Unusual Olympic Sports That Have Entertained Crowds

To some, synchronised swimming might appear unusual at first glance. The sport combines elaborate dress-up with a swimsuit and makeup but takes place in a pool, with in-person viewers sometimes only able to see legs kicking above the surface. Now, do this with several teammates to the rhythm of music with synchronised movements.

The event would look strange if one were to watch the dressage equestrian competition without commentary or knowledge. Dressage involves a horse and rider, with the horse high-stepping. The sport is a bit more involved than that, though. This event culminates one’s ability to train a horse to walk, trot, canter, and steer at different speeds. Upon reaching the Olympic level, the rider’s challenge is communicating their movement demands to the horse subtly.

While horse dressage may look odd, it takes years to master, much like our previous sport, synchronised swimming.

Like synchronised swimming, many people have seen photos in strange poses, with gymnasts twirling a ribbon or holding a ball in their shoulder blade while doing manoeuvres. These require significantly more athleticism than you might think, especially doing them well over the course of an entire routine to the beat of music. Think of rhythmic gymnastics as a blend of choreography, balance, and power.

Note that rhythmic gymnastics differs considerably from traditional gymnastics, often called artistic gymnastics. Rhythmic gymnastics involves a floor routine, while the better-known artistic gymnastics includes balance beams, vaults, uneven bars, and floor exercises.

Let’s start by saying that the sport of plunge for distance was only played once during the 1904 Olympics, where other one-time athletic competitions took place. The event’s name almost does a good job of explaining what happens, noting that competitors dove into a pool and saw how far across the water they could go before either a minute was up or their heads surfaced.

The weirdest part of this sport, at least to us, is that it doesn’t involve swimming. In fact, competitors aren’t supposed to make swimming movements; they need to streamline themselves when jumping into the pool. Only five competitors entered, and the winner went just over 60 feet into Olympic history as the only gold medal winner for the sport.

Some sports enter the Olympics on a trial basis and don’t quite make it to the status of a full event. Poodle clipping was introduced at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris and became one of those sports that didn’t quite cross the finish line. From what we can gather, the idea behind poodle clipping was to clip as many poodles as possible in two hours. There isn’t much of an indicator of the quality of the cut, but the winner permed 17 poodles and took home the gold.

Watching the Olympics can help viewers appreciate the world’s best athletes in many common sports. The international competition also allows us to watch sports that we might not understand or consider unusual. Hopefully, this guide has given you some insight into the true difficulty level of some of these events.