A visit to this story was an eye-opener. The Great Britain team is doing wonderfully well at the Olympics, having earned almost as many gold medals as at the Antwerp games of 1920.
But the biggest pile of gold ever was achieved at the 1908 London games, when Britain won 56 of the 146 medals available, a tally that will remain unsurpassed, “given there were only British entries in some events including figure skating, polo, rackets and tug of war.”
Tug of War?
True, some of today’s Olympic events seem somewhat strange, from BMX cycling to beach volleyball, but what might the future hold? Cheese-rolling? Welly-wanging? The Egg-and-Spoon Race? Hide-and-Seek? Shove Ha’penny? Guess the Weight of the Cake? Cluedo? Australian-rules shackle-dragging?
A few years ago I ran a series in Nature called Lifelines in which scientists were asked a series of bizarre and somewhat personal questions. One was to name a pastime that should be elevated to Olympian status. The only one I can recall was ‘wrestling hagfishes in a bucket, with your bare hands’.
Gold, silver and bronze OOFTUGs will be libated liberally for the most interesting, possibly scientifically motivated, previously unsung sport or pastime, one that our London Editor might offer to Mayor Boris Johnson (whom history will have shown to have been the greatest statesman of this or any other age) as Nature Network’s suggestion for the London Olympiad of 2012.
Mixed Quadruple Skulls: a timed event, in which an anatomy instructor assists medical students in the removal of the calvaria from the cadaver, to expose the brain.
Penalty points for overheating the Stryker saw, cracks in the bones, and torn dura mater.
Disqualification for releasing torque on the calvaria and smashing the instructor’s fingers, whilst she is attempting to separate periosteal dura.
Tug-of-war was the only sport at school I ever won at. Team event, of course – we had an absolute rock of a lad at anchor, then another big, muscly guy, someone else, then me at ‘stroke’. They provided the immovable object: I provided the timing and the brains (‘Hold! Strain! And… heave heave heave’). In three years, we only lost one pull (best of 3 in each case, remember).
Witch hunting? What with the outlawing of other, animal based blood sports, this should be an entertaining sport. Toffs on horseback hooting about the GM farmland after green faced, warty nosed women of disreputable employ.
And we used to be really good at it! Just like all the other sports we invented then became too lazy to try to take seriously.
Top shout Mike. I wonder what can be found on YouTube.
Pipette squirting
Swimming – in chemicals other than water
Agarose gel swallowing
Editor attempting to claw the conversation back to something more scientific
Oh all right then.
Dry ice cannons. Points awarded for vertical distance and trajectory.
Diet coke and mentos rockets. It can be in the same group of events as dry ice cannons.
I guess thy could be at the Winter Olympics.
Cat herding?
Performance enhancing drug detection?
Competitive grant writing?
Mornington Crescent?
I like competitive grant writing. I am currently at 6 for 6 in my new job.
I also briefly held my postdoc lab’s title for fastest completion of 24 minipreps, digests, electrophoresis and gel stain (non-Qiagen class). I was beaten out by a Kiwi who had some kind of rapid boiling technique, and picked the gloopy stuff out of each eppendorf with a toothpick so the tube could be reused – fast and environmentally friendly.
My PhD lab used to play ten-bin bowling – line up all the bins and roll a wheeled tall stool at them from the other end of the corridor. We also used to play volleyball over the tall shelves that stood on each bench, with a ball made of cotton wool wrapped in aluminium foil.
The chemistry department at my alma mater had an annual tug-of-war which was “started” by throwing a block of sodium into the swimming pool…
My contribution to the the activities that should be elevated to Olympian status is navigating out of
underground stationsmazes.If it has to be scientific, then the pipette-by-mouth 40 by 10 ml sprint. To make it interesting, let’s make it 0.1 M NaOH (we want it to be interesting, not dangerous).
Rhythmic gymnastics, paraffin ribbon apparatus: Contestants will cut 5 micron serial paraffin sections, using an old-fashioned microtome.
Points will be awarded based on length of ribbons, absence of flaws and streaks, and successful transfer of sections to microscope slides using the paintbrush apparatus.
see, I remember the “fill the pipette boxes as fast as posssible” and “move liquid from this beaker to the other but not pouring” [yes, this would be mouth pipetting, touching on to the relay Bronwen talks aobut]…. and of course; making the best rainbow with the help of BTB and acids/NaOH.
Maybe that would bring some non shame to the Swedish scientists team? (I’m not really paying attention to competition of the Olympics any more. Let’s go with "worst olympics at the moment since….. 1912…. " ^^)
Freefall speedcubing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtRsKWAECbs
Not science, but certainly geeky.