Olympics in Full Swing
The Games are on in Rio de Janeiro this summer, and already the US has pulled in 52 medals (21 gold). Legendary swimmer Michael Phelps, who looks like the spawn of Abe Vigoda and Bea Arthur after being born in a vat of hydrochloric acid, won his 22nd gold medal Thursday night, bringing a smile to his probably-unsatisfied, and strangely attractive, wife. But through the commercialization of the Olympic Games (sponsored by McDonald’s!) and all the drama surrounding abuse of illicit substances and country rivalries, we here at N3 have decided to focus on remembering the games for what they used to be by harkening back to events no longer sponsored by the Olympic committee.
The first recorded instances of the Olympic Games date as far back as 776 B.C., and many of the modern sports didn’t exist. The ancient Greeks and Romans were far less politically correct, commercialized, and giant pussies than humans in recent generations. They had visceral events like the shark race, where contestants were thrown into a pool of hungry hammerhead sharks with fresh mackerel tied to their torsos. The winners were chosen by being the first three swimmers to beat the shark to the edge of the pool.
The shotput was another event that displayed a certain barbarism in ancient Greece, as gladiators hurled severed heads of cheating spouses filled with molten lead. Even the hurdle event was different, as runners had to leap over mounds of poisonous snakes or pits filled with hungry lions instead of the Olympic Games standardized hurdles.
As the years went on, the Olympic Games focused more and more on modernization by adding events like Women’s Volleyball and Water Polo, but several times the Games were used as a test bed for new events.
In 1896, the first Olympic Games of the modern era, the Greeks in Athens introduced a variation of “korfball” (a basketball-like sport), where men with testicular elephantiasis (more commonly referred to as elephantitis) bounced around on their swollen sacks like a Hoppity-Hip while throwing leather balls into a centralized basket. They also brought on the wildly popular dwarf tossing event, where men and women hurled lucky dwarves and unfortunate looking children as far as they could into an active volcano. Both events were canceled the very next season.
In the 1912 Summer Games held in Stockholm, Sweden, Olympians attempted the “Men’s Cock Vaulting.” Essentially a modified Pole Vault, the Cock Vault was a man vaulting over a raised pole, but they were naked, erect, and slathered in lubrication. As they vaulted over the pole, they had to position themselves to land in the vagina of a nude, spread-eagled woman on the other side. The Cock Vault was dismissed from the Games in 1964, when held in Japan, for fear that too many well-hung members from other countries might put to shame the home teams and their diminutive members. The “Erectile Tug-of-War” event, also introduced that year, lasted three seasons.
The most embarrassing event, which was introduced and canceled the same season, happened in the Games of 1996, held in Atlanta, Georgia. Americans introduced the “Let’s Start a Race Riot” event, where minorities from large nations triggered street riots after being oppressed. Winners were determined by several categories, including survival, number of injuries, and amounts of loot acquired. The event was canceled when the committee discovered white people won exactly zero medals.
Since 1896, 17 Olympic events have been introduced and canceled. There are 38 different categories currently scheduled.