Old Olympics Events Leave Fans Confused

Here's a look at some past Olympic sports that are no longer in the games.

Several years ago, baseball and softball were pulled from competition. The American women dominated in softball, while in baseball Americans … well, they only got three medals in five tries. The Cuban team grabbed the gold. There’s not much else to do in Cuba, except play baseball and stare longingly toward Florida, where senior citizens have high speed internet and all-you-can-eat buffets.

In lacrosse, a medal event in 1904 and 1908, people in face masks hit their balls with big fly swatters. It died out in the early 1900’s because only the Canadians, British, and Americans were willing to take the punishment. Former lacrosse players are now employed as dog catchers and butterfly collectors.

Basque pelota was only a medal event in 1900, because nobody could figure out how to pronounce it. It’s played on a court with a ball, sometimes using a racket, but sometimes not.

In other words, it’s handball. If they’d called it that, basque pelota-ites would be on Wheaties boxes.

 

Downhill skiing initially fared poorly, with over a dozen cases of heat stroke before it was moved to the WINTER games.

 

Tandem cycling was popular in the Olympics, from 1920-72. It’s being considered again with more interesting rules: The guy in front steers, while the guy in back can lash out at other competitors with lacrosse sticks. It’s now a favorite of retired hockey players.

In 1948 winter pentathlon was put on as a demonstration sport, and consisted of downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, shooting, fencing, and horse riding.

All together. In the same event.

Cat Pool proved particularly popular with pooch preference people.

 

Sweden, which remained more or less neutral through World War II, had a whole army of young men just itching to shoot something: They swept all the winter pentathlon medals. However, the sport was discontinued after ski-clad Swedes on horseback shot all the competitors’ horses while jumping over the fencing.

Motorboarding--I initially thought this was something altogether different--was tried in 1908. It ended with only one boat finishing in each of three races. It turns out the Swedes used their winter pentathlon rifles to shoot up the other boat engines, leading officials to change to rowing.

Polo was a favorite Olympic event in the early 1900’s, but it was canceled after the Swedes sent in their entry forms.

The Olympics also tried an obstacle course … for swimmers. Competitors had to climb over a pole, go over a row of boats, and then swim under another row of boats. Luckily they had an excess of boats left over from the motorboat races.

Speaking of swimming, in 1984 they tried solo synchronized swimming.

Think about it.

 

Synchronized Ball Inflation preceded most Olympic sports that included balls, but failed badly after the tennis event caused several aneurysms.

 

Then there’s the one Olympic sport I actually participated in: Tug of war. Not in the Olympics, but we won, and didn’t have to borrow Swedish rifles to do it. Between 1900 and 1920 the sport was dominated by Great Britain, which sent teams of police officers. And remember, their cops were unarmed. Good thing the Swedes didn’t have a team.

Distance plunging would have been interesting … or not. Athletes would dive into the pool and coast underwater, without moving.

That’s it. The winner is the one who drifted the longest in sixty seconds, or when they floated to the surface, whichever came first. An American won the gold, although it should be noted that this competition happened only once, in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. It should also be noted that only Americans competed.

I’m not sure how they could tell whether the athlete was winning, or drowning.

Groundhog Racing was halted after a series of crashes--and rabies.

 

Also at St. Louis, another US competitor did an impressive job winning gold in a sport that still gives old gym class haters nightmares: the rope climb. Why was George Eyser so impressive? Because he had a wooden leg.

In 1906 they tried the sport of pistol dueling. No, it wasn’t won by a Swede. It wasn’t really dueling, either: Competitors shot at a dummy dressed in a frock coat, and by dummy I don’t mean the guy who planned the Sochi games. It’s a good thing, because it could have been the one sport where the silver and bronze medals were awarded posthumously.

Finally, here’s a sport they tried just once, at the 1900 Paris Olympics:

Live pigeon shooting.

When the feathers cleared, a Belgian named Leon de Lunden got the gold for downing 21 birds, none of which had a say in the matter. Then he celebrated with a steak dinner.

Once the onlookers got a look at the mess left behind, they decided the Swedes weren’t so bad.

