According to the Internets, which are never wrong, the largest ship ever was this one:

http://maritime-connector.com/worlds-largest-ships/

How do you think this compares with a typical land-based Olympic venue? What other challenges make this idea absurd and ridiculous?

Shell's new Prelude FLNG vessel is even bigger [1], if you call that a ship. It's about five football fields in area IIRC. So still absolutely tiny compared to anything you could host the olympics on.

Fun story: I was talking to some Shell people a few years back, about the potential troubles with LNG sloshing in process equipment due to waves. I asked them, why not just make the ship big enough that waves don't affect it as much? They looked at me very strangely for a few seconds before explaining just how big it already is.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10...

Do you know why they don't make the ship more square? Seems like that would help fight tipping due to sloshing (or any other reason...)

Water resistance. Same reason as planes aren't intended to fly sideways.

Maybe one vessel will not be big enough. But a fleet should be able to support every competition but the marathon and have quarters for all the athletes.

I'm sure they can get more ad revenue if the contestants are forced to compete above shark-infested waters, too!

Swimming competitions can even be in them!

Or something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

They already hosted sports events (see the "sport" section of that wikipedia page).

Haha I love this idea