The Weird History of Olympic Shenanigans

You're listening to an Air Wave Media Podcast. Hi, I'm Cassidy, and I'm April, and together we are fashion historians, friends, and co-hosts of Dress, the history of fashion, a podcast about why the clothes we wear matter throughout history and around the world. From the cultural and societal to the personal and often political, with each episode we explore the multitude of meanings quite literally sewn into the clothes we wear. Please join us in unraveling the hidden histories residing in your closet. New episodes are available on Wednesdays and our Dressed Classic episodes re-air each Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you listen to your favorite shows. Hello, my friends, I'm Michael Yee here, and welcome back to the History of Everything Podcast. Yes, I know I'm literally by myself here at this point, so this is going to look very different than how it is that I have kind of been doing things, or depending upon whether or not you were listening to this episode and not actually watching it, you're not going to physically see that I'm by myself. But Gabby has a hair appointment, we just got back from another little trip that we were on here in the first place, and I have a lot of recordings to do, like a lot. I'm reaching out to a couple of people because we're planning on bringing in some more guests to actually do things for different episodes, so that's going to be fun in the first place. We have been planning all the stuff that we're going to be doing for History Unhinged, so if you haven't seen that show that I do with Aiden Mattis, the lore lodge, that is another program that we do where it's history among other things that is extremely unhinged as the name literally goes. So definitely check that out. But you know what? Speaking of things that are crazy unhinged or absolutely wild, when we're talking about things in history, like the history of sports and international competition and all that kind of stuff, there is nothing. No word that is more highly sought after, more crazy. The best possible thing you could have, the Olympic gold. I mean, the Olympics, a series of games that occurs every four years, is literally the ultimate answer to the question that is brought up in pubs, bars, and taverns around the world, who is better, my country, or yours. And that oftentimes then leads to some fights. Well today we're going to be diving into facts and we're trivia about the Olympic Games and its history covering their origin, how they revived in the modern era, etc. But mostly this is going to be our bread and butter material. Weird, wacky, and odd historical facts that you know, cause us to generally admit that most of history was doing one's best and then going and apologizing for it later. That's a lot. Or in some cases doing things and then not apologizing, that also is a very common thing that ends up happening with history. Anyway, over 2,000 years ago, the Greeks held the original Olympic Games every four years in the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. So you know, the Olympics. There are quite a few outlandish claims as to the origin of the games, including the legend that Hercules himself started the first Olympic Games with the original Olympic Stadium built by Hercules as a gift to his father Zeus. Or I'm saying Hercules like in the Roman sense, but if you're actually using it in the Greek sense, it's Hercules because the whole origin of the story is that Hercules was named after his, not his actual mother, because of course Zeus was always cheating on his wife and that was a big thing that happened in there. But Hera, so Heracles, but either way, the earliest agreed upon date for the games being held is generally 776 BC. And that's based on hard archaeological evidence inscribed in Jurak. No legends involved here. So the first 13 games held the stadium, the 200 pace foot race, was the only event that was actually held. Like literally it was just a running competition. Eventually though, the games would expand to include numerous running events and even a pentathlon consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race and wrestling. Boxing, wrestling, equestrian events, and something called pancratician, I think I'm saying that here, right? That would also be the events of the ancient games. In fact, I got to say among all of the varying different games that were added, and I know I'm probably going to include this here later, there are some that are interesting for what we have nowadays that you probably look at this and go, "Man, is that really a sport?" And yet it is, and it's a thing that they'll do for the Olympics and stuff is always getting added all the time. I think my personal favorite among the ancient ones that is not done because it's just so weird is the hoplite's or gerumus. That was the hoplite gerumus, which is quite literally, and I'm not kidding about this, it's a naked foot race, sort of, but people are wearing