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| TMC... |
 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:56 pm |
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http://www.11points.com/Sports/11_Strangest_Former_Olympic_Sports
In case you didn't know, this is the last Olympics where baseball and
softball will be events. They didn't get enough votes to stay in the
Games.
And that got me thinking about other Olympic sports that have been
cut.
Which led me down a pretty hilarious rabbit hole of former sports and
exhibition sports that were included in Olympics of the past. Because
it turns out there were a LOT of really strange sports that have made
the Olympic roster.
It was hard to cut down my list to just 11 of the strangest, dumbest
and weirdest former Olympic sports, but, like a good list maker, I
did. And here they are...
Tug-of-War at the 1900 Olympics.
Tug-of-War. Tug-of-War, which is now pretty much reserved for church
picnics, summer camp color wars and "Real World/Road Rules Challenge"
events, was an actual Olympic sport. At five Olympics, 1900, '04, '08,
'12 and '20.
Olympic tug-of-war was eight-on-eight, and would be won when one team
pulled the rope six feet. (Unlike in "RW/RR Challenge", when the
winning team is the one that dumps the other team in a vat of Jell-O
or pudding or KY Jelly.)
In the five Olympics, Great Britain won the most tug-of-war medals
(two gold, two silver, one bronze) and the U.S. won the second most
(one of each medal).
One more note: Back then, a lot of Olympic athletes were just regular
dudes who happened to show up to the right place on the right day. So
the Olympic tug-of-war squads weren't handpicked teams of athletes
groomed from birth like our Olympians today. No, the U.S.'s 1904 gold
medal winning tug team was the tug-of-war team from the Milwaukee
Athletic Club. In 1908, the gold went to the London police force's
team.
Poodle clipping. As this list will show repeatedly, at the second
modern Olympic games -- 1900 in Paris, France -- there was just some
crazy shit going on. And nothing exemplifies that to me more than the
poodle clipping event.
For this event (which was a trial event), 128 competitors assembled at
the Bois de Boulogne, a park in western Paris. A giant (for the time)
crowd of 6,000-plus watched as they competed to see who could trim the
most poodles' fur in a two hour period.
The gold medalist was 37-year-old Avril Lafoule from Auvergne, France,
who clipped 17 poodles.
After the Paris Olympics ended, poodle clipping failed to get the
votes to become an official Olympic sport.
Firefighting. Another trial event from 1900 Paris. It's not clear what
exactly was involved in the firefighting event... like, did they light
some random Parisian neighborhood on fire and send all the dudes over
there to see who could put their designated house out the quickest?
In the volunteer competition, the winner was a team from Portugal; in
the professional division, the winner was a group of firefighters from
Kansas City.
And even though firefighting never became an official Olympic sport...
I gotta feel like an Olympic gold medal in firefighting would feel a
lot more prestigious than winning one for something like equestrian or
rafting.
Solo synchronized swimming. Like the sound of one hand clapping.
Solo synchronized swimming. Lest you think that all the weird events
are from the early 1900s... this should prove that Olympic organizers
make strange, strange decisions in the modern era, too.
In 1984, '88 and '92, there was actually solo synchronized swimming in
the Olympics.
And, yes, solo synchronized swimming is the paradox it sounds like...
kind of like a three-man barbershop quartet or a two-way orgy.
Upon doing my research, I found that the swimmer wouldn't be
synchronized to other people... but rather, to music.
So, I guess, if you were solo synchronized swimming to "Shout!" you'd
have to kick your heels up out of the water when the lyric says "kick
your heels up and shout!" Or something.
Anyway, no one bothered to figure it out and it was cut after the
Barcelona games.
Delivery van driving. More from 1900 in Paris. This was another trial
event (and tied in with the 1900 World's Fair that as going on
concurrently). The Paris Olympics featured a ton of different motor
races, including delivery van driving. French "athletes" got all three
medals, although their names aren't on record.
The motor racing event also included small cars, large cars, seven-
seat cars, trucks and taxis.
It looks like France really dominated the event -- a guy from the U.S.
got a bronze in the small truck division, a German got a bronze in a
large car distance race, and, other than that, it was all French
victories.
Meaning that this was possibly the brightest moment in the history of
both Peugeot and Renault.
Plunge diving. OK, you know how when you were, like, six, you and your
friends all stand at the edge of a pool and see who could jump in the
furthest? That was once an Olympic event.
At the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, there was an event called plunge
diving. A diver would stand stationary on the edge of a pool, then,
from that stand still, jump as far as possible. Once they got
underwater, they could swim forward for up to 60 seconds... or as long
as they could keep their head below the surface.
I feel like I could do really well in this, by the way.
Only five people competed and all of them were from the U.S. The
winner was William Dickey, who made it 62.5 feet. Which doesn't seem
like that far.
And, like most of the events on this list, plunge diving was a one-and-
done event, never appearing again.
Live pigeon shooting. There's only been one Olympic event in history
where animals were (intentionally) harmed. And that was live pigeon
shooting, which went down at those absolutely absurd 1900 Paris
Olympics.
The goal of the event: Stand there with your gun and kill as many
pigeons as possible.
For the event, more than 300 pigeons were shot and killed... and,
apparently, afterwards, there was a ridiculous mess of blood and
feathers.
Leon de Lunden of Belgium won the event with 21 kills. An American
tied for the bronze with 18. It was the first and last time animals
were killed for an Olympic event.
At the Paris games that year, there was also a shooting competition
centered around shooting running deer... except those were moving cut-
outs, not actual animals.
Swimming obstacle race. Now this sounds really cool... and sounds like
another thing little kids do in a pool. This is another 1900 Paris
event, and took place in the Seine.
First, competitors had to swim to a pole, then climb up it, then slide
down it. Then they'd swim toward some boats, which they had to climb
over. After that, more swimming to more boats... but this time, they
had to go under. Overall, they'd swim 200 meters... with a lot of
climbing in between.
Frederick Lane of Australia won the swimming obstacle race, doing it
in 2:38.4.
Turns out he also won the 200-meter freestyle those Olympics...
swimming that in 2:25. In other words, all the pole and boat climbing
only slowed him down by 13 seconds.
I don't do rope climbing.
Rope climbing. This was in four Olympics: 1896, 1904, 1924 and 1932.
It was incredibly simple: Just climb to the top.
The whole event gives me a funny feeling. Like when I used to climb
the rope in gym class.
Water skiing. Water skiing was a demonstration sport at the tragic
1972 Olympics in Munich. There were three different events -- slalom,
figure skiing and jumping. Apparently it was pretty cool... but there
was too much controversy about whether or not water skiing involved
any actual athleticism... so water skiing never showed up at the
Olympics again.
It did become a staple at Sea Worlds, though, so it's got that going
for it.
Hot air ballooning. And one more from the 1900 Olympics for good
measure. During the Paris Olympics, they held several hot air
ballooning events, including distance, duration, elevation and
targeted stopping.
French competitors won every single event.
I think I'd like to see hot air ballooning in the Olympics today,
partially because I think a bunch of hot air balloons in the sky looks
cool... and partially because I know NBC would spend $80 billion on
special cameras to record the event.
They'd also find a way to let us know how one of the American hot air
balloonists overcame a lot of adversity to get to that moment. Man I
love Olympic tales of people triumphing over adversity. I hope I hear
50 tonight. |
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