The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - REVISITING Olympic Weirdness: Barefoot Marathons, Medals for Artwork, Pistol Dueling

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

⁠While Rachel is on parental leave, here's a vintage episode from our vault! Rachel, Claire, and Sara discuss all things weird related to the Olympics way back in 2021 (when the games were pushed back a year from the pandemic). The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at ⁠https://cargurus.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest. That's code weirdest for 20% off. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cook. with the next grill for burner gas grill on special buy for only $199 and entertain all season

with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $49. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price invalid May 14th or May 27th, US-only exclusions apply. See homedepot.com slash price match for details. Hey weirdos, it's Rachel. In case you missed it, I'm off on parental leave right now, but we're doing some really fun stuff. while I'm gone. You've probably already noticed that we've got some amazing new episodes dropping into the feed hosted by the one and only Jess Bodey. The next one of those will be coming in two weeks.

But in between Jess's episodes, we're going to also be airing some reruns, which we've never done before. Because we're just thinking it's been around for a long time. It's not quite in its awkward tween years gap, but we're getting there. And we realized we've never gone back to revisit past episodes in the feed. It features a couple of fan favorites from the original Weirdest Thing host rotation, Sarah Chodosh, and Claire Maldarelli. Of course, talking about running. What else? This episode features me doing one of my goofy little quizzes, which I always love and should really do more, unless you disagree. Let me know. We also hardly ever do, themed, topically cohesive weirdest thing episodes. It just isn't really our vibe to constrain people

in terms of what they can talk about. Plus, now we have a guest host on almost every episode. And when I'm bringing folks in who are not part of the regular weirdest thing rotation, I'm definitely not going to tell them what they are and aren't allowed to talk about. So, yeah, theme episodes, like, we're all talking about the Olympics, are pretty rare, and I really love them. There are certain conversations you can just only end up having if everybody has come in having read about and thought about the same topic to get ready for the show. We also referenced several other older Weirdest Thing episodes than this one.

So it's kind of like a rushing nesting doll of vintage episodes. So just follow that rerun rabbit hole and enjoy the ride. Honestly, the only thing that doesn't hold up about this app is that I definitely say that we are hopefully at the tail end of the pandemic and this was in the summer of 2021. That was not true. But in my defense, it should have been true. And we ruined it. By we, I mean, you know, the collective public and by the collective public, I really mean several elite government officials. But anyway, one quick thing I will add before we get into the episode is that I am spending a little bit more time on social media than I have in the last couple of years to make up for the fact that I've otherwise fallen off the face of the earth to care for a newborn.

You can find me on Blue Sky at Rachel Feldman or Threads where my username is R.A. Feldman. Okay, let's rewind back to the 2020 Olympics, otherwise known as the 2021 Olympics, and enjoy the show. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and heck stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Fultman.

I'm Sarah Trodosh. And I'm Claire Maldarelli. Welcome back, Claire. Woohoo. Happy to be here. It's been a while. Listeners, of course, you already know. but Claire has been busy hosting our fantastic sister show.

Ask Us Anything. It's on break right now, so definitely it's a great chance to go get caught up if you haven't been listening live. But Claire, in the off season, we're so thrilled to have you back on the weirdest thing to you. Thank you. I'm excited to be back and talking about weird things again. Which you don't do and ask us anything ever. Nothing good about that show. All right.

So on the weirdest guy I learn this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story. We found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Today, we are all talking about the Olympics, which had been postponed. last year and seems like they might be postponed again, but I guess are happening as of the time of this episode's publishing, which is a choice we will not comment on. But there's a reason people love the Olympics, and while the choice to hold them at what we hope is the tail end of a brutal pandemic is maybe a little questionable. We can completely appreciate why people love them and are excited about them. So we are going to safely from our respective homes enjoy some

Olympics-related content. Why don't we start with Claire's teas? Yes. Okay, so surprise, surprise. I'm talking about running. So I would like to talk about how the winner of the Marathon at the 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome won the race Barefoot. It's amazing. Oh, Jesus. I can't even run a regular marathon, much less barefoot. Yeah, it's, um, wow, the marathon. That's amazing.

Right. It's a lot of miles. It's not the event you would expect someone to, uh, somehow win barefoot. Yeah. And there was a lot of cobblestone involved. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, my feet already heard just thinking about it.

Excited to hear more. Sarah, what's your tease? I'm going to talk about how there used to be Olympic medals for art and how that relates to the 1992 dream team. Ooh. See, art is really hard. I would fail utterly at Olympic art. Claire's like Olympic marathon, no sweat. Olympic doodle. No, thank you. Stick figures. I couldn't do either.