armor. And what I mean by that is that you have people who are carrying a shield and they're wearing greaves, right? Like the guards for one's shins. But everything else is just all natural. So it's really less of an armored foot race and more of like a foot race with slight leg weights and stuff here that you're going to be using. I mean, and a shield is heavy, of course, but still, yeah, some of this stuff is pretty weird. Some of this stuff is pretty, and they're all oiled. I forgot to mention that. They are literally all oiled up. And for you modern sports fan, this should be interesting. Pencratican was an unarmed combat sport introduced into the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC. The athletes would use boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others, such as kicking, holds, joint locks, and chokes on the ground, making it similar to modern mixed martial arts. In fact, the pencratican was one of the primary inspirations for the ultimate fighting championship that the Gracie family was paying homage to when they came up with the concept of modern day MMA as we know it. There was also a separate uninvolved organization that ran out of Japan in the 80s and 90s called the pancreas or pancreas that was like a mix between open hand striking, boxing, kickboxing and wrestling. If you're an early MMA fan, Bass Ruten himself would dominate in the league, and he actually is a YouTube channel where he gives commentary on his greatest matches in pancreas. It's highly suggested because no one breaks a fight down like Bass Ruten and no one thinks higher of Bass Ruten than Bass Ruten himself. Anyways, the pancreas was not for the week. It was dirty and hot and it took place in the dirt, I guess. Two men gripping and pulling at each other, both nude, feeling each other's breath on the other's neck. Yeah, it was definitely not homoerotic at all for ancient Greece. It was really masculine. Yeah. And the greatest legend of the pancreas in an era was definitely Archaean of Fagalia. I'm saying that name here actually right. This was a man who had one numerous pancreatic events. He was tough as nails. He was a champion. Defending his title at the 564th Olympic or year 564 Olympic Games, Archaean would find himself on the wrong side of a chokehold and gasping for air. Now maybe it was AIDS that was creeping up on him and causing him to miss a step and maybe it was a lucky hold, but the champion was fading fast. As if one final burst of aggression, Archaean would go and grab his opponent's foot and twist it the ever loving shit out of it. The man held in pain and tapped out, but before he could let go of the chokehold, Archaean had taken his last breath. His body was limp and he was obviously gone. But according to the rules, he won the match. And that is why after presumed a large amount of head scratching from the officials in a sport where the only rules are no biting, no eye gouging, a dead man's hand was raised in victory. Archaean left the Olympic Stadium as the only three time champion and the only athlete to have ever won a gold medal after death. So that did happen. Yeah. Again, this is one of those things where it's just kind of like a weird little side story of how all that kind of goes. As it was here, my friends, the Olympic Ancient Games were at the height of their popularity in the 5th and 6th century BC. But gradually they would decline and prominence as the Romans came in and started conquering everyone's shit, and then they became the dominant power in influence in Greece. But it still existed. In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius I would decree an end to all pagan cults and practices, which the Olympics ended up falling under as a religious festival for Zeus. His successor, Theodosius II, would even go to step further to have all Greek religious temples be destroyed in 426 AD. And that was kind of the end of that as it is. Now from here we have to go and skip ahead to more modern times. In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wendlock Olympian Society, Baron Pier Dick Coverton, who would aim to promote international peace and friendship through sports, was inspired to found the International Olympic Committee, the IOC. Bringing together representatives from around the world, the IOC would hold its first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, Greece. And oh boy, oh my god, when we were going to describing these, these early modern Olympic Games had a lot of problems. They were a verifiable shit show. Really. I'm not kidding about this. It was. You'll see what I mean. For the inaugural Games, 14 nations would send 241 men to compete. Everyone was European except for the Americans, and two-thirds of the competitors were Greek. Like literally, two-thirds of the people there were just Greek. Winners didn't even get a gold medal. It was a silver medal initially, and event runner-ups would receive a copper medal. So that's how that would work. On April 6, 