Bandy

Take two favorite pastimes, soccer and hockey, smash them together, and you have one of the strangest winter games ever included in the Olympics. Bandy was a demonstration sport in the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics and involves two teams of 11 players that compete in a 90 minute game, which is played on a rink the size of a soccer field. They took the sticks and skates from hockey and use a ball instead of a puck. Basically its field hockey on ice skates, but with soccer rules. The game itself isnt necessarily strange, but why bother when you already have an Olympic event in which teams skate around whacking something with a stick? Maybe theyll renew interest in bandy by tossing elements from football or baseball in the mix as well.