 

 

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Former Olympic Events Leave Fans Confused

I haven't seen a lot of this year's Olympics, because I had my hands over my eyes most of the time. Are there always that many crashes, or didn't I notice before? And why isn't someone giving those people tickets for traveling 70 mph on two sticks? And no way are there safety belts on those sleds.

Even one of the curling guys fell over.

So instead of writing about how my bones hurt just watching, here's my 2014 look at some past Olympic sports that are no longer in the games. Yes, it's a rerun--give me a break, this is my 28th Olympics.

Several years ago, baseball and softball were pulled from competition. The American women dominated in softball, while in baseball Americans … well, they only got three medals in five tries. The Cuban team grabbed the gold. There’s not much else to do in Cuba, except play baseball and stare longingly toward Florida, where senior citizens have high speed internet and all-you-can-eat buffets.

Lacrosse was a medal event—in 1904 and 1908. It involves people in facemasks hitting their balls with big fly swatters. It died out in the early 1900’s because only the Canadians, British, and Americans were willing to take the punishment; former lacrosse players are now employed as dog catchers and butterfly collectors.

Basque pelota was only a medal event in 1900, because nobody could figure out how to pronounce it. It’s played on a court with a ball, sometimes using a racket, but sometimes not.

In other words, it’s handball. If they’d called it that, basque pelota-ites would be on Wheaties boxes.

 

Downhill skiing initially fared poorly, with over a dozen cases of heat stroke before it was moved to the WINTER games.

  

Tandem cycling was popular in the Olympics from 1920-72. It’s being considered again with new, more interesting rules: The guy in front steers, while the guy in back can lash out at other competitors with lacrosse sticks. It’s now a favorite of retired hockey players.

In 1948 winter pentathlon was put on as a demonstration sport, and consisted of downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, shooting, fencing, and horse riding.

All together. In the same event.

Cat Pool proved particularly popular with dog lovers.

  

Sweden, which remained more or less neutral through World War II, had a whole army of young men just itching to shoot something: They swept all the winter pentathlon medals. However, the sport was discontinued after ski-clad Swedes on horseback shot all the competitors’ horses while jumping over the fencing.

Motorboarding--and I initially thought this was something altogether different--was tried in 1908. It ended with only one boat finishing in each of three races. It turns out the Swedes used their winter pentathlon rifles to shoot up the other boat engines, leading officials to change to rowing.

Polo was a favorite Olympic event in the early 1900’s, but it was canceled after the Swedes sent in their entry forms.

The Olympics also tried an obstacle course … involving swimmers. Competitors had to climb over a pole, go over a row of boats, and then swim under another row of boats. Luckily they had an excess of boats left over from the motorboat races.

Speaking of swimming, in 1984 they tried solo synchronized swimming.

Think about it.

 

Synchronized Ball Inflation preceeded most Olympic sports that included balls, but failed badly after the tennis event caused several aneurysms.

  

Then there’s the one Olympic sport I actually participated in: Tug of war. Not in the Olympics, but we won, and didn’t even have to borrow Swedish rifles to do it. Between 1900 and 1920 the sport was dominated by Great Britain, which sent teams of police officers. And remember, back then their cops were unarmed. Good thing the Swedes didn’t have a team.

Distance plunging would have been interesting … or not. Athletes would dive into the pool and coast underwater, without moving.

That’s it. The winner is the one who drifted the longest in sixty seconds, or when they floated to the surface, whichever came first. An American won the gold, although it should be noted that this competition happened only once, in the 1904 St. Louis Olympics. It should also be noted that only Americans competed.

I’m not sure how they could tell whether the athlete was winning, or drowning.

Groundhog Racing was halted after a series of crashes--and rabies.

 

Also at St. Louis, another US competitor did an impressive job winning gold in a sport that gives this old gym class hater nightmares: the rope climb. Why was George Eyser so impressive? Because he had a wooden leg.

