Gone But Not Forgotten

Day 12: Some Olympic Sports are no longer with us

Feb 15, 2022

The first winter Olympics featured only nine sports and 16 Medal events, compared to this year’s 15 sports and 109 events. Skiing, Skating, and Sliding were all there in the beginning, but many others have been added over time - including this year’s new additions.

Not all new Olympic sports are destined to last though. Many non-traditional events have debuted as demonstration events, but failed to catch on as regular competitions. Sadly, these were also some of the most interesting events in Olympic history.

Appropriately debuting at Calgary 1988 alongside the Jamaican Bobsled Team, Ski Ballet is more or less the gymnastics floor exercise on skis.

Only contested twice, in 1988 and 1992, Ski Ballet was officially dropped by the International Ski Federation in 2000. Another victim of Y2K.

If you’ve been watching Alpine Skiing and thinking the gates are the problem, then Speed Skiing is the sport for you! In this demonstration sport from Albertville 1992, skiers point themselves downhill and that’s pretty much it. Sounds pretty simple until you realize the winner and world record holder, French doctor Michael Mickaël was skiing over 140 miles per hour.

No mention of lost winter sports would be complete without the wildest of them all. Skijoring (rhymes with Eeyore-ing) is the Scandinavian sport of riding on skis being towed by a running horse. The word is Norwegian for “ski driving.” It was included as a demonstration sport in 1928 and 1948 only in its most basic form: Olympic Skijoring consisted only of athletes racing around an oval track on a frozen lake. The Swiss swept the medals; they still race like that there. But Skijoring is also alive and well in the American West, where it has evolved a into a much more “American” sport:

You can’t tell me you don’t want to see this version of Skijoring in the Olympics, maybe even Salt Lake City in 2030. And if these sports aren’t to your liking, there are plenty more once (and future?) Winter Olympics sports.