Gone are the days
In one of my geekier moves to date, this blog post was inspired by the Word Sleuth puzzle in a recent Columbus Dispatch. The theme was "Discontinued Olympic Sports." Some of the sports listed struck me as funny, like Jeu de Paume, a form of tennis which I had always assumed died out shortly after the French monarchy did. One sport, pelote basque, is evidently related to jai alai, which means that even after looking it up I still have no idea what it is. Some of the sports were clearly one-shot deals. Cricket, croquet, raquets, golf, lacrosse, and powerboating only lasted one or two games before being scrapped, ostensibly either because of lack of interest or lack of a world governing body. I suspect at least one person made the "how is powerboating possibly a sport" argument, and I can't say I would have blamed them.
The ones that amazed me were the events that I cannot fathom as sports, some of which stuck around for quite a while. For instance, how exactly would you add a competitive angle to callisthenics (1948, 1952)? Would it just be straight numbers of push-ups and jumping jacks, or would it be the number in a limited period of time? Would there be style points? Ditto walking (1906 (1500m), 1920 (3000m), 1908 (3500m) 1908 (10mile)). Presumably this would be a race-type situation, but how boring would it be to watch someone walk 10 miles? How do you do color and commentary on that?
My favorite two ex-sports, though, were definitely rope climb (1896, 1904, 1906, 1924, 1932) and tug-of-war (1900, 1904, 1906, 1908, 1912, 1920). Partly, this is just because of their rather bizarre longevity, but also because they scream "Battle of the Network Stars." In 1908, all the tug-of-war medals went to Brits (to the City of London Police, Liverpool Police, and Metropolitan Police, which is sort of fantastic). I'm still thinking that the US could have taken them, though, if we'd been able to send in Gabe Kaplan, Lynda Carter, Farrah Fawcett, Ron Howard, Penny Marshall, and Hal Linden.
posted by Alison @ 6:53 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
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At 8:09 PM,
TeacherRefPoet held forth...
- Get Linden the hell off the team. I demand Mr. T and Erik Estrada.
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At 12:34 PM,
held forth...
- As long as they never make Texas Hold-Em an olympic sport I am ok.
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At 4:08 PM,
tommyspoon held forth...
- I say bring back the tug of war and get rid of the equestrian events. The olympics are for humans.