In 1906 they tried the sport of pistol dueling. No, it wasn’t won by a Swede. It wasn’t really dueling, either: Competitors shot at a dummy dressed in a frock coat, and by dummy I don’t mean the guy who planned the Sochi games. It’s a good thing they cleared up how they did it, because I was thinking this would be one sport where the silver and bronze medals were awarded posthumously.

Finally, here’s a sport they tried just once, at the 1900 Paris Olympics:

Live pigeon shooting.

When the feathers cleared, a Belgian named Leon de Lunden got the gold for downing 21 birds, none of which had a say in the matter. Then he celebrated with a steak dinner.

Once the onlookers got a look at the mess left behind, they decided the Swedes weren’t so bad.

 

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My Alma Mater’s Girls’ Basketball Team—State Champs!

I seldom pay much attention to sports, but when a team from your alma mater wins the high school regional girls' basketball title ...

(By the way, alma mater means "nourishing mother" ... I didn't even know my mother played basketball.)

Wait, what? The Central Noble Lady Cougars basketball team not only won regional, but went to semi-state? That's very cool; even a nerd like me gets that.

The truth is, the only thing sports-related I paid attention to in high school were the cheerleaders--which is okay, because sports never paid any attention to me. Neither did the cheerleaders.

(I should add that the cheerleaders were all very nice on those few occasions when we interacted; we just seldom interacted. I was what in those days was called shy, and these days would be called antisocial. Now I'm Facebook friends with most of them, one of those remarkable things about social media.)

Wait, what? The Lady Cougars won semi-state? Wow!

Thanks to WANE-TV

I don't believe any CN sports team ever won semi-state. Again, I could be wrong on this. When I was in school Coach Schnepp took the boys' basketball team all the way to the regionals, I think. There were signs on the walls, and we had a pep rally, and I went to it; but I sat with a notebook on the back row, writing a science fiction story with lots of violence and sex. These days I'd have ended up in a therapist's office.

Anyway, my biggest memory of Coach Schnepp was that he taught Physical Education, and he taught by doing, and he did dodgeball. Now, Coach Schnepp had these long arms--he could touch his toes without bending over--and he played the sport we called "killer ball" right along with us. When he wound up and let go, pity the poor guy who didn't get out of the way in time. It would be like someone get shot in a 70s Eastwood cop movie: They'd fly halfway across the gym and tumble end over end. Sometimes the ball would stay in the shape of a disk from flattening against its victim. Sometimes we couldn't locate the ball at all. Once all we found was a hole in the concrete block wall, and a felled pine tree outside.

As a science lover, it made me appreciate physics. As a human being, it made me appreciate the concept of duck and cover.

The Lady Cougars did what? They won State? They're the State Champions? Wait ...

They're the STATE CHAMPIONS!!!!

Thanks to Steve Bushong and the Albion Volunteer Fire Dept.

Holy crap. That's just ... awesome, and it explains the giant parade that went through town. I thought it was to celebrate the end of February.

It's not surprising, either. These girls are so good, colleges are afraid to recruit them for fear the rest of the team won't have anything to do.

They're so tough, Chuck Norris walks across the street to avoid them.

Muhammad Ali sent a message from the afterlife to say they're the Greatest.

They're so talented that during their downtime they won the regional championships in baseball, track, and chess. Their group science project is in the Smithsonian.

What I'm saying is, they're pretty darned good. They were called in to give lessons to the Duke Blue Devils. (It's a basketball team, I looked it up.)

You know, when we're looking to the future of our country and world, these are the kind of people who give me hope. Go-getters. Hard workers.


Champions.

Olympic sized thoughts

(These aren't really Olympic sized thoughts--just small thoughts on the Olympics.)
 

It was nice that benevolent dictator Kim Jong-un let his cheerleaders out of the country to attend the Olympics, along with his sister. Isn't he a good guy? Hopefully they had a chance to grab a nice meal--or any meal--before heading back up to the Dark Country. (Literally dark, take a look at a nighttime satellite view.)

Cheer ... or die.

Probably the only downhill sport I'd have a chance of making it through would be sledding, otherwise known as luge or skeleton. That's because I'm incapable of standing on any moving object other than my own feet, and sometimes the feet part isn't easy.

