September Blog

I am not much of a sportsman. I do a bit of downhill skiing during the winter, if I get around to it. Right now I am trying to fit in a bit of jogging into my schedule after being challenged to take part in the local Sun Run for the first time last spring, and making a commitment to join next year and achieve a better result. And I don't play golf even though it has become almost obligatory among my peers. Above all, I am completely uninterested in watching any sports and I was, as usual, fascinated by all my friends who followed the Olympics religiously. Maybe this is genetic but then again my grandfather was actually an Olympian, and a gold medalist to boot. He was part of the Swedish military equestrian team, which won the gold medal at the Stockholm Summer Olympics in 1912. My morfar also competed in the individual horse jumping, completing the course without felling any hinder. He could very well have won a medal in this race also had it not been for a leather strap in his new saddle breaking and grazing against every top bar, resulting in a disqualification. (The rumor in Stockholm was that my hot-tempered grandfather then rushed up to the office of Palmgrens, that is still Sweden's foremost saddle maker, and flogged the owner with his whip for selling him something defective). I have sometimes joked with my friends that if there was a competition in something like croquet at the Olympics I might be game. Imagine my surprise when I recently found out that croquet was actually played at the Paris Olympic Games in 1900. The only competitors were French so France won all the medals. This was also the first Olympic event where women took part, but this did likely not sit well with the spectators. There was only one fan watching the women’s events and that was an Englishman who had travelled up from Nice especially for the occasion. As for other unusual Olympic sports, there have been competitions in softball, Glima wrestling and Tug of War, which was actually an integral part of the Ancient Olympics as well as the Summer Olympics between 1900 and 1920. The most successful eight-man team was the British Bobbies that was a given on the podium. Sweden did not have a national team, but at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912 the local police quickly assembled a team (right) and became the surprise winner. All this got me looking into discontinued Olympic sports and there are some real gems here. There was Live Pigeon Shooting (1900, with 300 pigeons shot), Motor-boating (1908), Rope Climb (1986, 1904, 1906, 1924, 1932), Swimming Obstacle Race (1900, competitors had to climb over a pole and scramble over or under some boats on a 200 meter course right in the River Seine) and Jeau de Paume (1908, like squash but using your hand instead of a racquet). Bring these competitions back and add some other quirky ones and even I will become a fan.