Yeah, I was going to say, not two of my least strong areas, to be honest. Okay, so I forgot to make a tease, but I guess I can, there are a couple teases for mine. And one of them is that Claire, in fact, at one point, would have been the ideal Olympic athlete for reasons I will explain. and the other tease is that in the early days of the modern Olympics, there were just kind of no rules. And I'm going to talk about some of the bizarre circumstances that came out of that situation. I love this. I love no rules. I think all sports should have less rules. Just chaos. All right. What should be?

we start with? All great teases today. I want to start with the marathon. Okay, great, yeah. Okay, so I'm starting. All right. Yeah. Got all excited and then it was like, oh, wait, okay, I have to go now. Right, exactly. Okay. Well, I think I haven't done weirdest thing recording, like in so long, I was like, oh, I begin now. Okay, so these days, there's tons and tons of money and effort that goes into designing running shoes. I will know I'm obsessed with writing about it on popside.com. And that includes a lot of them that are meant for running long distances like marathons, which is 26.2 miles long. In fact, there's been an explosion of marathon shoes on the market that have fancy midsul technology and literal carbon fiber plates that together give you superior energy return, which is essentially how much

energy gets back to the runner on each stride, the more, the better, of course, which overall improves your running efficiency. So a little bit less effort for each step you take when you run, which might seem small, but it really adds up over time considering you take, shoot, I don't know how many steps you take for 26.2 miles, but it's a lot. So much technology has come out in play that there's now limits on the height that running shoes can have. So in the Olympics coming up, the maximum height for running shoes is 40 millimeters. But if you've ever seen various running shoes on the market, they just, they look like literal platform shoes or platform sandals that I used to love to wear in high school. So a lot of running technology these

days. And it makes you wonder that in 1960, someone was able to run the entire race barefoot. I will explain. So in 1960, a guy from Ethiopia named Abebe Bakila, he was a not really well-known runner. He was known in the Ethiopian community as a sort of up-and-coming athlete. So he was born in a mountainous region in Ethiopia and really in a rural community. He was working as a cattle herder. And then when he was a teenager at age 19, he visited Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa, and he visited the imperial palace where he saw the bodyguard forces in training.

And he was so impressed that he applied to join and was accepted. And training, all of the guards were encouraged to, quote unquote, pursue vigorous physical exercise. And so he joined in and found that he had this natural ability to run really well over long distances. So quickly he did a 5,000 meter race and a 10,000 meter race. And then he started his marathon debut in the 1959 Military Forces Day celebrations in a disababa. And that's where a coach saw him and was like, this guy's got talent. So started him on this sort of like rigorous training program. And he actually finished one race with a time of 221, 23, which was a really, really fast time for that time.

I think it had actually beaten the Olympic record at the times. But despite all of this, he actually wasn't chosen for the Olympic team. But at the last minute, another runner from Ethiopia actually broke his ankle during a soccer game. and they were like, okay, let's put in this new running talent. Imagine it just goes to show you, I'm going to get into this more in my fact, but how much the Olympics have changed that someone was playing another sport where they get injured right before the Olympics. It's like, let me just play a quick soccer game right before the big day.

And it's like, oops, I broke my ankle. But it's like, you know, it's hard because these days they say that, like you really shouldn't, it's best for your body perhaps not to run just one sport or play one sport. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So. But, you know, cross training, maybe like water aerobics, something, something very safe. Yoga, Pilates. Although Pilates can be very challenging. I messed myself up doing Pilates. Same. Same. In a good way, though. So, yeah. So days before the race, he hopped. in and he was training in Ethiopia both with and without shoes. So on some days he would wear shoes for some of his races and some he wouldn't. But he was wearing essentially just like one

pair of shoes because running shoes are expensive and it wasn't like the Olympics today where runners are sponsored. They get all of these running shoes in advance, all of this wardrobe and apparel and all this free stuff. It was essentially kind of a more DIY why type of thing. So he had this one pair of running shoes. And a few days before he was about to leave for Rome, the shoes literally fell apart. And according to an article in the World Athletics Organization, he went on a search in his hometown to find a new pair of running shoes. But as the story goes, he couldn't find a pair that he was comfortable wearing for 26.2 miles. He went to a local running store, tried a bunch on, really wasn't feeling it. But he did, you know, think to himself,

well, I do need to buy a pair of shoes. I've got a big day ahead of me. So he bought a pair, tried them out for a bit, and they gave him blisters. So he said, screw this. I'm going to go barefoot for the big day. And if there's any runners out there, and maybe you and Sarah can also attest to this for whatever shoes you wear for cross-training or for weightlifting, you know that your shoes are very important. So I like to train in exactly one type of running shoe. And despite the amazing shoe technology, like I mentioned, available on the market today, I refuse to wear literally any other shoe, but this exact pair of shoes so much that

when I saw that there was an update that they were going to do for 2021, I went and bought like a ton of the old pair because I was like, I will die. Yeah, you can't risk it. Exactly. So he's not loving the new shoes and he's like, I'm going to go barefoot on the big day. Coaches do have a saying, and it's unclear if it existed or was popular in 1960, but it goes like this, nothing new on race day or the rhyme tried and true and nothing new. And I was trying to think about this.

I was like, well, technically, because he trained with and without running shoes, he kind of was, adhering to the method. Nothing new on race day. Why tried this new pair of shoes that gives me blisters when I've run in training runs, probably not the full 26 miles, but whatever, I've done it barefoot, so I'm just going to go for it. All right. So. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Exactly, right? I feel like this is exactly what I would do in his situation. So race day comes. the Olympic Marathon that year was scheduled in Rome at 5.30 p.m., which seems pretty late for a 26.2 mild jogging event. An evening, evening run.