1896, American James Connolly became the first Olympic medalist in more than 1500 years competing in the triple jump. The United States won the most gold medals, 11, while the host nation Greece won the most medals overall, 47. Wish, again, I guess what happened when two-thirds of the people that were there are Greek. The highlight for the Greeks was the marathon victory by their compatriot, Asperdean Lewis. The most successful competitor was the German wrestler in gymnast by the name of Karl Schumann, who won four events. Now at these first games, the events consisted of athletics, being track and field events, like the marathon, disc, and shot put, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, and wrestling, all fairly simple stuff. In the shooting event, obviously, the Americans would go in excel with the military pistols event being dominated by a pair of American brothers, John and Sumner Payne. They likely would have swept another shooting event, the free pistol event, except the Payne brothers decided to show sportsmanship and in order to not offend their hosts, they decided only one of them would take part in the event to give the others a chance. Sumner Payne easily did win the event. So someone else could take the second place, and by this point, the brothers didn't even bother taking part in the 25 meter pistol event, presumably because they were getting carried away by the crowd of Greek women that were swimming over them. This led a native Greek to win the event, but the Payne brothers had made their point. In the swimming event, they held the race in the open scene, and for the wrestling event, there was no weight classes, and some leg holds were allowed, but not a time limit. Spurdy and Lewis, more commonly referred to as Spiros, had his strength buoyed up at about 30 kilometers into the race by eating half an orange and shortly afterwards drinking a glass of cognac. So that happened. Two kilometers later, he would pass the leader, Edwin Flack, the Australian, already the winner of the 800 meter and 1500 meter double at the Olympics, was running his first marathon and had been in the lead at that point for approximately 8 kilometers. Flacted his best to hang on to the Greek, but finally collapsed at 37 kilometers and needed to be revived with a drink of egg and cognac. Louis would eventually enter the stadium seven minutes ahead of fellow Greek and national champion, Harlow's Vassalacos, crossing the finish at two hours and 58 minutes and 50 seconds to become the first ever Olympic marathon champion. The greatest controversy of the game, though, would be made by Greek runner, Spiridian Belacas, because apparently he got tired from eating a roadside fruit and decided to hitch a ride from a local farmer's carriage for part of the race. Which as you can imagine, this got him disqualified. But the real scandal was from the 1904 marathon in St. Louis, Missouri. Yeah, this is a fun one. With temperatures over 90 degrees and running on dirt roads that choked competitors, the heat and dehydration would take out half the field of 32 runners from even finishing the race. South African runner Lentau, a Spana tribesman, who also had no shoes, was chased nearly a mile off course by a pack of wild dogs. American Fred Loars wound up crossing the finish line first, but he had suffered from cramps early and actually rode 10 miles of the race in an automobile. When the car broke down, apparently he had given Loars enough time to get a second wind and he ran the last five miles of the race. His ruse was quickly discovered, though. Cuban runner Felix Carval, who showed up without shoes, got stomach cramps from an early Olympic runner's worst nightmare. Roadside fruit. Apparently after gorging himself on green apples, Carval got a bad stomach cramp and from there he was incapacitated. American Thomas Hicks was also suffering and his coaches decided to give him a cocktail, a brandy, sulfate and egg whites, and a dose of. Strychanine. I think that's how I pronounce that in the first place. Yeah, which for anyone who's familiar with what exactly this is, they may have well given him battery acid and Dr. Pepper. That's. it is some stuff. But whatever it is that he drank, apparently gave him wings because he won the event. This marathon was considered so exhausting at this time that it almost didn't return in 1908. It was just that much of a shit show. When it did, the circumstances would again prove to be goofy. Italian pastry chef, Dornado Pietre, would find himself in the lead running into the Olympic stadium for the final lap of the race. He was so exhausted and disoriented that he ran the wrong way around the track. After running into the stadium and race officials had to turn him around. Sumbling and with legs failing him, a newspaper reporter would later write, quote, "He staggered along the path like a man in a dream. His gate neither walked nor run, but simply a flounder." End quote. Yeah, Pietre would collapse three times, turning