Olympic sports

It was strange watching the Olympics in Tokyo on TV: not only should they have taken place a year ago, but seeing athletes performing in empty venues is somewhat bizarre. Having had the opportunity to attend a few events as a spectator at the 2012 Olympics in London, I will never forget the atmosphere in and around the venues let alone the buzz all over town.

The Olympics are the largest sporting event in the world with 46 disciplines having been competed in this year. But a lot has changed since the first games in 1896 and many disciplines have disappeared, some of them quite rightly so:

• In order to spice-up the games in the year 1900 not clay but real pigeons were being shot. In all some 300 birds were killed, 21 of which were downed by the gold medalist Leon de Lunden.
• Spitting, apparently of tobacco, was only in the 1904 games a discipline, based on the assumption by the organisers that this would be popular with the tobacco chewing working class.
• The discipline of Long Jump on horseback featured in the 1900 games in Paris. The winner was the Belgian Constant van Langhendonck with his stallion “Extra Dry”. On him, he jumped 6.10 metres over a water ditch.
• Olympic duelling was a sport at the 1906 and 1908 games. In 1906 male competitors fired pistols at plaster dummies at a distance of 20 and 30 meters. In 1908, however, as part of a Franco-British exhibition, the competitors fired at each other albeit with pistols loaded with wax bullets and the men wearing protective equipment covering torso, head and hands.

Some others, however, might be worthwhile considering for a comeback:

• Sack race: What sounds like an activity for a kids’ birthday was in fact an olympic discipline at the 1904 games in St Louis.
• Obstacle swimming: Like on an obstacle course, the swimmers had to climb over boats and dive under ship on this 200 meter course before shimmying up a pole at the end. The Australian Frederick Lane secured the gold medal in 2.38 minutes at the 1900 games in Paris.
• Barrel vaulting: In this discipline, the athletes had to complete a 400-metre course in which they had to jump through a barrel every 50 metres.
• Tug of war: Another favourite from our childhood days, which was included in the Olympics from 1900 to 1920. Having equipped the soles of their shoes with nails, the Brits in a very un-olympic way won gold in this discipline in 1908.

The remit of the Olympic Programme Commission is to include sports that keep the Olympic Games relevant to young people, which explains disciplines such as skateboarding. But also cities can push for certain sports to be included in the year they are hosting the Olympic Games: breakdancing, for example, will see its debut at the 2024 games held in Paris.

The choice of which sports take part in the Olympics is up to the 99 members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) who make the decision on the basis of proposals from each games’ local organising committee, via the Olympic Programme Commission. These proposals are then evaluated against 35 criteria in 5 categories (but enough of the boring stuff, you can find all the categories and criteria here).

We get to watch football all year round and the same, I suppose, applies to tennis and other sports. We don’t need the Olympic Games to indulge in them. So bring back some of the more unusual disciplines. Who knows, maybe some of the suggestions above might tickle young peoples’ fancy and become favourites in the future.

And if all fails, here’s another suggestion how to spice up the games: If the modern Olympic Games ran true to the strict customs of ancient Greece they might well today have been called the “Naked Games”. From the early 8th century BC, Olympic athletes competed in the nude. There are indisputable records going back to Athenian philosopher Plato in the 5th century BC and even Homer’s Iliad, as well as many explicit drawings that confirm it was common practice for all male track and field athletes to take part naked. Now if that won’t draw the crowds, I don’t know what else will.