There are a maltitude of events that take place during the Olympic Games. The number of events will only increase with every occasion that The Olympics takes place. However, there were events that once took place during the Olympics. Some were weird and others seem interesting.
Tug of war was an Olympic event between 1900 - 1920. Originally, the competition was entered by groups called clubs. A country could enter more than one club in the competition, making it possible for one country to earn multiple medals. This happened in 1904, when the United States won all three medals and in 1908 when the podium was occupied by three British teams. Sweden was also among the top countries with two medals, one as a member of the mixed team.
During its time as an Olympic sport, it was considered to be part of the Olympic athletics programme, although the sports of tug of war and athletics are now considered distinct.
After the 1920 Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to streamline the Olympic program to manage the number of sports and participants. As part of this effort, Tug of War and several other sports were removed from the Olympic program in the following years.
The British were rather dominant in this competition, with five of the 10 Olympic medals awarded in the sport going to the UK.
Tug of war was last featured in the 1920 Antwerp Games, with the UK team - made up of City of London police - claiming gold.
Live Pigeon Shooting was held only once in Olympic history, in 1900. The object of this event was to shoot and kill as many birds as possible. The official report of the Games described this sport as "très aristocratique" (very aristocratic). This was the first and only time in Olympic history when animals were killed on purpose, though the event is not listed in official IOC medal records, so it's listed it as a demonstration sport.
Pigeon shooting was held at Cercle du Bois de Boulogne. There were two competitions: Grand Prix du Centenaire (Centenary Grand Prize) and Grand Prix de l'Exposition universelle de 1900 (1900 World Expo Grand Prize).
As they are today, targets have historically been inanimate objects but organisers of the 1900 Paris Games decided to go in another direction.
Gruesome as it may sound, competitors lined up to shoot as many live pigeons as they could. Reportedly, around 300 birds were killed in the event. The winner was Belgian sports shooter, Léon de Lunden, who, according to the Guinness World Records, managed to shoot down 21 birds in the tournament.
While pigeon shooting never returned after the 1900 Paris Games, organisers came up with pistol dueling - in which two competitors shot at each other - for the 1908 Games in London. Luckily for all involved, the duels weren’t deadly. Competitors were dressed in protective clothing and the pistols were loaded with non-lethal wax rounds.
"The joke at the time was … if you did it right, there would have been no silver medalist," journalist, Craig Copetas, recently told France 24 TV. Copetas also said that several years ago, "there was some talk that they would bring back duelling pistols to add some zest appeal to the rifle and pistol competition."
The men's 200m obstacle event was an obstacle swimming event in the 1900 Summer Olympics held in Paris. It was held on 11 and 12 August 1900. Twelve swimmers from five nations competed. The event was won by Frederick Lane of Australia, with Otto Wahle of Austria second and Peter Kemp of Great Britain third. Lane had already won the 200m freestyle (with no obstacles).
This was the only appearance of obstacle swimming at the Olympics. There were three obstacles throughout the 200m course. Swimmers had to climb over the first two (a pole and a row of boats) and swim under the third (another row of boats).
This swimming event used freestyle swimming, which means that the method of the stroke is not regulated (unlike backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly events). The event consisted of two rounds: semi-finals and a final. There were three semi-finals, with 4 swimmers in each; the top 2 swimmers in each semi-final advanced to the final along with the 4 with the best times from the remaining swimmers. This made a 10-person final.
The Olympics has long prohibited sporting events that depend on mechanical propulsion. There was a rare inclusion of an automobile at the 1904 St. Louis Games when American runner Frederick Lorz surreptitiously travelled 11 miles of the marathon in a car (he was disqualified).
Fast-forward four years later and organisers allowed combustion engines at the games with motorboat racing as an Olympic heat.
Boaters raced a 40-nautical-mile course at the 1908 London Games and according to an official report, the heavy seas "made racing an enterprise of some considerable risk, and robbed it of all its enjoyment, except to the most confirmed enthusiasts."
