The Olympics has been obsessed with sex for centuries

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The history of the Olympics is full of nonsensical—and deeply invasive—sex confirmation tests

By Rose Eveleth

From 1968 to 1999 every single woman who competed in the Olympics, at every single event, had to take a chromosome test to verify that they were female. If they passed, they got a little card — a “certificate of femininity” — that verified that they were female. They had to bring that card to every event before they could compete.

But the event’s obsession with sex goes even further back than that. From the time that women first started competing in big athletic events, people expressed concern that they might hurt themselves in the process. From acting like runners being out of breath was a sign of weakness—even if they were wearing corsets while they competed—to musing that a female athlete might spontaneously turn herself into a man, there was a lot of pearl clutching.

You can hear more about the “balance theory” of sex determination that made folks think this might be possible—and that was arguably, at least in some ways, closer to the true nature of biological sex than the strict binaries we hear about today. And you can learn more about the past, present and future of “gender verification tests” on Tested, a new podcast from CBC and NPR’s Embedded.

FACT: Leeches can leap.

By Rachel Feltman

In 2017, a conservation biologist on her first major field research trip took a casual cell phone video of a leaping leech. This turned out to be a very big deal. Whether or not leeches can jump has been a subject of fierce debate since at least the 19th century. Like, apparently it’s one of the most contentious things about leeches, among leech people.

Her quest to confirm this unsettling behavior takes us on a tale full of twists and turns (mainly from airborne leeches) and hinges on one crucial question: what constitutes a jump, exactly?

P.S.- Here’s how to avoid getting bitten by a leech. 🙂

FACT: The original Olympic shoe controversy was all about tug-of-war

By Claire Maldarelli

We’ve talked about some serious Olympic weirdness on Weirdest Thing before, but this week I’m sharing one of the wildest stories from sports history I’ve ever found. It all goes back to when tug-of-war briefly joined the elite crew of Olympic events.

In 1908, with the games held in London, it’s no surprise that Londoners swept the competition. After all, only amateur athletes were allowed to participate in the games at the time. The tug-of-war got absolutely swept by local law enforcement: The City of London Police formed a team that wound up getting gold, with the Metropolitan Police winning the silver medal and the Liverpool Police coming in third.

But some controversy arose about that bronze medal. Apparently, the Liverpool Police “… were wearing enormous shoes, so heavy in fact that it was only with great effort that they could lift their feet from the ground.” The rules forbade ”prepared boots or shoes with any protruding nails,” and American competitors reportedly called foul. But the Liverpoolians were cleared to continue with the competition. Later, they offered to have a barefoot rematch, and the Americans declined.

Here’s a fun video of a women’s tug-of-war competition in 1927—several years after the sport got pruned from the Olympic games, along with many others.