Fact Check: Summer Olympics Events in 1900 Included Cannon Shooting, Firefighting and Lifesaving?

Claim:

Competitive events at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris included cannon shooting, firefighting, lifesaving and angling.

Rating:

False ( About this rating? )

On July 15, 2024, a Reddit user made a post ( archived ) to the r/todayilearned subreddit reading, "TIL that the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris featured cannon shooting, firefighting, lifesaving and angling." The post, which linked to the Wikipedia page for the 1900 Summer Olympics, had received around 1,400 upvotes at the time of this writing.

Reddit user u/Johannes_P

This was not the first time claims about unusual events at the 1900 Summer Olympics circulated online. In April 2020, the official account of the BBC television program Quite Interesting made an X post similarly claiming that year's Games included "kite flying, firefighting and competitive lifesaving."

The truth is a little more complicated. Competitions in cannon shooting, lifesaving, firefighting (which was considered a type of lifesaving), and angling did take place in Paris during the same period of time in which the 1900 Summer Olympics occurred. However, none of these sports are included in the list of that year's events as it currently appears on the official Olympics website, which is maintained by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Furthermore, Olympic historians generally agree that none of the events listed above should be considered official Olympic competitions because they all failed to meet necessary criteria such as having an international scope or being limited to amateur participants. Rather than official events, these competitions were best understood either as early versions of demonstration sports or as non-Olympic events organized as part of the broader 1900 Paris Exposition , of which the 1900 Summer Olympics was merely one component.

Because neither the IOC nor mainstream Olympic historians currently recognize cannon shooting, lifesaving, firefighting, or angling to have been official Olympic events in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, we have rated this claim as False.

The "Chaotic" 1900 Summer Olympics

Olympic historian Bill Mallon opens his 1998 book "The 1900 Olympic Games" by noting that "the 1900 Olympic Games are perhaps the most unusual Olympics in modern history." Elsewhere in the book, Mallon describes that year's games as "poorly organized, almost chaotic" and the result of "dismal organization."

The IOC's official page for the 1900 Summer Olympics has a similar tone, explaining,

The organisers spread the competitions over five months and under-promoted their Olympic status to such an extent that many athletes never knew they had actually participated in the Olympic Games.

Two primary factors can help to explain this chaos.

First, the 1900 Summer Olympics were only the second modern games to be held (the first were the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens). This meant that there was very little in the way of precedent to ensure the games went smoothly.

Plans for the games hit a major snag in late 1898, when a French national sporting organization, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA), demanded sole authority over the event. IOC president Pierre de Coubertin , who happened to be a member of the USFSA, was forced to resign from the planning committee due to political pressure. Subsequently the planning committee, as Mallon explains in his book, was replaced largely by French politicians who had no previous Olympic experience and were more interested in boosting France than in fostering a spirit of friendly international competition.

A second, and perhaps more important, reason for the chaotic and confusing organization was that the 1900 Summer Olympics was not a standalone event. Instead, it was folded into the much larger and longer 1900 Paris Exposition, which ran from April to November of that year.

The exposition, also commonly known as the Exposition Universelle, was a world's fair , a months-long international festival intended to highlight achievements in industry, science, and culture. Importantly, the exposition included many athletic competitions that did not fall under the Olympic umbrella.

In combination with the lack of experience of many of the organizers, the decision to hold the 1900 Summer Olympics as part of the 1900 Paris Exposition led to numerous logistical problems and points of confusion that raised eyebrows even at the time. One competitor, the Australian sprinter Stanley Rowley , is reported by multiple sources to have complained,

To treat these events as world's championships would be really an insult to the important events they are supposed to be. They are treated by most of the competitors as a huge joke and when it comes to that one has come all this way from Australia to compete in them, it really seems ridiculous.

Unusual Events

One notoriously chaotic aspect of the organization of the 1900 Summer Olympics was the lack of clarity surrounding which of the many sporting events held between May and October 1900 were official Olympic events and which were simply athletic exhibits organized as part of the broader 1900 Paris Exposition.

