Long-lost Olympic Sports – live pigeon shooting, anyone?
The Olympics is often credited with bringing knowledge of more esoteric sports to enthused watchers.
Indeed, some of the most special moments in any Olympics happens when you find yourself shouting at your TV, utterly enthralled by a sport that 10 minutes prior you had no idea existed.
But what the Olympic committee giveth, the Olympic committee taketh away: here are some sports that are no longer part of the Olympic repertoire.
Swimming with a twist
This is one swimming event that Michael Phelps won’t win a medal in: the men’s 200m obstacle event.
This sport was only showcased once, at the 1900 Paris Olympics, before it was discontinued. Which is a shame, because it sounds like a spectacle to behold.
Swimmers had to complete a 200m swim across the Seine, climbing over a pole and a row of boats and swimming under another row of boats in the process.
Australian Frederick Lane took the top gong.
(Live) Pigeon Shooting
1900 was a simpler time, with animal rights activists in short supply, and the creators of the Olympic programme saw fit to add live pigeon shooting to the mix.
Shooters would shoot down as many live pigeons as they could, with two misses resulting in a disqualification.
Belgian shooter Leon de Lunden won the gold after gunning down 21 live birds, leaving a gory mess in his wake: however the messiness of the sport, as well as logistical difficulties of the clean-up, meant he was fated to be the only winner of the Olympic event.
Tug-of-war
It turns out the schoolyard and work-christmas-party staple has high-brow origins.
Tug of war was contested as part of the track and field programme in every Olympics between 1900 and 1920. Countries could enter multiple teams in the sport, which required competitors to pull on different ends of a rope until the loser succumbed to the winner’s raw strength, and in 1904 USA took out a clean sweep when teams won gold, silver and bronze before being by supplanted by Great Britain, with the same accomplishment in 1908.
Baseball
This ‘American as apple pie and private prisons’ sport was an official Olympic sport between 1992 and 2008. As a result of the amount of sports being showcased in the Olympics being capped, and because it generated little interest in Europe, it was quietly removed from the programme.
This might have come as a secret relief to Americans: despite the ubiquity of the sport in the US, America only claimed one gold medal during the sport’s tenure and in 2004 failed to qualify. Sister sport softball, which ran from 1996-2008, was discontinued for another reason: the Americans had such a monopoly it lost its competitive lustre pretty quickly. It’s back in 2020.
Tandem Cycling
Tandem Cycling involves two cyclists on the same bike, but that’s where the romance ends (on the bike, at least). The cyclists’ goal is to pedal their hearts out for 2km against other tandem cyclists to win the gold. They are positioned fore’ to ‘aft – riding along side each other is called, charmingly, ‘sociable’ cycling – and it was a staple of the Olympics since its inception in 1920 until 1972. The sport is still a fixture in the Paralympics, which begins on 7 September. Speaking of the Paralympics.
Bonus Discontinued Paralympic Sport – Dartchery
This sport, which combines the finesse and grace of archery with the smoky-bar brilliance of darts, was a part of the Paralympic programme until 1980. Competitors used archery equipment to fire at a dart-board: players started with 301 points, with shots deducting a certain number of points. The first player(s) to reach zero won. Unfortunately, the sport as a whole seems to have fallen out of favour, with no major tournaments in the sport on offer anywhere.
Weirdest Ancient Olympic Sports
Pankration: literally meaning ‘‘all of might’’, the infamous submissions sport only had two rules: no eye-gouging and no biting. Otherwise, anything was permitted to subdue the opponent.
Chariot Racing: a perilous sport which often resulted in death, or at least carnage. This was one of the few Ancient Olympic sports women were allowed to watch, but they were still not allowed to participate, making it more ‘‘Ben Him’’ than ‘‘Ben Hur’’.
(seriously): The trumpet contest was judged based on clarity of tone and melody, however, meaning that his electric period would probably have been disqualified. Interestingly, the sport has a modern forebear: the ‘arts’ competitions of the Olympics, which ran until 1948, in which competitors would create architecture, literature, painting, music and sculpture about sport to vie for a medal.
Hoplitodromos: a 400m race run not naked, as was custom, but in full hoplite gear (shields, spears, helmets) weighing about 23kg. An exercise in torture: not unlike watching the 50km walking race.
Trumpeting