So, you think you’ve got this whole dating thing down, do you? Ever wonder how you’d match up against the world’s best? Well, experienced singles from all over the world have gathered in San Diego this month to demonstrate their prowess. Taking advantage of the Exotic Magazine Lear Jet, I’ll be flying down to cover the 1996 Dating Olympics. Since it’s too late to qualify for this Olympiad, here are some events you might want to train for in the next four years.

Biathlon: Set loose in the Competition Bar arena, contestants will be challenged to get dates from equal quantities of men and women.

(Re)Cycling: Here contestants are challenged to take a dysfunctional relationship from the past and recreate it as many times as possible. The current champ, Craig Lightner of Dayton, Ohio, found 43 women looking for emotionally distant father-figures during the week-long Games.

Competitive Safe Sex: Some of the most imaginative competition is to be found in Condom Donning. The idea is to put on a condom one-handed in the dark without one’s partner being aware of the process. Overall time is important, of course, but equal weight is given to such factors as form, imagination, and difficulty (for example, an unlubricated rubber adds .25 to one’s cumulative average). The reigning champion is Alain Richelieu of Montreal, who, after winning the gold medal four years ago, gave a demonstration wherein he kept his partner so distracted that he was able to put on an entire Bozo the Clown outfit (including nose, wig and big honkin’ shoes) without being discovered.

Synchronized Trolling: Available for both male and female divisions, competitors pair up and enter a life-like bar scene. The graceful dance of the partners as they isolate and stun their quarry is tempered with the cold precision of the actual “take-down.”

2K, 5K, and 10K Stalk: Your target is set loose on a busy urban street. Your job: to maintain visual contact over the hour-long course from one of the three distances. At the last Olympiad, one of the competitors was disqualified, as he was defying a court order by stalking an actual ex-lover in the 2K event.

Begging and Whining: Again, an event more artistic than athletic. A panel of judges scores on originality, physical expressiveness and endurance. Entrants must compete in both Compulsory and Freestyle Forms.

Exhibition Event: Since America is the host country this year the exhibition event is being introduced by the host team: Mobile Phone Sex. Where the more mundane phone events of the past have focused entirely on verbal skills, the clever Americans have added steering a Honda Accord or Ford Taurus over a slalom course on an actual interstate while conducting sex over the phone. Until the liability question is settled, however, this is going to remain a non-competitive event.

If this brief review has whetted your appetite, consider the array of categories for competition and start getting in shape now. When your friends ask you why you can’t seem to settle down, just tell them, “I’m not a loser; I’m in training!"