Paris 1900: The Silliest Ever Olympics

Ok, it's a bit late for a Paris Olympics video, but if you're going to be late, you may as well be 124 years late right? The original 1900 Paris Olympics was the most straight-up bonkers Olympics in the history of the Olympics, so today I'm going on a mission to explain the absolute silliest events while visiting the exact locations where they happened.

CREDITS

[renerpho]

The story of that unknown boy who became Olympic champion is fascinating. Sadly, the fact that there seems to be nobody who remembers their father or grandfather talking about how they competed at the Olympics as a boy, there's a good chance that he died in the First World War, and the 1900 photo may be the only one ever taken of him.

EDIT: It seems the boy was Giorgi Nikoladze (1888-1931) from Georgia, see comments below. He was identified in 2016. There's a nice detailed article about him on the Olympic World Library website.

[tvp]

There were more bonkers swimming events in the 1900 Olympics: there was “obstacle swimming” where swimmers had to dive under and climb over boats. There was also “team swimming” where my great grandfather won a gold medal, without actually swimming (since his team mates already got enough points in the complicated scoring system). They then had trouble at customs getting their trophy back to Germany.

[JanRademan]

They will finally be reintroducing cricket at the LA28 games after the last appearance in the 1900 Games. There have been many discussions to do so over the years, but they had to wait for the 1900 match to end first.

[lukesmith]

So it was basically a cross between a school sports day and village fête

[thatoneguy]

Hats off to random French boy, what a legend

[bentoth]

My favorite Olympic event is still the 1904 marathon. It was just a complete cluster**** of stuff going wrong. Including a runner cheating in a car, another one taking a nap, and one getting chased off course by dogs.

[eddiedeclown]

in the velodrome, there was a tandem bike race, where the Dutch duo started swinging left to right on the track because one of them drank too much cognac. that was one of the stories of Dutch Olympic histrory broadcasted this year

[felipecrespo]

How to win a gold medal in the olympics.
Paris 1900, pelota basque event. Only 2 teams, France and Spain. There's a disagrement about the rules of the game and France doesn't play. First gold medal for Spain with no game played.

[tazbertdt]

Sounds like there might be room for a Part 2 to this one Tim! :)

[marklima]

Twin daughters of my best friend, Scarlet & Eliza Humphrey, will be representing Great Britain (swimming) in this year’s Paralympics. I am forwarding this to them because, as per usual it’s funny & informative top-notch viewing, but also because it can be listened to by the visually-impaired without missing out any of the brilliant content. Thank you, Tim, for this and all your great content 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[rocketboysmc]

IMPORTANT the "hot air ballooning" was not using hot air but is actually regular ballooning using either helium or hydrogen.

[simongiesen]

An interesting fact about that rowing competition: even though the Dutch team won that race, it does not count as a Dutch medal. Since the boy was French, they officially competed as a mixed team (IOC Code ZZX). Only the first three games had mixed teams. The Netherlands achieved their first official gold medal 20 years later in Antwerp 1920.

[eddiejc]

I don't expect Tim to fly to St. Louis to cover the 1904 Games (which I heard were worse than 1900), but the 1908 London marathon might be worth making a video about. That race was so popular that it fixed the length of the marathon race.

[GeistView]

In a 124 years a future content creatior will point to a patch of concrete and say, "124 years ago this is where the Olympic sport of "Breaking" took place.

[tristanhenchoz]

Great video as always
Regarding ballooning, it was done with gas balloon instead of hot air balloon, and such competition still exists today. It's call "Gordon Bennett's cup", and this year edition should take off from Münster (Germany) around the 12th of september.

[MartyFox]

It’s an interesting alternate history to imagine if the Olympics had been fully, permanently subsumed by the World’s Fair.

In addition to 1900, the IOC originally chose to hold the 1904 Games in Chicago but moved them to St. Louis to align with the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition. The 1908 Games were awarded to Rome, but when Rome diverted the Olympic budget to volcano relief in Naples, the IOC again chose to ride the coattails of the Franco-British Exhibition in London.

It’s really thanks to the Swedes in 1912 that the Olympics became a real rival to the world’s fair. They even added art competitions to compete with the world’s fairs directly.

[mrtnsnp]

Tug of War seems like a sport ripe for reintroduction. And Fierljeppen is a great spectator sport as well, as well as great torture for all presenters that have to pronounce it.
And here is a fun one: It may be a part of the Olympics the world forgot, but from 1912 to 1948, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) handed out medals across five creative arts categories including architecture, painting, sculpture, literature and music. Bring it on!

[fredygump]

Finally! Some olympic coverage that I can get behind. (I think Monty Python had some very serious ideas for Olympic events that could be considered?)

[dwbusk]

Wonderful as always. Thank you, Tim. And one of the very few YouTube channels where the comments are worth reading - thank you everyone else.

[RossParker]

Gold medal for Charriots of Fire, Question of Sport and definitely Going for Gold in the background!