Regardless of their official status, events in cannon shooting, lifesaving, firefighting, and angling did take place in Paris in the summer of 1900, and information about them can be found alongside information about uncontroversially official Olympic sports, such as fencing or track and field, in publications from the era.

One such publication is the French-language "Concours internationaux d'exercices physiques et de sports," which in English is commonly referred to as the "Official Report of the 1900 Olympics." Another major source is La Vie au Grand Air, a French weekly magazine that for much of 1900 was dedicated to covering the athletic events of the 1900 Paris Exposition and the 1900 Summer Olympics.

In terms of modern sources, Mallon's book on the 1900 Olympics contains much useful information, as does Olympedia , an online database maintained by an independent group of Olympic historians.

Here's what we were able to find about the sports listed in the July 15, 2024, Reddit post.

Cannon-shooting competitions organized by the Parisian Society for Cannon Shooting took place in Vincennes, a suburb of Paris, from July 29 to Aug. 4, 1900. As explained in the May 6, 1900, issue of La Vie au Grand Air, these competitions had different divisions for French and international participants. With the exception of one event open to the general public, the cannon-shooting competitions were also limited to active and reserve armed forces members. The awards for the cannon-shooting competitions consisted of cash prizes, not medals.

Two types of event classified as "lifesaving" ("sauvetage" in French) took place over the summer of 1900. First, a military first aid demonstration was held at the Municipal Velodrome in Vincennes on July 8, 1900. Next, a series of water-based rescue competitions were held on the Seine from July 21 to 23. All the participants in these events were French. As with cannon shooting, no medals were awarded for these events.

Firefighting, which was technically classified as a third type of lifesaving in the "Official Report of the 1900 Olympics" and in the May 6, 1900, issue of La Vie au Grand Air, was contested in a series of four events that ran from Aug. 13 to 19, 1900. One of these events was limited to French nationals and one was limited to British nationals. Of the other two, which were nominally open to international teams, one was limited to professional firefighters and the other to volunteer firefighters. Again, no medals were awarded.

As for angling, a line-fishing competition took place on the Seine between Aug. 5 and 8, 1900. Photographs of the event, published in the Aug. 19 issue of La Vie au Grand Air, highlight a unique aspect: a woman, identified only as "Madame B...", was allowed to compete (she does not appear in Olympedia's list of competitors , however). All competitors in the event were of French nationality, and once again there were no medals awarded.

Disqualified

Why, exactly, do none of these competitions qualify as official Olympic events? As Mallon explains in his book,

Four criteria currently must be met for any event or sport to have been considered and Olympic event in current nomenclature. One, the event should be international in scope, allowing entries from all nations. Two, no handicap events should be allowed. Three, the entries must be open to all competitors (which means mainly that limitations based on age, religion, national origin, or competency, such as junior or novice events, should not be allowed). And four, the IOC does not allow events based on motorized transport and has only once approved the inclusion of one in the Olympic Games — that being motorboating in 1908. A fifth criteria should also apply, that of the events being restricted to amateurs. While no longer a criterion for inclusion on the Olympic program, it certainly was in 1900, save for the fencing events.

The events held in the sports listed in the claim failed to meet these criteria in various ways.

First, all or nearly all the competitors in most of these events were French nationals. Firefighting was the one event listed in the claim that attracted a significant number of non-French participants, but, as Olympedia explains, "These were not national crews, but local crews representing various cities or towns, such as Kansas City in the United States and Milano in Italy."

Additionally, eligibility for many of these events, particularly those in cannon shooting and firefighting, was limited to professionals. With the exception of fencing , professional athletes were not allowed to compete in the Olympic Games until the 1980s .

Another important factor: none of the 1900 events in cannon shooting, lifesaving, firefighting, or angling offered medals as awards to the top competitors.

For these reasons, Snopes concurs with Mallon and other Olympic historians that cannon shooting, firefighting, lifesaving and angling were not official Olympic events at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. As a result, we rate this claim as False.

Sources:

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