Only two nations, France and Great Britain, competed in the event and were awarded the only medals in the sport, which never returned to the Olympics after 1908.
Art competitions formed part of the modern Olympic Games during its early years, from 1912 to 1948. The competitions were part of the original intention of the Olympic Movement's founder, Pierre de Frédy and Baron de Coubertin. Medals were awarded for works of art inspired by sport, divided into five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.
The juried art competitions were abandoned in 1954 because artists were considered to be professionals, while Olympic athletes were required to be amateurs. Since 1956, the Olympic cultural programme has taken their place.
From 1912 to 1948, rules of the art competition varied, but the core of the rules remained the same. All of the entered works had to be inspired by sport and had to be original (that is, not be published before the competition). Like in the athletic events at the Olympics, gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to the highest ranked artists, although not all medals were awarded in each competition. On a few occasions, in fact, no medals were presented at all.
Generally, it was permitted for artists to enter multiple works, although a maximum number was sometimes established. This made it possible for an artist to win multiple prizes in a single competition.
At one time or another, there were suggestions to also include dancing, film, photography or theatre but none of these art forms was ever included in the Olympic Games as a medal event.
Launching at the 1984 LA Games, American swimmer, Tracie Ruiz-Conforto, took home the gold. After a brief sojourn in bodybuilding, Ruiz-Conforto returned to the sport and won silver at the 1988 games in Seoul.
Solo synchronised swimming failed to make much of a splash with viewers and saw its last outing at the 1992 Olympics.
Today, synchronized swimming is known as, "artistic swimming" and swimmers can compete in a duet and team event.
With the founding of the IOC in 1894 and the celebration of the first modern Olympic Games, French Baron Pierre de Coubertin saw the fulfillment of his ideals—men being educated in both mind and body and competing in sport rather than war. One of his other desires was to combine both art and sport and he thus considered including artistic competition in the Olympic Games.
In May 1906, Baron de Coubertin organised a meeting in Paris for both IOC members and representatives of artists' organisations. The meeting ended with a proposal to the IOC to organise artistic competitions at the Olympic Games in five areas (architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture). The works of art entered had to be inspired by sports.
Preparations were underway to hold such competitions at the 1908 Summer Olympics, which were scheduled for Rome, Italy. The Italian organisers were faced with financial troubles due to the Vesuvius eruption of 1906 and were forced to halt preparations. Additionally, the IOC awarded the organisation to London in 1907. The British organisers planned to hold the art competitions but because of the short preparation time, they were cancelled. The organisers felt that artists would not have enough time to send in their works.
Pierre de Coubertin was not discouraged and sought to include the artistic events in the programme of the 1912 Summer Olympics, to be held in Stockholm, Sweden. Although the Swedes initially objected, opposing the idea of art combined with competition, they eventually gave in. The number of entrants was rather disappointing: only 35 artists are known to have sent works of art to Sweden but gold medals were awarded in all five categories.
When the first post-war Olympic Games were held in war-ravaged Belgium, art contests were again on the programme, although they were little more than a sideshow. This was different for the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. The contests were taken seriously for the first time and 193 artists submitted works. This figure included three Soviet artists, even though the Soviet Union officially didn't take part in the Olympic Games, which they considered to be a "bourgeois" festival.
The growth continued at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where over 1,100 works of art were exhibited in the Municipal Museum, not including the submissions in literature, music and architecture. Artists were allowed to sell their works at the close of the exhibition, which was rather controversial given the IOC's amateurism policy, which required all competitors to be amateurs. In Amsterdam, the number of events was also increased, as four of the five fields of art were subdivided, creating more events.
It was because of the economy and the remote location of Los Angeles that participation in the athletic events of the 1932 Games was lower than that of 1928. The art competition didn't suffer from this problem and the number of art works entered remained stable. Their exhibition drew 384,000 visitors to the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art. Art contests were also held in Berlin (1936) and London (1948), with reasonable success, although the number of entered works had significantly dropped by 1948.