An evening, yes, a light evening jog. But Rome is an incredibly hot place in August, and it's unclear why they decided to have it at night instead of, say, early in the morning when marathons happen now, like the New York City Marathon. I think starts at nine, other ones start at eight or sometimes even 7 a.m. But it was smart for them not to do it in the middle of the day. If you remember back to a previous episode of Weirdest Thing where I talk about the ill-fated 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, where they decided to start the marathon at 3 o'clock p.m. You'll remember that among other things that made that marathon perhaps the most ill-fated in history. That start time in the heat of the day didn't really bode well for the runners. And there was like one water station, right? The whole. Did you know that there's an online

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It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. Yes, one water station. And I wouldn't really call it a water station. if I remember, it was kind of just like a well that you had, it was like a self-service well. So that was such a great episode. People definitely need to go back and. It was so scary. But you will still want to run a marathon. Don't worry. Well, I hope. I hope. Maybe listen to it after you run your race.

Anyways, okay, so the race starts and right away a group of four runners set the pace, including Bekela and a key rival of his, this guy from, Morocco named Radi Ben Abdesolam. So the race continues and if anyone knows anything about following marathons, you know that even though the marathon is technically 26.2 miles, once you hit the elite racing teams and runners and Olympics where everyone is going really, really fast, the race doesn't really start until the 20 mile mark. It might sound late for a marathon given that it is 26.2 miles, but Marathoners will often typically hold a set pace for the majority of the race and then pick it up towards the end at mile 20. And it's like whoever has it left in the tank is going to be the winner.

That is not how I race a marathon. I just go hard, fast and then die at the end. But that's not the best tactic. I'm not an elite runner. So there we go. So they're at the 20 mile mark and it was essentially pitch black at this point because they started at 5.30 p.m. and they actually had to light Olympic torches in order to illuminate the roads for the runners because they couldn't see anything and it was cobblestone again throughout Rome.

So he's running. It's pitch black. There's like torches with runners running along with the torches to kind of try to keep up with the runners. And he's still going barefoot. And at this point, he's running over total cobblestone. And I don't mean like cobblestone. you know, like the nice cobblestone. It's like the bad cobblestone.

I guess you could call it. Like those, you know what I mean? Like those big, big... I mean, it's cobblestone that has been there for hundreds of years. Like Rome is a different level of old compared to any cobblestones you have walked on in the U.S. Yes, correct. Exactly. Thank you, Sarah, for that description.

Like the big stones, you know? Like you're running on giant stones and it sounds terrible. And if you Google 1960 Olympic Marathon, you can see some great footage. And he is just running straight through on this cobblestone and a documentary about the event, quote unquote, calls it he was in the zone. So they enter the last 500 meters, which is essentially like the last 0.2 of the 26.2 mile race. And he just ditches his competitor in the dust. There's like two runners at the end. and he like sprints to the finish in two hours, 15 minutes, and 16 seconds breaks the previously

held marathon record, all totally barefoot in the dark running on cobblestone. And I will just say he seems like such a great person in his interview at the end. He said, quote, I want the world to know that my country, Ethiopia, always won with determination and heroism. Winning that race, he also became the first Black African to win an Olympic gold medal. And for years later, he also won the gold medal in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, though he was wearing shoes and socks. So, moral of all of this story is, and something that I've been trying to keep in the back of my head, I guess, when I cover running technology and running shoes and marathon shoes and stack height and mid-es. Soul Technology and all of that is you could be the best, you could wear the best running shoes on the planet, but it's my favorite part of marathons and Olympic Games is that you never know what is

going to happen on race day. And it's so much of it, like yes, you can measure how much better this running shoe will help your economy or whatever, but you also have to take into account the person's training and their determination and their grit. And I think that's what makes the Olympics even just a great thing to watch. I love that. I feel like it is. It's fun to get caught up in the gear and the tech and like getting new shoes. Like I don't even run. And when Claire gets like new running shoes delivered to the office that like someone has sent her to test, I'm like, look at these cool shoes. Like I don't know anything about running shoes at all. I only know about weightlifting shoes. But like it's fun.

to talk about it and to like get caught up in it but it's true like at the end of the day shoes that give you like 1% more power return kind of pale in comparison to all the rest of the training that you do like if you sleep properly and eat well and train hard like all of that's going to make such a much much bigger difference than a pair of shoes I guess it's once we get like we've gotten so elite and so uh like we're pushing to the forefront of especially like sports like running that I guess we're sort of at this phase where there's where every micro second counts. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But for most people it's like that you won't notice. It doesn't matter at all. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's funny. Yeah, exactly. Although I don't know if it has made me want to run barefoot. Like there was a big movement back I think it was like in the 90s of like barefoot running

and those like shoes that look like. Yeah. That's where those weird toe finger shoes came from. Yeah, I'm really glad that that, like, phase is over. But. Not for some people. No. No.

I went on a day once with a guy who was just wearing those shoes. Oh, no. Have you seen those high heels with the toes? No. It's made by the same people. It's like a collab with some, like, high fashion brand and also Vibram who made the toe shoes, I think. I'm going to find them and send them to you. They're really upsetting looking. Yes. The more, you know, get back to nature by wearing high heels.

To shoes. I just don't understand. Like, my feet are so uncomfortable when my toes are separated from each other. Like, they like to be together. And, like, when they're forced to be apart and just be stuck next to two pieces of rubber or fabric, they're just miserable. Like, I can't even wear toe socks. It's very sad for more than, like, 10 minutes. And I'm just so uncomfortable. To socks also freak me out. They're weird. It's not natural. Toes should be together.

