There are 32 sporting disciplines featuring in the Olympic Games this summer.
Spectators will see traditional competitions like athletics and archery, as well as modern additions like skateboarding.
The evolution of the Games has incorporated a wide variety of events – but along the way, some weird and wonderful contests have been lost.
200m Obstacle Swimming
The race saw swimmers scramble over and under boats as well as climbing a partially submerged pole in Paris, 1900.
Peter Kemp was the only Briton to ever win a medal, bronze – in large part because the event was never featured again.
Plunge for Distance
The next Olympics, 1904, saw another one-time sport, with the podium dominated by US athletes.
It required divers to jump into the water from a standing position and travel the furthest underwater, while motionless.
Tug of War
A somewhat more successful competition, tug of war featured in five Games between 1900 and 1920.
Great Britain won the most gold medals of any country, at the top of the podium in both 1908 and 1920.
Running Deer Shooting
Don’t worry – despite the name, no animals were hurt in this event.
Instead, a piece of wood shaped like a deer was mounted on a cart on rails.
The shooter had a four-second window to hit the wooden animal, affixed to which was a target with three concentric circles.
Four points for the bullseye, three and two for the other two circles – and one point for striking any other part of the deer apart from it’s rear.
The sport was introduced in the 1908 London Olympics and was last featured in 1924 – but not before Sweden’s Oscar Swahn became the oldest Olympic medallist in 1920 when he won silver at age 72.
Pigeon racing, ballooning and firefighting
These were just some of the demonstration sports featured in Games gone by.
The competitions did not award medals to the winners, but would certainly have offered onlookers a spectacle.
There are no demonstration events at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