In 1949, a report was presented at the IOC meeting in Rome which concluded that practically all contestants in the art competitions were professionals and that the competitions should therefore be abolished and replaced with an exhibition without awards or medals. This sparked a heated debate within the IOC. At a 1951 meeting, the IOC decided to reinstate the competitions for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. However, the organisers claimed there was insufficient time and an art competition was not held. An art exhibition took place instead.
The issue continued to be debated within the Olympic Movement and at the 49th IOC Session in Athens, 1954, the IOC members voted to replace the art contests with an exhibition for future Olympics. Several attempts have been made to re-include them but without success.
Despite no longer holding art competitions, the Olympic games continue to be connected with art exhibitions. The Olympic Charter required organisers of the Olympic Games to include a programme of cultural events, to "serve to promote harmonious relations, mutual understanding and friendship among the participants and others attending the Olympic Games".
The long jump was one of five equestrian competitions held in late May and early June of 1900 at the International Horse Show in Paris. The event was part of the Exposition Universelle and later classified as part of the 1900 Summer Olympics. It is the only Olympic Games to feature an equestrian long jump competition. Of the seventeen competitors who entered, around half are known by name. The event was won by Constant van Langhendonck of Belgium, with Gian Giorgio Trissino of Italy in second and Jacques de Prunelé of France in third.
The competition format was more like a human high jump than long jump, with competitors trying to clear a fixed distance that increased with each success rather than simply jumping and measuring the distance. The equestrian long jump involved trying to clear a water jump with the take-off point moved further back each time the jump was made. The distance began at 4.50m, increasing gradually to 4.90m. Remaining riders at that point could choose subsequent distances.
The plunge for distance is a diving event that enjoyed its greatest popularity in the 19th and early part of the 20th century, even being included as an official event in the 1904 Summer Olympics. By the 1920's, it began to lose its popularity and slowly disappeared from U.S. and English swim competitions.
According to the 1920 Official Swimming Guide of the American Swimming Association, the plunge for distance "is a dive from a stationary take-off which is free from spring from a height of 18 inches above the water. Upon reaching the water, the plunger glides face downward for a period of 60 seconds without imparting any propulsion to the body from the arms and legs." To determine the total distance travelled, the measurement was taken from the farthest part of the body from the start, "opposite a point at right angles to the base line." Generally, being fat was an advantage in the sport. The 60-second limitation appears to have been instituted at the English Plunging Championship around 1893.
In later years, the plunge was subject to criticism as "not an athletic event at all" but instead a competition favouring "mere mountains of fat who fall in the water more or less successfully and depend upon inertia to get their points for them." John Kiernan, sports writer for the New York Times, once described the event as the "slowest thing in the way of athletic competition" and that "the stylish-stout chaps who go in for this strenuous event merely throw themselves heavily into the water and float along like icebergs in the ship lanes." Similarly, an 1893 English report on the sport noted that spectators were not enamored of it, as the diver "moves after thirty or forty feet at a pace somewhat akin to a snail, and to the uninitiated the contests appear absolute wastes of time."
A wild event was Poodle Clipping. It took place in Paris in the 1900 games. This was, admittedly, only a test event, meaning it didn’t have full Olympic status. Mystifyingly, it didn’t make the cut. It involved 128 competitors performing in front of a crowd of 6,000 in the Bois De Boulogne park, where they had to clip the fur off as many poodles as they could in two hours. The winner was Avril Lafoule, after winning gold with a total of 17 clipped poodles.
However, this appears to be an April Fools prank by a writer for The Telegraph newspaper when writing on the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
All of the above sports, apart from the pigeon shooting, seem to be very interesting. It would've been fun to see a tug of war event. While it might have been a joke, seeing poodles being clipped would be hilarious to watch. There's no telling what unique event might be introduced. Hopefully, it will be fun and amusing to watch.