Pain Olympics

The Pain Olympics is one of the events that occasionally occurs at BME BBQs, especially BMEFest. It is a contest to see who has the highest pain tolerance and stamina where the contestants come from a group of familiar people. Much like drinking games, these are performed at the contestant own risk as a rite of passage, but unlike drinking games, it is often done by totally sober people.
Rites of passage involving pain tolerance have been documented from the earliest of human records[1] and as such, the Pain Olympics can hardly be called new or genuine. What sets it apart from others such rituals, like Kavadi or the Phuket Vegetarian Festival[2], is that it is rarely done for spiritual enlightenment, but rather out of curiosity and sport. In addition, Pain Olympics are almost exclusively held by those people attending BME BBQs and are usually well photographed and video recorded for bmezine.com and there generally is no prize for winning other than notoriety.