Exactly. This is an official pop-size stance. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to get into my fact, which is going to start with a quick quiz. We had a lot of fun with me making up fake sports back in our episode where I talked about cheese rolling, a fan favorite, I think. So go back and check it out.

if you haven't already. I think this quiz about which sports did or did not happen in the Olympics may be a bit easier than the made-up sport quiz, but we'll see. We'll see how we do. Okay. So which of the following sports have not been played at the Olympics? We have first. Nordic folk wrestling, motorboating, or cheerleading.

Sorry, is there just one that one of them had? Just one has not been played at the Olympics. Okay. Can you repeat them? Yes. Repeat, please. Let's, I'll start from the top. Okay.

Yeah. So, all right, so, which of the following sports have not been played at the Olympics? Just one. Is it Nordic folk wrestling, motorboating, or cheerleading? I'm going with B motorboating. I'm also going to go with motorboating. Incorrect. What?

Your voting has appeared at the Olympics, though the IOC is notoriously opposed to motorized sports in 1900 and 1908 that didn't matter because it was Paris's call. What is Nordic folk wrestling?

Well, it appeared at the Olympics in 1912 and there are going to be people who tell me I'm wrong about this and I will say I am going to explain why I'm saying it was in the Olympics. Don't be pedantic. I'm about to be pendentic for you later. we are just having fun with this quiz. It appeared at the Olympics. Chearleading has been granted provisional status as of 2016, which means it could be approved in time for 2024 or 2028.

But unfortunately, cheerleading, the very real and dangerous sport has yet to appear in the Olympics. And Nordic Folk Wrestling has. I just Googled Nordic Folk Wrestling. Just to try to get a sense of what the heck this is. And first of all, it tells me that what I should have searched for was Glema. The name that covers several types of Nordic folk wrestling. Wow. Yeah.

Well, we're going to have to put some photos up online because, first of all, some of these people are wearing, like, boots and what looks like underwear. So it's a great image. Well, you're, you know, you don't do Nordic folk wrestling naked. It's cold. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of. That stuff is for Greece and Rome. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I guess I'm surprised because, like, Olympic wrestling now is such a thing. like it is a very specific kind of wrestling. And it's wild to me that there was just this other kind of wrestling, but I really love it. I will get into more detail. Okay. Which of these sports has not appeared at the Olympics? Life saving, billiards, or motorcycle racing?

Life saving? Yes, life saving. Which has not appeared. They all feel like they happen to be. Going into the water, pulling people out of it. Oh my God, wow. Okay. Wait, what was B and C then?

I got stuck on life-saving. That's fair. Billiards and motorcycle racing. Oh, God. I want to go for motorcycle again, but after motorboating, I'm scared. Same. Yeah, I have the same thought process, so I'm just going to go with A, life-saving, because that just sounds wrong.

Well, unfortunately, it has appeared in the Olympics. Billiards has been trying to get into the Olympics since the 1950s, but the IOC thinks it is a game, not a sport. Okay, they're right, but I was going to say billiards. Dang it. Okay. That makes no sense. I should have given you more time, Sarah.

It's okay. It's okay. I just was so perplexed. They all sounded like they definitely have never been in the Olympics. I want to say that that's totally makes no sense on their part because the Olympics are literally called, quote, unquote, the Olympic Games. So. If I've learned anything from my research for this episode, it's that the IOC is a very pedantic organization.

God. We could also have a whole episode about what is a sport and what is a game. I'd just get a lot of angry fan now. Yeah. All right. Next up. Which of these has not appeared in the Olympics? Chess, pistol dueling, or horse long jumping.

Like a long jump, but on a horse. Oh, my goodness. Again, like I want to say chess, but I feel like it's a trap because the other two are sports and chess is not a sport. Oh, God. I'm going to say chess. I'm going to also say chess. Yeah, chess has not appeared as an official Olympic sport. And this is where I will have to get pedantic in a minute to explain my logic.

But I promise, this is all going to be a learning experience. We're going to learn a lot based on which things I said were in the Olympics and which we're in. Okay, a couple more left. which of these was not in the Olympics. Cannon shooting, underwater hockey, solo synchronized swimming. Cannons. Underwater hockey. Okay, so underwater hockey, indeed, has not been in the Olympics.

It was a real sport, as I outlined in... Wait, it actually is a sport? I thought you made that up. No, Claire, this was back in my episode where I did a made-up sport quiz, Underruder hockey was one of the trickiest ones. Exactly. Dang it. I was on that episode and I got fooled this time.

Oh. Shooting a cannon's not a sport. Well, I'm going to get into it. It's really hard, Sarah. It's a skill. It's not a sport. Okay. Now, bonus round, and this is the last one.

Which of these took place in Paris, 1900? Live pigeon shooting or pigeon racing? Oh, pigeon racing. Pigeon racing. It's a trick question. They both took place. Oh, no. Rachel.

Okay, yeah. So I could get into a little bit more detail about some of these sports throughout my explanation, but I need to give people a little bit of historical context here. So the Olympics are at least 3,000 years old. That's when we know the ancient Greeks were definitely holding several major sporting festivals a year, one of which took place every four years in Olympia. though that may have only been a foot race at first, actually. But they didn't exist from the year 400 to the year 1859.