the last corner of the track. And fearful he might actually die on the spot, race officials panicked and carried him the last ten yards across the finish line on a stretcher. The Americans, whose Johnny Hayes had finished second, cried foul at the thought of a runner being carried across the finish line, yet winning the contest. Hayes ended up winning the race, but Pietre definitely won the hearts of fans as a sacrifice to the god of speed himself, Hermes. So that happened. The Italian runner lost the Olympic title, but he did win the sympathy of much of London. Sir Arthand Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, would raise money to present Pietre with a gold cigarette case and a check for more than 300 pounds as compensation. Queen Alexandra herself would present him with a replica of a winner's trophy, paid for her own expense. Since there was no time to get the award engraved, the monarch presented it with a handwritten card. It is absolutely wild, but the Olympic games were just getting started when it came to scandals and controversies, because there is so much more for this crap. In what will most definitely be an episode on its own, the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, or the side of one of the greatest robberies of all time, when American athlete Jim Thorpe won gold medals in the DeCathalon and the Pentathlon. Only to have both medals stripped away for having played two-thirds of a minor league baseball game for the next to nothing of a few years prior, breaking the Olympic rule on amateur competitors only at the time. Yes, because he had played a few games in a minor league baseball league before, that meant that he technically was a professional athlete, and so he was disqualified. Yeah. In solidarity with Thorpe, silver medalist Hugo Weislender would refuse to accept the medals when they were offered to him, stating that it was quite clear that Thorpe was, in fact, the world's greatest athlete that year. And you know what? The committee listened. Eventually, it took a whopping 70 years, 70, for the IOC to correct this injustice and award Thorpe's medals to his children in 1983. Thirty years after he'd actually died. Yeah. It should be noted that Jim Thorpe at this time, between 1900 and 1920, was one of the greatest all-around athletes the world had ever seen, and his exploits would play like his exploits of playing college football at Carlisle School basically helped to get the NFL started in his wild. But another interesting fact is that the winning medal has only ever been made entirely out of gold for three Olympic games. That's it. And those games would be 1904, 1908, and 1912, that's it. These days, the medals are an alloy composed mostly of silver with a slight gold plating on the outside. It's actually strictly enforced rule by this point. Gold medals must be at least 92.5% silver and then plated with gold. That is just the rule of it because, quite frankly, with the issues that people were having with gold and how expensive it was. There's no way, really, reasonably, that the games expand and expand and expand, that they would be able to do this, especially these gold drastically increases in price. But that's besides the point for medals. But besides the whole issue with medals, there's also been a time's problem with the games themselves. The games have been suspended during times of great turmoil, such as in 1916, when the games were suspended because of a little thing called World War I. They were supposed to be held in Berlin, but again, Germany, Central Powers, not exactly going to happen. In 1924, the first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France. Meanwhile, war again would cause the games to be cancelled again in 1940 because, yeah, the Winter Games were supposed to be held in Germany. That didn't happen because in 1940, in 1942. In 1944, the games were initially supposed to be held in Tokyo, but again, World War II and Japan declaring war on everyone. So those were postponed and then the venue was changed to Helsinki, Finland, before being cancelled entirely. In 1944, the Winter Games would have been held in Cortina, the Embezzle, Italy, and if you've watched the current games occurring now, you'll notice that they're taking place in two cities, Milan and Cortina Denbezzle. This is the reason why, because Italy was to have hosted the Winter Games 80 years ago. The same thing occurred with the summer games that year. London was supposed to host the summer games in 1944, but it didn't get the chance to until 1948 with the country still rebuilding from the rubble of war. It wouldn't properly get to host the games again here until the summer of 2012. The next time the games were affected by worldwide events was actually a lot later because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This caused the summer of 2020 games to be postponed for over a year, but they were still able to be held. If it was any other country but Japan, they probably