We’re reaching the final hurdle at last then after just over two weeks of fantastic sporting action, and as usual there has been plenty of talk about what and what shouldn’t be included in the Summer Olympics. Some sports have been dropped and then brought back in, many have been freshly brought in over the years while others have been dropped never to return, particularly in the early days of the modern Olympics.
When the games were in Paris in 1900 two corking events that stand out are the high jump and long jump. For horses. Now I don’t understand how this can have worked either but there was a jockey on board apparently and it wasn’t held in the normal Athletics stadium either, more’s the pity. In the long jump the winning horse making it just 6.1 metres, with the high jump finishing tied at 1.85m. Elsewhere in the equestrian world that year meanwhile Belgian Georges Nagelmackers won the mail coach race, powered by four horses, although this wasn’t considered an official Olympic event.
If swimming was more your bag those days though then you had a couple of events to go at which don’t feature these days either, underwater swimming and the 200m obstacle event. The underwater title went to Charles de Vendeville of France with a score of 188.4 in a competition where you picked up one point per second and two points per metre that you swam in (under?) (inside?) the River Seine. As for the obstacle race, which consisted of three things in climbing over a pole and a row of boats, and swimming under another row of boats, well that was won by Australian Frederick Lane in a time of two minutes and 38 seconds.
An obstacle race sounds more like something you would have at a summer fete, but to reach the ultimate on that score you have to mention the tug of war, which was another sport that was contested for the first time at Paris 1900. It wasn’t exactly a long competition though as only two teams took part as a combined Danish and Swedish outfit defeated the hosting French 2-0 in a best of three series. Next time up in 1904 in St. Louis was no less bizarre either as six teams were involved, four from the States (two from St. Louis itself), one from Greece and the other representing the Boers of South Africa. The two visiting sides being knocked out first meaning the home nation took all three medals with the Milwaukee Athletic Club taking the overall title.
Just five teams were then involved in London 1908 as it was one-two-three for the home team again as three teams representing the Police took the medals, with City of London first, Liverpool second and the Metropolitan ‘K’ Division third. Sweden losing in the semis, while in the only quarter-final the United States, already 1-0 down to Liverpool, withdrew in protest about the opposition Police wearing their service boots while tugging. 1912 in Stockholm seeing another home win as the Stockholm Police beat the City of London Police 2-0 with only two teams on show.
After the war it was onto Antwerp in 1920 with just five teams competing in Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, Netherlands and the United States. Britain this time taking the title 2-0 against the Netherlands, but that was it for the tug of war at the Olympics, as with such obvious lack of interest the event was, erm, pulled. Finally though comes another event which was contested at those experimental Paris 1900 Olympics but was never classified as an official competition for medal purposes. It’s one we’ve got no chance of ever seeing again either to be honest, the reason being that it was live pigeon shooting.
Nearly 300 of the poor birds being blasted out of the sky to decide the winners in three separate competitions, with Australian Donald Mackintosh winning the 25 franc entry fee contest, Belgian Leon de Lunden claiming the 200 franc entry fee prize and Frenchman Louis Debray bagging the running game target event. Not surprisingly protests at the sport soon took hold, leading to an understandable gradual shift to clay pigeons.