The ancient Olympic Games tapered off during the Roman Empire because the Romans had sporting events like gladiator fights, but those were largely framed as entertainment, not as like a competition for the sake of the competitors. Plus, the games that had pagan associations, as they were originally part of religious festivals. So, you know, during the rise of, of Christianity in the Roman Empire that was, you know, bad news for the Olympics, basically.

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Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. So it was in 1859 that Greece started holding modern Olympiads in Athens. And some other countries followed suit. So for a while, there were like Olympics in different countries. Different countries just had their own Olympiad. The first international Olympic Games took place in Athens in 1896, which was not long after the International Olympic Committee first formed, known as the IOC most times. The winter games weren't a thing until 1924, actually. And in general, it took about that long for the Olympics to look anything like the events we hold today. For starters, Olympians had to provide their own lodging until 1932. So for those first games, most, like, non-Greek competitors were people who happened to be in Athens for some other reason. That's why there was a big showing of, like, members of the British embassy in Greece at the Olympics.

Also, only amateurs were allowed to compete, which I'll talk more about in a minute, and rules were really all over the place. So for those first few Olympic games, and especially the second iteration, which was Paris 1900, countries could kind of just insert events that they expected locals to do well in, which led to some very weird competitions. And one great example of this is that in 1900, France included croquet in the Olympics, which only French people signed up for, albeit some of the women, so that was cool. That was the first Olympic event that women were allowed into. but like only the French people played croquet. And then so at 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, which also held Olympic Games, America decided to feature Rock, R-O-Q-U-E, which is literally just taking the first and last letters off of croquet.

And it's an American variant of croquet that pretty much no one played outside the U.S. So only Americans sign up for that at the Olympics. So people pulled this kind of crap all the time where they were just like, we are going to show off to the world how good we are at this sport that none of them care about playing. And so, yeah, there were a lot of accusations of people trying to like pad the metal count for the host country. And the early Olympics were very much just extensions of the world fairs that they were generally held with.

So some really random stuff got airtime. These days, we would call these events demonstrations. sports where they're not part of the official games. They don't contribute to any nation's metal count. They're there generally because it's something the country that's hosting has like a lot of top ranked competitors in, like bowling, which was a demonstration sport in Seoul during the Olympics. So it's an opportunity to show that off on an international stage and add to the stuff there is for people to buy tickets to and to broadcast and all of that good stuff. but because there were so few rules about how to run the Olympics in the early 1900s,

there are still people debating what should be counted as an official Olympic event versus a demonstration event because at the time the host countries were not making a distinction. So, for example, chess has been a demonstration event at a more recent Olympics, but by then it was being called a demonstration event. No one was pretending it was part of the real thing. whereas canon shooting was if it happened today it would be a demonstration sport but when it happened in Paris in 1900 it was just one of many quote unquote Olympic events so um no one has has really there are definitely people who have made lists being like here's what was official here's what

wasn't but it's kind of a matter of opinion so wait okay so are the countries that earned medals in cannon shooting? Like, are those counted in their total, their official country by country medal counts? So my understanding, and I could be wrong about this, but I think in Paris 1900 and probably in St. Louis 1904, there was no distinction between sports. And it was just like, if you want a medal, you want a medal. And there wasn't as much about like a country winning the Olympics. It was kind of, I mean, there wasn't really an opening or closing ceremony. It was all a mess. And I'm sure someone who knows more about the Olympics than me could talk about this with more nuance. But my takeaway is just like, if someone won, it was still kind of arbitrary because nobody was, like,

keeping great track. Yeah. And it sounds like some countries were like, well, we're going to do our best. sport and win like 20 medals with it. Yeah. Well, and I think the important thing to get at is that even if they really were keeping a close tally of medals, it was always going to be the host country that won because they had the most competitors there because they didn't pay for travel. Right. A very strong geographic selection. Exactly. Yeah. And also important to remember is that none of the people doing these events were professionals in any sports. So, like, cannon shooting was just as legit as foot racing because nobody was supposed to be doing this full time. In 1912, American decathlet and pentathlet, Jim Thorpe, actually lost his 1910 medals because he had once accepted a small payment for playing semi-professional baseball as a college student, which breaks my heart.

That seems really unfair. But the Olympics were supposed to showcase this pure athleticism that would only be tainted by someone's desire to make money or their ability to train full time, which is so radically different from what the Olympics are today that it really blows my mind. It seems like the IOC was persuaded to move on this once TVs became really widespread and they realized how much money the Olympics could make by broadcasting. And relatedly, how much cooler the sports would be to watch on TV. if people were performing at really elite levels. Plus, another thing is that the Soviet Union had started to train and support their national athletes basically from birth, so they didn't have amateur athletes anymore.

