New Olympic sport: Water balloon tossing!

Not really, but it wouldn't be a shock.

We see some pretty silly competitions in Olympics events. Frankly, my hide would be chapped if I had booked a flight to London to learn that ping-pong was the only event I could get a ticket to see.

But it could be worse. Consider the list of some competitions that were actually Olympic sports at one time:

Tug-of-war was an event for eight-man teams at five Olympics, 1900, '04, '08, '12 and '20. A Vince McMahon-hosted international battle royal would probably be more to our liking today.

Poodle clipping. You can't make this stuff up. In the 1900 summer games some 6,000 spectators assembled at a park in western Paris to breathlessly watch 128 competitors race to trim the most poodles in a two hour period. The gold medalist was a French woman named Avril Lafoule, who snipped 17 dogs. Sadly, she wasn't invited back four years later because the event was, uh, cut.

Firefighting, another trial event in 1900, had both amateur and professional divisions. Details of the specifics are a bit fuzzy but you have to assume folks weren't as anal about air pollution back then. The event was flambéed thereafter.

Delivery van driving. This was a race through the streets of Paris. Yes, in delivery vans. I should mention that the 1900 games ran concurrently with the World Fair which was also going on in Paris at the time. It gave the unhappy customers who couldn't get a ticket to watch poodle clipping something else to do.

Roque. Okay. We know it now as croquet. This thrill-packed event was held only once, 1904 in St. Louis but Americans won all the medals! Possibly because no other country competed.

Motor boating first appeared in those wacky 1900 Parisian games but the thrill was gone after 1908. Apparently the big problem was that nobody but the contestants themselves could see what was going on. Oh, and nobody cared.

Swimming obstacle race. Say, how many events did they have in 1900? Did anybody run or jump? Anyway, this actually sounds pretty exciting. Contestants had to swim against the current of the Seine River, climb over some poles, scramble across the top of a row of boats and swim under another row of boats. Hey, wait a minute. That's the reality TV show called Wipe Out!

Live pigeon shooting. Yep. Paris, 1900 and never thereafter. Imagine the thrill for the children, watching clumps of bloodied feathers tumble from the sky! Still, it must have made for a plethora of inexpensive squab daily specials on Parisian restaurant menus that summer.

So, when you find yourself in front of the TV watching pretty girls bouncing around waving a ribbon or a bunch of guys in Spandex ® shooting bb-guns and you think, "This is stupid," remember the great stuff you missed.

© 2012, Dave Williams. All rights reserved.