would have cancelled the games, to be honest. But speaking of cancellations and changes and other things like that, the biggest change for the scheduled pattern of the games would take place in 1992, this being when Barcelona would host the summer games, only for the Winter Olympics to then leap ahead by two years, starting in 1994 with the Winter Olympics being held in Lillehammer. Norway. Unfortunately for the citizens of Lillehammer, they didn't expect hundreds of thousands of condoms to basically clog up their entire city sewer system for weeks. I'm not kidding about that. This is due to the fact that the Olympians are active. We will say this here because again, this is one of the things my wife has talked about when describing what should be a very obvious thing. You take a collection of arguably the, we're going to say most beautiful, but physically fit people more likely, physically fit people on earth and put them all to a small area where their hormones are perhaps raging. Yeah, this is potentially going to lead to some issues. It's basically bound to happen. Olympic level, partying and fun times that demolish unprepared sewer systems and hotel toilets are a given, I guess. Yeah. At the 2000 summer games in Sydney, Australia, athletes were depleting the 50,000 strong condom cash so quickly that the manufacturer Ensel would ship an additional 20,000 to the village several days before the closing ceremony. And I quote for this, judging by the demand, the metal tally is certainly rising both in and out of the sporting arena. And quote, this being something coming from an Ensel spokesperson, he also revealed that products with peppermint green studs and strawberry ribbing were especially hot commodities apparently and that certain athletes had asked for larger sizes. Derrick's would take over his supplier for the 2004 Athens Olympics, providing a staggering 130,000 condoms and 30,000 lubricant packets to smooth the performance of the world's elite sports people in the arena under the covers. This is a direct statement from them. That condom count would hover around 100,000 until 2016 when Rio de Janeiro, so we're talking Brazil here, as one could probably expect, would break all records by distributing at least a whopping 450,000 condoms, 100,000 of which were female condoms, a first in Olympic history. And while the details continue to vary from games to games, the reason for the giveaway is the same as it's pretty much always been. Words do it, please do it, even the world-class athletes performing your superhuman feats, I'll do it. Obviously, and they're going to do it. So let's make sure they do it safely. This year in Milan, you may have seen the headlines already here that they ran out of the initial 10,000 condoms that were distributed in like the first three days. So that happened. So yes, that is an absolutely fun time and truly something that is an Olympic feat, I guess, you could probably say, and speaking of which, there have been many stories of incredible talent at the Olympic games, all throughout its history, from Nadia, Comunicci, scoring seven perfect tens at the 1976 Olympics, to the 1996 American Dream Women's Gymnastics team that was saved by Carrie Strug landing a vault with an already broken ankle, because that was the thing that happened. Or the 1988 Calgary Olympics blessed by the appearance of the Jamaican Bob sledding team, which is now, for many people, a fan favorite. And perhaps Michael Phelps breaking the all-time record for Olympic gold medals with 23 gold medals, three silver, and two bronze medals, winning the last gold by a single fingertips length and a hundredth of a second. Hell, Bob Beeman's 1968 long jump record is still standing to this day, and the things he's saying both has accomplished on the track are nothing short of superhuman. The point is, the Olympic games are messy and complicated, just like the rest of life is. When you give them a chance, the nations of the world can really show you just what they're made of, and their stories stay with us for decades. And so I guess here on that note, if you're here for some assorted facts, well, I guess that's where we're right now. There is really no place in the overall narrative to really insert a number of these. So I guess we just kind of had to lump them in here at the end when actually talking about this. So yeah, some quick, fun fact, weird stuff about the Olympics. I begin, painters, sculptors, architects, writers, and musicians, all used to be able to compete for medals in the modern Olympics. That was a thing with art, a very subjective thing, being in a Olympic sport somehow. We're not kidding. And all of this was between 1912 and 1948, after which presumably people realized like, oh, well, you can't really do art as a sport because it's so subjective and you're going to have a lot of controversy. But each of these separate arts was considered their own sport with multiple events for various arts. They were scrapped after the 