And so other countries needed to turn to full-time professional competitors to have any chance of beating people from the Soviet Union. The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association actually sounded the alarm on this, in regards to the Soviet Union's team, particularly in the late 60s. And the International Ice Hockey Federation decided that Canada should be able to include nine non-NHL professionals on its team for the 1970 Winter Olympics in Canada. But the IOC disagreed, and Canada actually withdrew from all international ice hockey competitions in protest until, I think, like the mid-1970s, when the IOC actually opened hockey up

to non-NHL professionals. And there continued to be a lot of debate about who should be allowed to compete or not. Then in 1986, the IOC decided to officially leave competitor selection criteria up to individual sport federations. And by the 90s, basically every sport featured people with full-time endorsements or professional contracts. So things have changed a lot. you know, in Paris 1900, you could basically just stroll up and be like, I can shoot a pigeon, and you were in the Olympics.

They did actually reinstate Jim Thorpe's medals, but 30 years after he died. I know. It's really sad. Such a bummer. Yeah. Well, and it's like, it's such a, like, letter of the law thing, right? Like, it's not like he was, like, sitting at home, getting rich off of endorsements. He had gotten paid for one sport once. for a different sport. A different sport, not even the sport he won in the Olympics. So, yeah. But again, IOC, very pedantic organization, I think. So, yeah, then, I mean, I wanted to talk a little bit about how you get a sport into the Olympics. Because when you look at, like, billiards and cheerleading, like, waiting in the wings,

it makes one wonder. And I will say also, for anyone who has yet to pick up on this, all of the weird sports that I listed in the quiz at the beginning are from those early days when just kind of like countries could just put random stuff in there and be like, it's an Olympic event. The only weird one that I listed that's like modern is solo synchronized swimming, which is where you're synchronized to the music, not to other dancers. So you kind of, it's like a gymnastics mat routine, but in the water.

It does not, it is not still in the Olympics. it fell out of fashion. Could I do it? No. Do I think it looks silly? Yes. That's my stance on solo synchronized swimming. It sounds lonely.

Like I would want. So, yeah, getting into the Olympics is a really complicated and drawn-out process. You have to first get recognition as a sport from the IOC, which, as I said, Billiards has not succeeded in doing. And that gets you into the international sports. Federation status, which means then you can have, like, your own international governing body that's supposed to ensure that the sport is following various IOC rules, like anti-doping regulations. Then you file a petition to the IOC where you can either argue that you're an entirely new sport or a discipline, which is a branch of a sport, or an event, which is just one competition

within a discipline. So, for example, triathlon was added in 2000 as a whole new sport. Meanwhile, women's wrestling, when that was added, it was just a new discipline since wrestling was already in the Olympics. And then you have something like women's pole vaulting, which was just a new event within women's track and field, which was already a discipline. So that's all to say, like there are different strategies for getting your sport in, and one of them is to kind of like fold yourself in under another sport and just be an event. There's also like a bunch of stuff about popularity. Like a sport has to be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on four continents and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on three continents, which I would like to say creates a big bias against roller derby, which is predominantly played by women and non-binary, non-gender conforming people.

So I would love for roller derby to be the sport that breaks this qualifier because we could flip it. The sport must also increase the value and appeal of the Olympic Games, reflect its traditions. And then there are rules about, like, they have bands on purely, quote, mind sports, like chess, I guess. I guess that's what they would call it game is a mind sport. I feel like that's so untrue. All sports are mind sports. All sports. All sports are mind sports, but I kind of appreciate the characterization of chess as like, it's not a sport, but it is a mind sport.

but it is a mind sport. Okay, but there is that article in, I think it was ESPN, like a year or two ago, or maybe even a few years more, that, like, chess players actually burn, like, tons and tons of calories, and they have to, like, yeah. It's physically intense. Well, and relatedly, so they're really, again, sports dependent on mechanical propulsion. You know, we had motorboating and motorcycle racing in some of those really early Wild West days of the modern Olympics, but the IOC does not like mechanical propulsion.

which has kept various forms of automobile racing out of the Olympics. And we also know that race car drivers go through incredibly intense physical stress. But I feel the same way about car racing, where I'm like, it does require a lot. Like, it's a massive physical skill. You do have to be physically fit. But like, you're not propelling you forward, you know. Yeah, I understand it. I do.

So yeah, the sport has to be popular enough to be a draw. It has to be a good return on investment in terms of how expensive it is to create facilities for it. So, like, if you have a sport that can't be done on, like, the same playing field as an existing Olympic sport, then that's going to hurt your chances. And then, like, how psyched are people going to be to watch it on TV? Like, surfing is getting its Olympic debut whenever these summer Olympics actually occur. and, you know, that's one where technically all you need is an ocean, but I guess you need a pretty good ocean. So, like, that's probably tough. On the other hand, it's going to be a huge draw.

People are going to be really jazzed to watch Olympic surfing for the first time. So I'm sure that, you know, had some weight for the IOC. And there also has to be space for it. These days, events usually only get added at the cost of other events. So I feel like we don't hear about this a lot because it's, rare that they shed an entire sport or even an entire discipline, but they might get rid of events under it, like a particular type of middle distance race or something. So I feel like most people who aren't interested in that particular sport don't really pay attention as those things

get kind of shed based on like changes in popularity or in the number of competitors around the world. And then that's how we get kind of other events inserted in. So yeah, basically my point is the Olympics was super made up for the first few decades that we did it, and a lot of really weird stuff went down, including some very racist stuff at the St. Louis 1904 Olympics, where they did, they had what they called Anthropology Days, which were an extension of the human zoos that were very popular at World Fairs. World Fairs were really messed up. I've talked about this on previous episodes of the weirdest thing. They had like eugenics tense in the science section. They had human zoos where it was just like they shipped people in from other countries so that you could be like, oh, wow, look at these non-white people.

