Speed, athletic prowess, and grit are all markers of Olympic competitions, inspiring the world to watch as the best compete for the gold. But the BBC digs up a chestnut from the days of yore that's been called the "lamest, weirdest, and most boring Olympic sport of all time" for highlighting the exact opposite. The "plunge for distance" was a swimming competition that even in its heyday was a head-scratcher to watch.
- How to: In a nutshell, it involved a casual dive into water. After the swimmer surfaced, they floated facedown, arms stretched forward, for about a minute without moving a muscle. The winner was chosen for traveling the longest distance in either 60 seconds or before surfacing for breath.
- One gold: The event was featured in one Olympics—the 1904 Games in St. Louis, where American William Paul Dickey won with a distance of 62 feet, 6 inches, per Time.
With little action or noticeable skill involved, distance plunging became a bit of a punchline, mocked as "competitive floating." It didn't help that muscle, which is heavier than fat, was a disadvantage in the sport. "The stylish-stout chaps who go in for this strenuous event merely throw themselves heavily in the water and float along like icebergs in the ship lanes," a New York Times writer said of the sport in 1930. Four years after making its Olympic debut, the plunge for distance was eliminated from the Olympic program in 1908. Today, some argue there may have been more strategy to the sport than previously thought. Read the full story over at the BBC. (The Paris Olympics is off to rocky start in one area: food.)
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