#17 Recognising 125 years of Olympic progress

On Pierre de Coubertin, equality, representation, and less known Olympics facts.

Jul 30, 2021

“The important thing in life is not the triumph but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.”

A lot has changed since the 1896 Athens Summer Olympics, the first international Olympic Games held in modern history. For this we have to thank the French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, who was behind reviving the Games on a four-yearly, international basis.

Coubertin was a keen sportsman and a firm believer that sport was the key to developing mental energy. He came up with the five-ring Olympic symbol, representing the “five parts of the world,” the Olympic Charter and protocol, the athletes’ oath, as well as the main components of the Games opening and closing ceremonies.

Like many visionaries, Coubertin had his blind spots, especially regarding women’s participation in sports:

“An Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper.”

Needless to say, women are badass and don’t need a man telling them what to do. This was the case for a Greek woman named Stamati Revithi, who was refused entry to the marathon in 1896, yet ran by herself the following day. As officials couldn’t remember her name, they called her Melpomene, after the Greek muse of tragedy. It would take nearly 100 years before women were finally allowed to run an Olympic marathon race, at Los Angeles, in 1984.

In 1900, women were also allowed to compete for the first time, yet their participation was limited to tennis and golf, as a result of pressure put on the IOC by national sporting bodies and federations. It was barely in the 2012 London Olympics where every participating nation had women athletes in their contingent. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics is the most gender equal yet with female participation – 49 percent (up from 45 percent at the 2016 Rio Olympics), a nearly even split with the men.

There is always room for improvement in terms of representation but – perhaps a step in the right direction, although I’d take it with a pinch of salt – is the IOC’s decision to establish the Refugee Olympic Team in the summer of 2015. Since the first participation in Rio, the Refugee Olympic Team has now almost tripled in size and consists of 29 athletes from a host of countries. Whilst the idea of a Refugee Emergency Fund to help international aid agencies integrate refugees in sport sounds noble and a feel-good story, it shouldn’t cloud the deeper reasons why the athletes are there: a global migrant and refugee crisis. Nonetheless, it’s not all doom and gloom, as Claude Marshall, a volunteer consultant at UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said for SB Nation:

“Sport, by the way, it’s not the solution to all of mankind’s problems. But in a refugee setting when you’ve got a lot of kids – it makes the difference between a miserable life and a halfway reasonable life.”

**
The 1896 Olympics started with nine sports, including cycling, fencing, gymnastics, weight lifting, and wrestling. However, there are a few bizarre ‘sports’ that were part of the competition in the early editions, such as the live pigeon shooting or running deer shooting. The former was a one-time only event in the 1900 Paris Olympics where 300 birds were killed. Somehow, an official report of the Games found this sport “très aristocratique.” Thankfully, the latter didn’t involve live deer. Apparently they used cutouts of deer with three concentric circle targets?! Anyhow, some other sports that are no longer part of the Olympics, but could potentially be reintroduced (one can only hope!), are solo synchronized swimming, tug of war, rope climbing, hot air ballooning, dueling pistol, and tandem bicycle.

Meanwhile, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has made up for this by introducing four new sports – karate, skateboarding, surfing, and sport climbing. On this note, skateboarder Momiji Nishiya of Japan, 13, became one of the youngest gold medal winners ever at the Olympic Games. The youngest Olympian in the modern era though is Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras, who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics at the age of 10.

As for one of the most famous Olympian swimmer, forget Michael Phelps. It’s actually Tarzan. Yes, Tarzan, the Ape Man. Before making his big-screen debut as Tarzan, Johnny Weissmulle was crowned Olympic champion in the 400m freestyle, the 100m freestyle and the 4x200m freestyle relay with the USA at the 1924 Paris Olympics. After winning two more golds four years later in Amsterdam (100 m and 4x200m), Weissmulle remained the only five-time Olympic swimming gold medallist until Mark Spitz in 1972.

**

The history (and the evolution) of the Olympics is undoubtedly fascinating, whether you’re a sports fan or not. The bar is set higher and higher every time. The 2020 Tokyo Games have proved this on the sustainability aspect too. It is a first in the history of the Olympics for medals to be made of recycled materials. Under the “Tokyo 2020 Medal Project”, authorities collected used small electronic devices, mostly smartphones and laptops, from the people of Japan, which were then used in the creation of the approximately 5,000 medals.

