Which of the following was once an Olympic event?

The last “original” Olympics were held in 393 CE, but the games made a triumphant return about 1,500 years later, when Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) brought 34 countries together for the first “modern” Olympics, which was held in Athens in 1896.

The athletes competed in 43 events covering athletics (track and field), cycling, swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, wrestling, fencing, shooting, and tennis. Many of the those sports are still part of the Olympics today. However, beginning in 1900, the event selection started to get a little more “creative”, with new events like tug of war and sailing being added.

Successive Olympics added more and more diverse events, and the 1912 games in Stockholm brought a distinct innovation that Bardon de Coubertin had always wanted to add: art competitions.

From 1912 to 1948, the Olympics issued medals across five different artistic fields: Literature, Music, Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture. Since arts competitors were asked to provide designs that linked art with sport, it’s not surprising that Swiss architects Eugène-Édouard Monod (1871-1929) and Alphonse Laverriére (1872-1953) won the first Olympic gold medal for architecture, for a project titled ‘Building Plan of a Modern Stadium.’

The arts competitions were scrapped after 1948, allegedly because too many professionals were entering, violating the avowed Olympic spirit of amateurism.