The Ancient (and very Naked) Olympics

The original Olympic games got cancelled for 1500 years because … well … everyone was naked. The Ancient Greek Olympic Games, held from 776 BC to 393 AD, so that’s nearly 10 times longer than the modern Olympics have been running (since 1896), were celebrated almost entirely in the nude. While today’s spectators are used…

How to Host the Olympic Games on a Shoestring Budget

As the countdown for the Paris Summer Olympics has begun and the excitement for the international extravaganza of athletic prowess mounts, few will now remember a past games that had a rather more frugal approach to the sporting proceedings. Compared to the multi-millions spent on the current games the 1948 London Olympics was the make-do-and-mend…

Kim Jong-un Married One of His Cheerleaders

It’s a big year for North Korea. The country has qualified 22 athletes for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the DPRK enemy territory of Pyeongchang, South Korea– and the world is holding its breath to see how interactions unfold. Also in tow with the athletes? Kim Jong-un’s “Army of Beauties,” a highly competitive cheerleading squad…

Cool Down and Reminisce over the Wonders of Ski Ballet

There was a brief time in winter Olympic history when athletes would zip into their snow suites, strap on their skis, cue the music, and dance to victory. Ski ballet is like the love child of figure skating and skiing. Routines lasted for two minutes, and athletes competed alone or in pairs. The result was…

So this exists: The Hipster Olympics

This is in fact the second annual Hipster Olympics (I don’t know how I dared miss the first one) and it was held in Berlin over the weekend. Participants in the games competed in events such as the vinyl-spinning contest, the moustache finger-tattooing race and the ‘skinny jeans tug-o-war’. Of course, true hipsters (who would…

Where has the Japanese Art of Synchronised Walking been all our Lives?

Just when you start to feel like a fairly competent human, something like Shuudan Koudou slides into your Instagram feed to prove you wrong. Literally translated as “collective action”, Shuudan Koudou is the Japanese sport – no, art form – of walking. That is, walking forwards and backwards. Walking sideways. Walking whilst lightly squatting. Walking…

Postcards from Sochi: Summering with Stalin

Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea, is known for being a controversial host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, but I thought we might take a look back at the “Florida of Russia”, when it was still a socialist holiday resort for Soviet workers hoping to experience a semblance of the utopian future they had…

London Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in 1948: Modest but still Proud

Last night I logged onto my Facebook and saw my newsfeed overwhelmed with status updates of London-based or British friends about how proud they were to be Londoners. The opening ceremony for the Olympics had just aired on television and the Queen had apparently made her entrance by parachuting out of a helicopter with James…