Top 10 Olympic oddities

With golf and rugby sevens on the Olympic agenda from 2016, Winston Aldworth looks at some of the odd events that have featured on the Olympic podium.

1 Live pigeon shooting

Leon de Lunden's place in sporting history and slaughtering history seems secure: He remains the first and only Olympian to win gold for killing animals. At the Paris Games of 1900, the Belgian sharpshooter popped 21 shots into 21 pigeons.

The object of the game was clear enough: birds were released one at a time in front of the competitor who blazed away with a rifle. The contestant was eliminated once he - and, yes, this was a strictly male affair - missed twice.

Three-hundred pigeons had met a bloody end before the medal winners were found. But even in those less complicated times, the limitations of such a violent event were quickly apparent.

"Maimed birds were writhing on the ground," writes sports historian Andrew Strunk. "Blood and feathers were swirling in the air and women with parasols were weeping in the chairs set up nearby."

2 Poetry

No mere muscled oaf, Baron Pierre de Coubertin's vision for the modern Olympics included artistic endeavour - poetry, architecture and music were all on the agenda. And the Baron himself bagged gold, entering (under a pseudonym) the first poetry competition in 1912 with a cheerily unreadable missive titled Ode to Sport:

"O Sport, pleasure of the Gods, essence of life, you appeared suddenly in the midst of the grey clearing which writhes with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant messenger of a past age ... etc ... etc."

Oh dear. The rest of the thing reads like an advertisement for a Victorian health spa, with the only notable diversion coming in stanza VII with a hint that the Baron was keen on sex and eugenics.

"O Sport, you are Fecundity! You strive directly and nobly towards perfection of the race, destroying unhealthy seed and correcting the flaws which threaten its essential purity. And you fill the athlete with a desire to see his sons grow up agile and strong around him to take his place in the arena and, in their turn, carry off the most glorious trophies."

And if you believe that the judges didn't know who the "anonymous" author of Ode to Sport really was, then you probably believe that Flo Jo was clean and that the Barcelona archer lit the torch.

3 Swimming obstacle race

That's the trouble with modern swimming races: not enough things in the water blocking the competitors' path.

We'd love to see how Michael Phelps (right) would have performed in the 1900 Olympic swimming obstacle race - competitors had to swim to a pole, shin up it and slide down, then swim along to two boats, clamber over the boats, then swim under the boats and then swim to the finish line.

This being the River Seine, they also had to contend with strong currents and raw sewage.

Frankly, it all sounds much more interesting than just flopping along with a variety of strokes and waiting to see whether the American or the Australian wins gold.

Incidentally - and perhaps inevitably - the winner in 1900 was an Aussie. Frederick Lane's future as a Convict swimming great was assured from the moment when, aged 4, he rescued his brother from drowning in Sydney Harbour.

4 Tug of War

This is what sport is all about: A bunch of big blokes, a long rope and a heap of sweating and grunting.

The tug of war has serious pedigree: it was contested in the Ancient Olympics by chin-scratching Greek philosophers and appeared at the 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920 modern games. The modern Olympic rules were pretty much the same as the ones played out at primary school sports days up and down the country.

A team of eight had to pull the opposition six feet to win, but if after five minutes no one had moved the full six feet, the side who had pulled their opponents the furthest was named the winner.

An honest contest, indeed. And one that stirred the passions. Crowds were known to leap into the competition area and lend a hand to their countrymen, sparking brawls.

The London Games of 1908 saw great controversy as the local police force entered and tugged in GB colours. The final was over within seconds, the American team being whupped by the London police.

But as the Yanks picked themselves up off the floor, they noticed the Old Bill were all wearing their spiked police boots despite such footwear being banned from competition. Outrage ensued! Sadly for the Septic Tanks, the fuzz won the rematch in their socks.

5 Cricket

The Brits sensed an easy gold could be bagged in the cricket competition at the 1900 Olympic Games. Only two teams competed in Paris: Team GB and that cricketing superpower France. To be fair to the Poms, they were supposed to play two other feared cricketing heavyweights, but Belgium and Holland pulled out at the last minute.

With bona fide Frenchman difficult to press into cricketing whites, the tricolor ranks were boosted with random Poms living in Paris and British Embassy staff on a day out of the office.

Predictably, the Poms triumphed in the one-sided contest, hammering their way to a 158-run victory over two innings. One Fleet St newspaper saw little hope for the Gallic game. "The French temperament is too excitable to enjoy the game and no Frenchman can be persuaded to play more than once."

6 Long jump for horses

Answer me this, what could jump further: a horse or a man? Wrong. The only Olympic gold medal for horse long jump went to Extra Dry, who sailed an impressive 20 feet and a quarter of an inch (6.32m) at the 1900 Paris Olympics. To put that in perspective, the world record for homo sapiens today is 2.63m further.

Such equine underperformance might explain why the event appeared at the Olympics just once.

Long jump for horses was a sport for the upper classes: until 1952, all Olympic equestrian sport could be contested only by men who were commissioned military officers.

7 Solo synchronised swimming

To the uninitiated, the difference between solo synchronised swimming and someone with a peg on their nose splashing around in the water while music is played seems unclear.

These days we have two- and eight- person teams competing at the Olympics, but fans of women behaving bizarrely in swimming pools were treated to the reduced form of the game at the 1984, 1988 and 1992 Games. Yep, that's one woman splashing around in the water while music plays - sort of like the opening stanza of a performance at Mermaids on Gore St.

8 Pistol duelling

This one appeared at the 1906 Intercalcated Games (a sort of Olympic offshoot based in Greece) and popped up briefly at the 1912 Games.

Pistol duelling harks back to the Games' officer-class origins, but, sadly, it never involved two toffs blazing away at one another at point-blank range.

Instead, mannequins were dressed in frock coats with bullseyes emblazoned on their throats and shot up from marks 20m and 30m away.

Adding to the polite air of surrealism, competitors wore morning coats with pocket watches and top hats.

9 Club swinging

Not, as it sounds, a chance for a spot of competitive suburban wife swapping - after all, that would give the Dutch, Germans and Brits an unfair advantage in the medal count. Club swinging actually featured athletes, er, swinging two clubs. To be fair, they had to be swung in a complicated routine and it did have ribbons dangling off it for spectator interest.

The most notable practitioner of the sport was American George Roth, who twirled at the 1932 Games despite being unemployed and hungry, this being the Great Depression. Roth won gold then immediately walked out of the stadium and, legend has it, hitchhiked home where he sold the food he had picked up at the venue during the day. It's hard to imagine Usain Bolt pocketing sandwiches between races to pay the rent later.

A jack-up, event to boost the home medal count? Possibly. Club swinging featured at only two Olympics, both in the States, and all six medallists were Yanks.

10 Roque

... which brings us to perhaps Uncle Sam's most farcical medal-boosting Olympic effort. All the medal winners in roque at the 1904 St Louis Olympics were American. That's because all the competitors were American ... and that's because roque was only played in America. A typical ploy from the home of the "World Series". The game? A bit like croquet. And largely unseen since St Louis.