This summer, the Olympic Games come to Paris for a couple of weeks of physical prowess and lunging about in Lycra. We thought we’d take a look at some of the stranger sports to have featured in previous Olympics…
The first Paris Olympics, back in 1900, featured Live Pigeon Shooting, which we reckon the RSPB would have firm opinions on these days. The winner massacred 21 of our feathered friends in a matter of moments, with over 300 birds being blown to bits in the name of sport.
1900 seems to have been a bumper year for strange Olympic sports as both the Swimming Obstacle race and Basque Pelota featured. In the former, the competitors had to climb poles, swim under some boats and clamber over others. On reflection, they had it easy compared to the Pelota people who had to master a complicated mix of handball, squash, lacrosse and jai alai that has 4 possible court sizes and 14 different sets of rules to choose from depending on the kit available. Only the French and Spanish teams signed up. The Spanish triumphed when the French withdrew. Possibly due to some difficulty finding where the game was being played.
Early Olympics weren’t always big on health and safety. 1908 saw possibly the most dangerous Olympic event in the form of pistol duelling. Competitors were kitted out in padded coveralls and fencing masks and fired wax bullets at each other over a 20 metre and 30 metre distance. We’re not entirely clear on how the competitors found people to practice their duelling skills with, or whether competitors only required the confidence to let someone take pot-shots at them rather than previous experience. Either way, the UK had very little chance of success given that duelling was made illegal here over 80 years before the 1908 Games.
There can’t be many sports where just entering guaranteed an Olympic medal, but Singlesticks, later known as La Canne, was a form of fencing using thick wooden staves. The 1904 Olympics featured just three competitors, all from the USA, all of whom went home with a gong.
Rope Climbing made it out of saggy-shorted school gym classes to feature in the Games four times, with the final appearance in 1932. We like to think it was dropped when all the competitors arrived with forged notes from their mothers.
Lastly, let’s go back to 1900 and the sublime sport of Poodle Clipping. This attracted 128 competitors and must have involved rounding up half the poodles in France since the competitors were judged on numbers of poodles clipped. For some reason, no thought was given to providing each competitor with a standardised selection of poodle sizes or coat conditions, nor was the artistic quality of the outcome taken into account. The winner clipped 17 poodles in two hours, doubtless leaving the prized pooches’ owners aghast and unable to take poor Fifi la Froufrou out for a stroll along the Champs-Élysées for months afterwards.