What do you think of this fact?
Imagine winning Olympic gold without running a single meter. Instead, you use a paintbrush, a poem or a building plan. Sounds like satire, but it was the official program for decades: from 1912 to 1948, the Olympic Games awarded medals for art.
The founder wanted muscles and muses
The idea came from Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games. To him, sport and art belonged together, just like in ancient Greece. So there were five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. The only rule: the work had to be inspired by sport.
The best part: Coubertin himself won gold in literature in 1912 with his “Ode to Sport”. He didn’t enter it under his own name, though. He used two pseudonyms.
The very first art gold went to American Walter Winans in 1912 for a bronze sculpture called “An American Trotter”, a horse pulling a chariot. Winans is one of the few people who competed at the Olympics in both sport and art.
From niche event to blockbuster show
Interest started small: in 1912, only about 35 artists submitted work. By 1928 in Amsterdam, there were around 1,100 entries. And the art exhibition at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles drew nearly 400,000 visitors.
The last silver medal in the art competitions went to British artist John Copley in 1948. He was 73 years old at the time.
Why there are no art medals today
The problem was the amateur rule. Back then, the Olympics were meant for amateurs only, but almost everyone in the art competitions was a professional who made a living from their work. So after 1948, the contests were dropped and replaced by art exhibitions without medals.
In total, around 150 art medals had been handed out. According to Smithsonian Magazine, they were later struck from the official Olympic medal records. So there are Olympic champions who don’t show up in any medal table today.
Somewhere out there hangs a painting with an Olympic gold medal, and hardly anyone knows.