place.]

Because of Tolkienfan's sense of humour, traditional events have been skimped on to make way for some truly bizarre new games like Barrel Racing (not what you think it is), Food Fighting (exactly what you think it is) and 100 Metres Standing Still (what it says on the tin).

Events summary
This is copied verbatim out of the Olympics project on Scratch.

Marathon
The race will be 43 kilometres (Imperial people, work out the distance in miles for yourselves, dinnae ken how they work) just to annoy everyone who was expecting 42 like last time. It will be over a cross-country terrain, because I didn't want it in a city.

Swimming in Formation
Will be swum in Cangrejo Bay, which is fairly calm. This event is more of a showstopper than a race; place will be awarded to the most impressive display.

Archery
A straightforward test of accuracy with a longbow.

Fencing
Competitors will duel with actual, useful swords, not with the useless epee things they often have to use. Attempts will be made to keep event safe; if your athlete dies, we will pay for the funeral.

Sailing
A race around the coast of New Canciona, starting at New Ricroal and ending at Puerto Langoster Nova. Will include challenging choppy waters around Langoster Estrella Point.

Pole Vaulting
Chosen simply because it's satisfying to watch people do it. Participants use a long flexible pole to propel themselves over a high bar, which they try not to knock down.

Rock Climbing
Fairly self-explanatory; climb around on a mountain, try not to fall off, and get to the top before anyone else does.

Barrel Racing
This isn't the weird equestrian event, or versions of said event on foot or in motorised vehicles. In this race, your team is going to actually manhandle a large barrel of wine around a course as fast as you can, while trying not to spill any of the wine (as an incentive, your team gets to take the wine home afterwards).

Gymnastics
Again, name says it all.

100 Metres Standing Still
A new game based on the player's ability to stay in one place for the greatest length of time.

Food Fight
All-out fight using food as a weapon. All competing countries must contribute to the available food. Sending over stuff past its best is OK, as long as nobody's going to definitely get sick from handling it. No raw meats.

Button Breaking
Brought back from 1904 Fictia Olympics! Game consists of seeing who can click a button the most times in one minute. Please don't use automatic clickers or anything; if I catch you cheating, you'll be disqualified. The one game where you can actually have any say in the outcome. Information on how to play in the minigame button, but one very important rule: you only get two attempts. Anything past the two attempts will be ignored.

Registration and country 'scores'
The 'scores' refer to the probability number that helps work out where each country will place. It is not the country's actual score, except in the case of the button breaking.

All of these scores were miraculously filled out a mere two hours after the registration was originally supposed to close, within 3 minutes of the revised closing time. The exception is the button breaking, where two nations (PRA and Humerland) were excluded from the event despite registering for not having submitted scores in time for them to be calculated.

The event registration is as follows:

Results
The very basic results are: Eleutheria won overall, with second and third places taken by the Fictian Empire and New Canciona respectively.

Overall results
Here is a record of where each country came overall, with final points and a list of medals.

Event-by-event results
Here is a record of where each country placed in each specific event.

Account of the barrel race
The barrel race was one of the more interesting events, criteria being both speed around the obstacle course and amount of wine left in the barrel. Each team of four was given a large wooden barrel of Conejo Asesino Nova White Mountain red wine with a loose board covering over the hole, the idea being that the faster the barrel travelled, the more likely the board was to come out and spill wine on the course. Almost every team, interestingly, decided to trade one criterium out for another. Langoustino, New Canciona, New Touleese, and PRA decided to simply get the barrel around the course as quickly as possible, while Eleutheria, Hyrule, Avaconia, and Universia preferred the alternative method, which was taking the time it took to get as much of the wine safely around the course as possible. The Fictian Empire used a radically different approach, as I am about to unfold.

PRA took its approach to the game to the extreme, its team duplicating the record speed reputation it had already made by outstripping every other country in the marathon. The team crossed the finish line well ahead of anyone else. Unfortunately for them, they lost nearly every point gained by this speed effort by spilling all the wine, and also crashing into the Avaconia team and splitting the side of their barrel.

