For one fleeting moment of modern Olympic history, the games included a surprising category that had nothing to do with physical feats of strength, speed, agility, or accuracy. Instead, these short-lived categories covered tone, composition, light, and inspiration.
The supporters of these new categories argued that without them, the modern Olympics weren’t truly living up to the potential of its ancient predecessor. Nevertheless, Olympian organizers removed the non-physical components of the competition only four decades later.
These Olympic Categories Might Be Surprising to Sports Fans
We often associate the Olympic games with physical events like gymnastics, rowing, skiing, curling, figure skating, and other athletically demanding activities. Centuries earlier, the ancient Olympic Games featured events like running, jumping, wrestling, and chariot racing. But at the turn of the 20th century, advocates for the arts began proposing new categories: painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and music.
Historians have traced the decision to include arts in the Olympics to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the IOC and the modern Olympic games. “He was raised and educated classically, and he was particularly impressed with the idea of what it meant to be a true Olympian—someone who was not only athletic but skilled in music and literature,” The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions author Richard Stanton told the Smithsonian Magazine in 2012.
“He felt that in order to recreate the events in modern times, it would be incomplete to not include some aspect of the arts,” Stanton continued. At an organizational meeting in the early 1900s, Coubertin argued to his fellow event team members: “There is only one difference between our Olympiads and plain sporting championships, and it is precisely the contests of art as they existed in the Olympiads of Ancient Greece, where sport exhibitions walked in equality with artistic exhibitions.”
The Arts’ Short-Lived Inclusion In The Olympic Games
In 1904, Baron Pierre de Coubertin wrote in the French newspaper Le Figaro: “The time has come to take the next step and to restore the Olympiad to its original beauty. In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts were combined harmoniously with the Olympic Games to create their glory. This is to become reality once again.” Despite the baron’s confident proclamation, his decision to incorporate the arts into the upcoming 1908 London Olympics was too late. Instead, he had to wait until 1912.
The 1912 Stockholm Olympics included five arts competitions: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. Organizers then split these five groups into smaller subcategories specific to genres like orchestral vs. instrumental music, solo vs. chorus singing, drawings vs. paintings, and so on. All submissions had to relate to sport. The inaugural art competition saw 33 people compete.
These numbers grew eight years later at the 1924 Paris Olympics, where 193 artists submitted work to the competition. The judge’s panel included the first woman recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Selma Lagerlöf, and Rites of Spring composer Igor Stravinsky. The competition’s popularity wavered until 1949 when the International Olympic Committee removed the events from the games.
The IOC argued that since most of the artists submitting works were professionals, the competition went against the amateur nature of the games. The final arts competition took place at the 1948 London Olympics. Nevertheless, music is still an integral part of the Olympian tradition. One hundred years after the Paris Olympics saw almost 200 artists submit their works, iconic singer Celine Dion is set to make a triumphant return to the stage at the 2024 Olympics, once again held at the French capital.
Photo by Jonathan Hordle/Shutterstock
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