THE FORGOTTEN OLYMPICS

With the Olympic Games Paris 2024 coming to a close, TMS takes you back in time when artists, along with athletes, bagged medals

- JITHA KARTHIKEYAN

THE Paris Olympics has brought the world together. We are one as we cheer our athletes with hopes and dreams of those gleaming trophies reaching our shores. Like humanity, all fields of human endeavours were linked together in the years before compartmentalisation took over. The Olympics were not just for athletes back when it all started, but also for artists, architects, musicians, and writers too. Impossible to imagine now, in a world where categorisation reigns!

When American marksman, Walter W. Winans participated in the Olympics, he won two medals a gold for sharpshooting in 1908 and a silver for the same in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. He also won a gold at Stockholm but it wasn't for any sport. It was instead for his small bronze sculpture of a 20inch horse tugging a chariot. The work was called 'An American Trotter'. He was the only individual to have the medal for both athletic and artistic achievements. As unbelievable as it may sound today, art was very much an Olympics sport and this is how the story goes The Olympic games date back to around 776 BC and were held every four years at Olympia in honour of Zeus, the king of the Gods for the Ancient Greeks. In 393 CE, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the Olympics, terming it a pagan festival.