Did the Olympics once give out medals for art?

Imagine standing on an Olympic podium, gold medal around your neck, national anthem playing, and the thing you won it for is a poem. Or a painting. Or a design for a stadium. The Apple, to everyone’s surprise, already knows this one and is bouncing. The Sole, slightly put out, would still like to tell the story.

The short answer

Yes. From 1912 to 1948, the Olympic Games held official art competitions in five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. Medals were awarded, but they no longer count in any country’s official Olympic tally.

The real story

The idea came from Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who founded the modern Olympic movement. He believed the ancient Greek ideal joined athletic and artistic excellence, and he felt that without the arts, the Games would be just another sporting championship. There was one firm rule: every entry had to be inspired by sport.

The competitions finally debuted at the 1912 Stockholm Games, despite some reluctance from the Swedish organisers. The literature gold that year went to an ‘Ode to Sport’ entered under two made-up names. The real author turned out to be Coubertin himself, which is a bit like the referee quietly winning the match.

Some competitors managed to medal in both worlds. American Walter Winans won a sculpture gold in 1912 for a bronze horse pulling a chariot, and he also won Olympic medals in shooting. Hungary’s Alfréd Hajós, a swimming champion at the very first modern Games in 1896, later won a silver medal in architecture in 1924 for a stadium design.

The art contests ran at every Summer Games through 1948. Then they were dropped. The main objection was that most of the artists were professionals who could sell their work, which clashed with the strict amateur rules of the time. IOC president Avery Brundage was a firm opponent. The competitions were replaced by non-competitive cultural exhibitions, and the medals already handed out were removed from the official Olympic record.

Why people get it wrong

Because the medals were erased from the official tables, they simply do not show up when we look at Olympic history. No modern broadcast mentions them, and no country counts them in its gold medal total. Out of sight, out of mind.

It also clashes with how we picture the Olympics today: stopwatches, tape measures and photo finishes. Judging a sonnet against a symphony feels like a different universe. But for nearly four decades, it was part of the programme.

The Wiper would like to stress that judging art is notoriously subjective and he would have been a hopeless referee. He would also like to note that he cannot remember a single winning painting, which means he would have fitted right in with the official record books.

“A bloke won gold for a poem and I can’t even get a participation ribbon for knowing about it. Still, Apple got this one, so fair’s fair.”