But while I used to sled a lot, that was at, oh, ten miles per hour or so. Anyone who goes face first at seventy miles per hour ... well, there's a reason why it's called skeleton. Because "mangled body" seemed a little too obvious.

There is another kind of sledding in the Olympics, but apparently competitors are required to be named "Bob". There's only so much I'll do for my sport.

Speaking of sports in which I'd never made it to the end of the course, I've noticed that downhill skiiers seem to be flying as much as they're skiing. Let's make it more interesting and fit them with small wings, just to see what happens.

I don't know this guy, but I'm very happy for his survival.

There's a skiing event that consists entirely of skiing down bumps. I can't stand to watch it: It kills my knees.

"Salchow" is pronounced "sow cow" ... and as such, just doesn't seem like a figure skating move.

That group snowboarding competition ... did some Olympic official happen to catch a NASCAR race and think, "That's what the winter Games needs: massive pileups!"

Figure skating has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid. But I'll be the first to admit that back then I was all about the ladies and the short skirts. Now that I'm older I'm still fascinated, because how the heck do they even--? I mean, try just standing on ice skates. Their routines are, according to the laws of physics, as impossible as me making it to the other end of the rink.

I never tried pairs figure skating because I don't like getting stitches.

It's a magic trick--try to disconnect the rings! Nice try.

 I just watched a pair figure skate to music from Star Wars, and it made me realize Jedi would be fantastic athletes. Luke skiing, Anakin throwing Padme through about fifty spins on the ice, Vader as a bad boy snowboarder ... Yoda as a coach. Emperor Palpatine ruling the evil land just to the north. R2D2 as a judge. I've just created a whole new subgenre of fanfiction.

Curling. It's indecipherable, and a joy to make fun of. Unless you seriously watch it for about an hour, then it becomes addictive to 80% of the viewers. What dark magic is that? It's shuffleboard on ice. And I'm watching it.

Every time I watch ski jumping, all I can think of it the Wide World Of Sport's "agony of defeat". This removes much of the fun for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2AZH4FeGsc

In the end I'm not a sport fan so much as an events fan: Every two years I watch sports that I don't even think about the rest of the time. It's the same reason why I like to watch the Indy 500 even though I have no interest in racing, and I used to watch the Superbowl even though I haven't seen a non-Superbowl football game in twenty years. I've even caught a World Series game, or two.

But not basketball. For me, basketball is the rap of sports: to be shunned.

Decatha--what?

The Cubs Goat Gets Its Goat Got

In 1906, the Chicago Cubs won 116 games, a Major League baseball record. They lost the World Series to the Chicago White Sox but then won the next two, becoming the first team to appear in three consecutive World Series.

Their last big win came in 1908. It was all uphill from there.

71 years ago, in 1945, they got into the World Series for the last time. During game four Wrigley Field officials ejected Cubs fan Billy Sianis, who had two box seat tickets: One for him and one for his goat. Apparently one of them stank. When he was thrown out Sianis declared, “The Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more”.

And they didn’t.

And that, kids, is why the Cubs being in the World Series is such a big deal. You want to make history, but you don’t want to make it the way they did in the last century.

The Cleveland Indians haven’t won the Series themselves since 1948, but the Cubs have them beat by twice as much. I have to root for the most underdoggie of underdogs. Incidentally, my wife works in Steuben County, Indiana, which is exactly halfway between Chicago and Cleveland. Apparently for decades, late at night in Pokagon State Park, you could hear the sound of baseball fans’ dreams shattering.

So, how long has it been for the Cubs?

The last time the Cubs won the World Series was also the year Ford rolled out the first Model T. It was the year of the first commercial radio transmission.

That was only five years after the Wright brothers took to the air for the first time. In 1908, Cellophane was developed. It would be five more years before the zipper was invented.

No one had ever heard of the Titanic, which wouldn’t sink for another four years. Arizona wasn’t a state, not to mention Hawaii or Alaska. No one had ever heard of Wheaties, Wonder Bread, traffic lights, or bubble gum.

