By Tim Gihring //
The 2024 Summer Olympics opens in Paris on July 26 with thirty-two sports, including some newish events like surfing, skateboarding, and breaking (aka breakdancing). The Games evolve. When Paris hosted in 1900, poodle clipping was a trial event (of course)—groom the most poodles in two hours. (It didn’t catch on, c’est la vie.) Who knows what will be added next, but here we share some great images of bonafide Olympic sports from Mia’s collection—along with a few suggestions of our own. Not everyone can pole vault, after all, or do whatever one does on parallel bars. Enjoy.
Badminton
The woman with a shuttlecock and racket in Albert Joseph Moore’s painting (Badminton, circa 1868–70) is clad in classical Greek garb, inspired by the artist’s study of the Elgin Marbles. Though badminton is in fact a sport with ancient origins, here it would seem to be played mostly for style points.
Rowing
Eadweard Muybridge is famous for his early “animal locomotion” studies, including this one from 1887 of a rower. In some ways, there’s less to see than you might expect, which is perhaps the sign of a good rower—don’t move so much, and don’t rock the boat.
© Kawakami Sumio
© Mark Sfirri
Baseball
Japan’s enthusiasm for baseball goes back way before Shohei Ohtani, of course, as Kawakami Sumio’s incredibly charming print from 1936 demonstrates. Village children play in the smallest of clearings without gloves or bases and with a few spectators right in the field of play. What more do you need?
Baseball isn’t in the Olympics this year, having been struck out by the French—even though it made its trial debut (like poodle clipping) at the Paris Games in 1900. Somehow a rack of comically misshapen bats—made and photographed by Mark Sfirri and titled Rejects from the Bat Factory—captures the feeling. In fact, baseball has only been accepted at the Games a dozen times.
© The Estate of Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Diving
An elegant photo of an elegant sport, Edward Steichen’s image of Olympic diver Katherine Rawls is a modernist study in right angles. Rawls was a prodigy, capturing a silver medal at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles when she was 15. Here, she seems poised for greatness, a statuesque figure about to take the plunge.
Boxing
Boxing at the Olympics is a little different than the rough-and-rowdy bouts of the sort captured in this well-known image from 1917 by George Bellows, called A Stag at Sharkey’s. Here, you can almost smell the sweat and blood, and the prize might be nothing more than bragging rights at the bar.
Sumo Wrestling
Japan keeps pushing for sumo to join the Olympics, and the Olympics keeps pushing back. People know a national advantage when they see one, although the best sumo wrestlers these days are often from Mongolia or Russia or Egypt. The fellow in this 1814 print is Shirataki Saijirō, who was 14 at the time and already 190 pounds. He went on to appear in only one tournament, however, where he—like his sport in its quest for Olympic recognition—lost all the bouts.
Arm Wrestling
Arm wrestling also has yet to make its Olympic debut, much less with combatants like these. But here’s what it might look like, in an image inspired by Japanese folklore and carved into a netsuke, a toggle for securing the silken cords of a kimono. The toad is holding its own against a kappa, or boy of the river, a kind of water sprite that can take on the appearance of a turtle, among other animals.
Walking While Reading
If you’ve ever tried this, you know it’s harder than it looks—exercising, as it does, the mind and the body. As Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot seems to suggest in his 1868 painting, it takes a good deal of concentration—and a great book—to ignore even the beautiful scenery around you.
Sitting Still
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is doing nothing at all. Only twenty-four adherents to Jainism have managed to become a Jina, a perfected being who has gained release from the world by forgoing all violence and material possessions. Here, in a display of absolute stillness, a statue reflects the difficulty of what is required, as even physical or mental action is considered a form of material attachment and must be avoided. Let’s see an Olympian try that.