Ooh. But at St. Louis and at some other world fairs where they had Olympics, they would have an Olympics Anthropology Day, which was just the people from the human zoos doing sports. But it wasn't even, they didn't get medals that counted towards particular countries. That was the one place where the Olympics would draw the line and say this isn't part of the real Olympics. So anyway, the Olympics, what are they? Who knows? A mostly modern invention based on a misunderstanding of what the ancient Olympics used to be. Yes, absolutely.

Well, it just really fascinated me because I think as someone whose entire life has been in the like, you know, post-amature era of the Olympics, it just surprised me. how recently they were so different. It's really presented as like a storied historic institution. And it's all pretty made up pretty recently. Yeah, this is what bothers me about the IOC acting all high and mighty about like, oh, we can't allow like cheerleading into the Olympics. Because like what would that say about the Olympics? Like, I don't know. Like, it's all made up. And we've just always arbitrarily decided what gets to be in the games. I don't like, that's true. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with one more fact. Okay, we're back. And Sarah, tell us about Olympic art. Yeah, I mean, I'm here to get more

into the silliness of what the Olympics offend. Okay, so here's the fact, which was when I learned it so wild to me, I heard it on another podcast and I legitimately had to look it up in the middle of cooking dinner because I was like, this can't be true. Like, these people didn't fact check properly. But it is true. The Olympics gave out medals for art at every games from 1912 to 1948 and somehow we've just all collectively forgotten about this fact which is crazy to me because it was so recent um so the the reason why was basically a man named pierre de coupartin which i'm sure i am butchering who's like basically the founder of like what we consider the modern olympics and he was a big believer in the idea of the Olympics as not just a competition of

athleticism, but like of being a complete person. Like if you were going to be a true Olympian, you should be skilled not just in sport, but in music and literature. This sounds like a Jane Austen book. It does feel like that. A true woman, a truly accomplished woman must be adapted. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Or like a college application. Like you can't just be good at school. God forbid you just are good at one thing. You must be good at all of the things. And I'm unclear where he got this idea because, like, again, the ancient Olympic games were very much about sports. Often just like did one sport too. Yeah, like there weren't that many.

Like you had like discus and chariot racing, pentathlon, running, wrestling. But like, I don't think any literature or sculpture was involved. So I'm not really sure where we came up with this idea. Also, like the ancient Olympians were naked. But as far as I know, Cooper 10 was not interested in having all the Olympics be naked and oily. but regardless, when he found it in the modern games, let's be honest, more people would watch. If we're looking to spice up the Olympics, let's go back to its roots.

But anyway, Coopertown was pretty insistent that there needed to be like an artistic component to the Olympics. And I think perhaps single-handedly, he managed to get included as like kind of a side exhibit in the 1912 games in Stockholm. So they awarded medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music. I was hoping that, like, the other Olympic events, it was going to be some kind of race, like who can compose the best song, the fastest, or something like that. But you just submitted your work in advance, like it was just kind of like a normal art competition. They all had to be Olympics or sports themed. And then it was basically like exhibited at the games and the judges.

then got to give out medals. So over the course of these years, the judges gave out 151 total art medals and also withheld a lot of medals because at the time, the judges were just allowed to say, like, we didn't think that any of these things deserve a medal. What? The Pulitzer prizes were out recently. Yeah, like the cartoons. Yeah. No award for editorial cartoon, which was devastating. Good enough. It is literally like that. And also, not only that, but they were allowed to say like give out silver and bronze but no gold and just be like we didn't we are a lot of a lot of second and third places here but yeah to me though like the whoever won silver like they won gold they were the best like whoever you picked it was the best that's the

definition of who's gold. Yeah there needs to be a grading curve on medals. Yeah it was wild to me but apparently the the Olympics art judges were extremely extremely picky. Um so uh the art part was like it was never, it was never that successful and it was kind of a side show, but I do want to point out, like, they were Olympic medals. Like it wasn't, it was considered an accessory to the games, but they were official Olympic medals. And they kept holding the event through the 1948 games. Cooper Tent himself actually won a gold medal in literature in 1912, the first year that they did it for a poem that he wrote. He submitted it under a pseudonym, and I couldn't, I couldn't determine whether it was like it was legitimately a pseudonym and nobody really knew it was him and he wanted just because he was like an incredible poet or if it was like hey i'm going to submit this under a pseudonym but like you know right maybe maybe like not enough people had submitted their applications and he's like i got it put one in yeah um but other than other than the founder of the Olympics you have probably never heard of any of the other artists who ever won medals because the artistic community didn't take it seriously like

Like, this the fact that your entry had to be sports themed meant that, like, lots of artists weren't going to submit everything. So, like, in the architecture category, most of the things that were entered were, like, sports arenas. But if you're an architect who doesn't design sports arenas, like, why do you, nobody cared, no artist cared about winning an Olympic medal in art because it was a silly thing to begin with. So you might think that the IOC stopped awarding Olympic medals for art because of, like, a lack of interest or maybe because like it's literally a sports medal that has given out for art.