The guy who played the first Doctor Who was born in 1908. That’s the longest running science fiction TV show in history, although TV hadn’t been invented yet. In 1945, the last time the Cubs went to the World Series, Doctor Who wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye.

 In 1945 the microwave oven, Slinky, and Tupperware were invented—the first modern, room-sized computer wouldn’t come around for another year. 1945 was full of history, as the Allies won World War II and the atomic age began.

The last time the Cubs went to the series, we did not yet have the bikini, disposable diapers, kitty litter, Velcro, or the TV remote control. Al Gore had not yet invented the internet, which is fine because there was no personal computer, microprocessor, or RAM.

I found all this on Google. They didn’t have Google. They didn’t even have the milk carton.

So yeah, it’s a big deal. How big of a deal we’ll find out in a few days, but be warned, Cubs fans: So far as I know, the goat never forgave them.

An Olympic Undertaking

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

Despite being on opposite sides of the world, there are similarities between this year’s Olympics in Rio, and the Games two years ago in Russia. There was all sorts of controversy about whether the host cities would be ready: cost overruns, health concerns, not to mention the relative health of the entire host nation.

There’s also a parallel paradox. In Rio we have the summer Olympics being held during what is, for them, winter. On the other hand, the winter Olympics of 2014 were held in Sochi—a summer resort.

Everyone was already aware of the Zika virus, one of the least popular South American exports ever. They couldn’t have sent us more coffee? One athlete’s wife had his sperm frozen, just in case he contracted the virus and they still wanted more children. That by itself is both tragic and the springboard for at least a few good jokes, and several dozen bad ones.

I don’t know where to start.

Even Mother Nature took part, sending a 4.6 meter freak wave in to cover a Rio sidewalk, street … oh, and the Olympic Broadcast Services building. 4.6 meters? That’s about 15 feet, or 5 feet, or half a foot … I dunno, I’m American.

Meanwhile, some Rio protesters did the unthinkable as the Olympic torch passed through their area: They put it out. Probably with contaminated water. And what were these awful sleezebags protesting? Well, it turns out they were teachers who haven’t been paid in two months, thanks to the government spending money on … the Olympics.

One thing the government spent money on was a live jaguar, which appeared next to the torch in a Brazilian ceremony, as a symbol of … I don’t know … zoos? As if the Olympics wasn’t a zoo all by itself. Then the jaguar got away from its handlers and headed toward an armed soldier, and I don’t have to tell you how that ended.

What the soldier should have gone after was the drug-resistant super-bacteria found growing in the ocean, just off Rio beaches. A gun might be needed to kill this stuff, which apparently got there from local hospital sewage. Don’t drink the water? Forget that—the water will drink you.

Not long before the Olympics started, a mutilated body was found on the beach, as in the beach and water where some of the events take place. Killed by what? A jaguar? Super-bacteria? Disgruntled teachers? There’s a lesson.

Meanwhile, the Olympic village featured new entertainment for the athletes, such as a rousing game of “escape the natural gas leak”, and the more rushed hobby of “find a working toilet”. There were some records set with that one. And when you figure some of the water was contaminated by human waste, they may have needed all the toilets they could get.

I could go on, but the poop/body filled water and lack of toilets is making me queasy. We’ll end with the fire that started in the basement of the Village’s Australian quarters, which was not caused by them putting shrimp on the Barbie. Apparently the real cause was a discarded cigarette, which set fire to rubbish left over by contractors, because it takes more than a child to raise a village.

So who was smoking? The contractors? Or the thieves who made off with belongings of the Australian team during the fire evacuation? Some of the items stolen include special shirts designed to protect the wearer from the Zika virus, so maybe it was self-preservation.

I think the Australians should consider themselves fortunate. After all, they lived through both the theft and the fire—and the fire alarms weren’t working.

Besides, they didn’t get beaten up in an armed robbery, like one medalist was while celebrating his bronze on the beach … the judo medalist. Maybe the gold medalist would have done better.

In fact, this is one Olympics where they should consider handing out gold medals for survival.