**
If you’re keen on Olympics – good news! I’ve prepared some more content in the recommendations section! That, of course, besides the regular portion of literary news and digital trends.

You may also want to check out issue #10 when I wrote about Nadia Comăneci and the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

That’s it for today. More food for thought coming next Friday!

Happy reading, happy learning,

Teodora x

✨ Are you enjoying The Culture Worm so far? Consider clicking on the 💜 button at the very end of the newsletter, so I know I’m doing a good job. You can also spread the word on your social channels or share it with someone who might enjoy this just as much as you do! ✨

Share The Culture Worm

Are you reading this on Substack? Sign up and don’t miss out on any issue! 👇

🥁 📚 The latest in the literary world

Time to start placing your bets because the 2021 Booker Prize longlist has been announced! 🎉 Five previously longlisted authors, including Booker and Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, have made this year’s Booker longlist, but no authors from the literary superpower Ireland – no Sally Rooney I’m afraid! That being said, we’ve been spoiled for choice with some fantastic releases to choose from. 🙌 Which ones are going to be on your TBR? 👀
The Polari Prizes, the UK’s only book awards for LGBTQ+ literature, have also announced their 2021 shortlists! 🥳 Booker winner Douglas Stuart and Paul Mendez have both been nominated. 👏 Get your outfits ready because we’ll find out the winner at an in-person event (yay!) at the Southbank Centre on October, 30. 💃 🕺
On my radar: “The Women of Troy” by Pat Barker. 📜 Her last novel, “The Silence of the Girls,” began the story of Briseis, the forgotten woman at the heart of one of the most famous war epics ever told. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the Gordon Burn Prize, and won an Independent Bookshop Award 2019. The Women of Troy continues that story. The book is available to pre-order and is out in the world on August, 26.
Octavia Butler’s science fiction book “Parable of the Sower” will be adapted into a feature film, and A24 won the rights for it. Given the 1993 novel is set in a dystopian future plagued by climate disasters like drought and rising seas, this sounds like a pretty timely move. 🌊 ⚡ 😬
BONUS: This literary snobbery has made me quite hungry. Why don’t you try some gingerbread?😋 It’s Beatrix Potter’s official recipe, the beloved Peter Rabbit creator, who was born this week (July, 28) in 1866. 🐇

🎧 📰 👀 My media diet this week

Part of my current job at The New Humanitarian is to promote these brilliant humanitarian stories in regions that are often forgotten, under-reported, misunderstood or ignored. What I found particularly insightful in this week’s coverage is this investigation on Burkinabé women displaced by conflict being asked for sex to get on government food aid lists, as well as the varying impacts of Syria’s economic implosion explained using graphs. 💡📈
This week, my media diet involved reading exclusively about the Olympics (😵‍💫), so here’s a selection of the articles I enjoyed: TIME – Why athles are running away from the Olympic Refugee Team? | An interview from Al Jazeera with a DRC refugee hoping to inspire millions at the Olympics 🏅| A 2016 feature from the New Yorker about why Simone Biles is the best gymnast in the world 🏆 | Quartz – The world has 193 countries, so why are there 205 teams in the Olympics? 🌍

📌 Random news in brief

Pretty tough nowadays to stand out from the crowd in a competitive job market. Have you tried TikTok Resumes? Ehm… you’re welcome?! 🤔
This app wants you to consent before having sex. A team of Danish developers released iConsent, which allows users to send a request for consent via their phone to a potential partner, who can then accept or reject the encounter. 💕
Another app (!) but for snake emergencies. 🐍 Developers in India have pioneered a series of apps that provide information on various snake species, first aid advice, as well as a search facility to find the nearest hospital that treats these bites. 🏥 🚑 Up to138,000 people around the world die from snakebites each year, and about three times that number are left with permanent disabilities. 😵
This one’s made me rather sad, as it’s been an integral part of my childhood. 😢Arthur, the popular children’s show, comes to an end after 25 years on screen. After The Simpsons, it is the longest-running animated show in US history.

Before we say goodbye… 🥺

If you liked this issue of the newsletter, please click on the 💜 button, so I know I’m doing a good job. There’s always the option to leave a comment with your feedback. I promise I’ll always reply!

The Culture Worm