Langoustino beat everyone by studying potential outcomes, and arriving at a conclusion that had somehow escaped every other competitor: if the barrel is travelling fast enough and in the right direction relative to the hole, it doesn't matter if the board comes loose, because centrifugal force will keep the wine in the barrel anyway. They had also considered the point that if the barrel made its way through the course quickly enough, the wine wouldn't have time to leak out of the barrel entirely. This sounded fine in theory, but PRA's performance swiftly condemned it in practice. Langoustino simply used the centrifugal technique, and arrived at the finish line shortly after PRA but with ninety-five per cent of its wine left. New Canciona used a similar technique, but without realising that they were doing so until halfway through. They finished with ninety per cent of their wine and in very good fourth place in terms of speed (New Touleese had finished ahead of them, but lost most of their wine). However, their slap-up celebratory drink (held right then and there on the finish line) depleted a further sixty per cent. The judges were tempted to take points off for this, but said "Unfortunately we can't legally get them for this. They're not impeding other competitors, and we're not allowed to count wine losses after they finish the race."

Eleutheria finished towards the end of the race, well after Hyrule and Avaconia, but because of their extremely careful handling of the barrel was the only team not to spill any of the wine at all. This gave them more than enough points to boost them to second place despite their late finish.

The Fictian Empire never formally finished the race at all. Several of the speedy teams (notably PRA) and a few of the slow careful teams had knocked into their barrel, sending it rolling uncontrolledly several metres backwards, and at one point the board had been knocked loose and then trodden on and broken. The Fictian team had swiftly realised that they were hardly going to beat the fast teams, and had been relying on having plenty of wine left at the end of the game. When it became apparent that this was not going to happen, they sportingly gave up the entire competition with surprisingly good grace, and sat down in the middle of the course to drink some of the wine then and there before it all spilled out and got wasted.

Food fight report
In the food fight, Hawboline won in a walk by taking possession of several large drums of wild honey early in the event. By flooding the arena they managed even to wash out Eleutheria's excellent spaghetti bolognese barricade, from which they were throwing lamb chop cluster bombs. Hawboline's strategy prior to the flooding had been dunking players from other teams head-first in the honey and leaving them to eat or struggle their own way out, while the rest of the team struggled on one member short.

Hyrule was out of the game early as their best player slipped on a wad of butter left there by the New Canciona team, who had heard about Hyrule's plans for a winter olympic event and were inspired by it. The player broke an arm and had to leave the arena almost immediately. Without him, Hyrule was swiftly beaten by a combination of New Canciona's affective mashed-potato-and-gravy bombing approach (in which they bundled the hot, delicious cargo in slices of thin white bread, slingshotted it into the centre of teams, and let it explode) and Hawboline's honey dunking.

Humerland was the next out of the ring, their strategy being to bag all the seafood. The crabs and lobsters, which had a sizeable bulk which made them suitable shotputs and maces, helped them survive until shortly after Hyrule's downfall. The shrimps and prawns made a pathetic cluster bomb, and the unopened oysters may have stung a little as they hit opponents, but were no match for Fictia's mighty jam roll battering ram, which they had been patiently constructing in one corner for the entire game so far.

The PRA got off to a promising start, having secured several tureens of soup which they used in the same way as Hawboline's honey attack. For a while this made a superior (souperior- awful pun alert) weapon, as it was scalding hot. The tactic failed when New Touleese shattered the tureens with a well-aimed barrage of boiled sweets, and PRA discovered that puddles make a lousy weapon. However, the site made an interesting slipping point that very soon saw the Fictian Empire out of the game. New Canciona swiftly pounced on the jam roll battering ram.

Unfortunately, while New Canciona was thus distracted a New Touleese player snuck into their breadstick hut and, from a position of safety, chased the team out of the ring with its own mashed potato and gravy bombs.

Omari Robusuta had so far survived the game with a double attack technique, sidling up to one team with sharpened breadstick katanas and distracting them while the rest of the team waited in ambush with tuna and wasabi sushi grenades. They were themselves defeated when trying this on Eleutheria's then newly-constructed spag bol barricade, reinforced with bruschetta, and with a temporary alliance with Universia.

When eventually the Hawboline honey squad had seen New Touleese and Avaconia out of the ring (the latter of which had made several spectacular but unsuccessful Victoria sponge and strawberry jam offensives), Universia and Eleutheria saw that the time for an alliance had ended. A vicious but short-lived meat pie battle ensued. Eleutheria emerged victorious (and dripping with ketchup) having utilised their emergency cache of mushrooms and bacon to good effect.

Critics agree that the decisive flooding of the barricade with honey was the high point of the fight.

Assisting countries
Fictia provided gold for the medals.

Eleutheria provided some of the foodstuffs for the food fight.

Hyrule provided silver and bronze for the medals, and six sailing boats: Canciona, DeLorean, Ricroal, and Whatevers I, II, and III