1948 games when the number of artists entering had declined. So it was literally more of an issue of the number of artists trying to get in versus people realizing how the overall thing is in my personal opinion, kind of stupid. Anyway, more facts in a rapid order regarding women. Though the first year that the Olympics had women compete in every single sport was the year 2000 at the Sydney Olympics, it actually wasn't until the London 2012 games when every participating country also sent a female athlete, because there would be countries that just literally never sent any women to compete. Along with this, plenty of events have been scrapped as Olympic sports, but perhaps none are more iconic than Tug of War. Joining it on the list of discontinued events is pigeon racing, croquet, and rope climbing. You would not have known this fun Olympic fact otherwise. Moving on from that, regarding location, the games were actually not held in South America until Rio in 2016, that was the first time that it actually happened. The 1960 Olympics in Rome were the first games to make it to TV screens around the world. The number of viewers would break records of the time, with viewership peaking at 150,000, quite a lot considering how many places didn't have TVs. Plenty of countries have never won a single medal at any Olympics ever. Bangladesh is the country with the highest population and still has no medal whatsoever. 65 countries have never won a single Olympic medal. Grace, Switzerland, Great Britain, Australia, and France are the only countries to have sent an athlete to compete in every summer Olympics. Along with that, the most expensive summer games were Beijing in 2008, which cost an estimated $52.7 billion. Yeah, that is the game where people also realized just how lopsided everything could be and how little profit a country actually made from posting in Olympics. Because one of the draws that people have said about the Olympics before is, "Oh man, look, it brings in so many tourists. We do so much business. The economy grows during this time." Yeah, but generally speaking, the Olympics is a massive money drain because it cost them $52.7 billion, but it only generated an estimated $3.6 billion in revenue. Yeah, meaning they lost almost $50 billion in just waste making it that big of a show. Meanwhile, in terms of overall expense, the 2014 Sochi Winter Games were in fact the most expensive games ever costing around $59.7 billion. It's just really expensive. Generally speaking, this is why every time a new Olympics is being chosen, like for a host country, people get angry now that they don't want the Olympics to come to their country because it's a waste of taxpayer dollars for them and simultaneously, it just makes life a living hell for people who are actually in that city. This is a whole thing. With four summer and four winter games under its belt, the United States actually leads the world in terms of hosting the Olympics the most. Hosting years include 1904, 1932, 1984, 1996, 1932, 1960, 1980, 2002, etc. In 2028, the US will host its ninth Olympic Games in Los Angeles, so that's going to happen. The US actually holds the top spot at the Olympics with more than 3,000 total medals once since the modern games began. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom and China all fall of the United States for all time wins. As far as things are concerned, that is likely how it is that things are going to continue for a while longer until something else happens. Really, I don't really know where else it is that I was supposed to go from here, but we are kind of at the end. Yeah, if you want to be impressed by bodies in their prime, then check out our Patreon where we're going to be talking about all kinds of things as we end the Vietnam series and prepare for the next series, marking the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. So yeah, we're going to be doing an entire series on that, which is going to be a fun time. Take care, my friends. Thank you so much for listening. We're going to be going and jumping now into the Patreon segment, which I'm going to need to go in on to Patreon and figure out what question is that you all have asked. If you want for your things to be answered directly on here and for me to just talk about them, then you should go on over and subscribe on Patreon. And from that, we'll take your questions, we'll take your things, we'll insert them into segments here at the end. And in general, have a good time. I really didn't know where else to go with this, considering that we're doing this on video. And at this point, I'm kind of just rambling. Yeah, we're going to get a lot better at this. I do promise. We're going to get a lot better at this as time goes on. This is just the first time I've had to do this as a recorded video section for the show. It's different. Yeah. Anyway, see you all my friends. Thank you very much for watching or listening. And we'll see you next time. Goodbye, everyone.