But that is not why. The thing that killed the Olympic art medals was the debate about whether amateurs should be allowed to compete in the Olympics. So the guy who took over the IOC after World War II, Avery Brundage, who was American through it through, was absolutely adamant that everybody participating in the Olympic Games had to be an amateur because, as Rachel said, that's how you make them pure. But really, the idea of like amateurism being more pure than being a professional athlete is like very much rooted in classicism. So I found this great quote from an Olympics historian Bill Malin, which is quoted in

a really excellent 2012 article in the Atlantic about amateurism generally. So he said, Amateurism really started when the people who were rowing books. on the Thames for a living started beating all the rich British aristocrats. Damn. So basically like when all the professional athletes, many of whom weren't like fancy rich upper crust people who were like, I'm good at this thing and I'm actually going to earn a living doing it, they started getting really good. And then all of a sudden, all the wealthy elites were like, oh, it's not really very

sportsmen like to get paid to do this. You're only a gentleman if you do this sport as a hobby on the side. Yeah. Also, definitely as like an extension of the world fairs that these Olympics were being held at often, like there was kind of a eugenic subtext where it was like the pure, we're just showing off like the purity of our best stock, not our athletes. This is just like how good, you know, your standard well-bred Frenchman is at shooting a pigeon because of our good breeding. I definitely. Like, I didn't read anything that, like, came out and said this explicitly. But, again, it's like these were happening at world fairs that had competitions for the most well-bred baby with the best head shape and things like that. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, definitely all the talk of, like, maintaining the purity of their athleticism really skeets. It's also, it's super hypocritical because, like, rich people were fine to pay pro athletes to, like, teach themselves and, and,

their sons, because like, let's be honest, it wasn't women competing, how to, like, play tennis or, like, row. But they also simultaneously, like, look down on the people who they clearly considered experts in their field because, like, they had the audacity to actually get paid to do the sport. But, like, of course, the idea of being an amateur and being an artist are not really compatible because, like, imagine if the only people who were allowed to compete in the architecture competition were amateur architects. Like, that's just not a thing. I show up with a football-shaped house I drew on a napkin. Yeah. I mean the gold. I mean entertaining in other ways, but not really in the

keeping of what the Olympics is supposed to be about. And so they like kind of had to get rid of the art competition because I don't understand. Like, who was even going to submit? Like, they already had trouble getting artists to actually submit works. They, like, at least one year had to extend the deadline because they didn't have enough. entries coming in. So they went so far as to strike all of the medals out of the Olympic, like the official Olympic record. So the 151 medals, they don't count towards the country's medal counts, which I'm

actually all right with. But I think it's interesting that they used to count. And then the IOC was like, actually in retrospect, we shouldn't have ever given out any of those. Yeah. No, I mean, similarly, like the IOC has definitely looked back and like redacted a bunch of stuff that happened in Paris. I mean, like, these are the medals that count.

But, like, their logic, the logic by which they separated sports seems to have been pretty much just, like, a vibe. Like, should this have counted or not? Yeah. Yeah. And it's all, like, especially wild, I guess, because, you know, the art medals went away starting in the 1950s. But then, as Rachel said, it wasn't that long after that that the Olympics became the giant

money grabbing scheme that we know them today. So, like, as soon as Avery Brentedge left, the IOC said, hey, you know what, we can make a lot of money if we pay, if we just had professional athletes who were actually really good at these events. And then people would probably tune into the television and watch the people that they already know from the other sports that they play professionally. I'd just like watch them in the Olympics. So starting with the 1992 Olympics, the IOC changed the rules. And while you don't get, you can't get paid to go to the games, you are allowed to be a professional. hence the 1992 dream team. I brought it around in the end.

For those who don't know, the 1992 dream team was the U.S. basketball team that was the first to feature NBA players. So Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley. And ever since then, of course, the men and women's U.S. basketball teams have absolutely dominated the Olympics because we have the NBA. I learned that each the men's and the women's teams have lost only once each to, to, like not won gold. The men's team launched

to Argentina, which is not a country I associate with basketball. But as I learned in researching this, basketball is an amazingly popular sport outside of the U.S. That's one of those sports that I think is just U.S.-centric and it is so popular like many other places in the world. It did make me kind of wonder like,

what would art look like if it were in the Olympics today? Like if pro artists today could enter into the Olympics, would it be more interesting because you could make money off of it and be an actually interesting person. It still makes no sense to me to have an art medal as an Olympics thing, but there is kind of like art exhibitions related to the Olympics. Like there's always sculptures and things.

And often when you go to cities that have hosted in the past, they'll still have like artifacts from the Olympics that are like up and around the city. But yeah, this is just crazy. It's crazy to me that we have just like entirely forgotten that for like a large chunk of the modern Olympics, we gave out art medals. It's just, the Olympics are silly. I love them, but also they're so silly. All right, what was the weirdest thing we learned this week?

I'm giving my vote to the barefoot foot race. I still like art in the Olympics. I was going to vote for one of Rachel, so it's a three-way time. Wow. The IOC would be horrified, but I know. They would have some rule. Just to give out a gold. We'll take the W's.

All right. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other weirdos find the show. For more information on the stories you heard in this episode, come find us at popsye.com slash weird. You can buy our merch, including weirdest thing, t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at popsy. The show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, with editing and audio engineering by Jess Bodie.

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