Inside Paris’ long history with the Olympic Games

The 1900 Games were strange ones, and are only just accepted today as part of the Olympic canon.

Talking of cannons, one of the unusual events was artillery firing. There were also boules, fishing, crossbow-firing, barrel-rolling and long-distance ballooning. The winner of that one landed near Kyiv.

The difficulty was that the Games took place at exactly the same time as the Paris World Fair, and many people – including competitors – thought the sports were part of the World Fair.

But they served an important purpose in establishing – after the first Greek edition in 1896 – that the Games were to be international, and not forever Hellene.

And they helped advance the growing idea that sports were something to be taken seriously, and not just a frivolous pastime.

The work of the French scientist Etienne Jules Marey was significant in this regard. Famous for his photographic studies of sportsmen in action, he persuaded many 1900 athletes to perform at his outdoor studio (under what is now Court 1 at Roland-Garros).

Less brilliantly, he also sent round an anthropological questionnaire to Olympic participants seeking elucidation on such vital points as: the colour of their beards; the physical strength of their grandfathers; and whether they’d been fed as babies on breast or bottle.

The 1900 Games were the first to see the participation – in golf, tennis, sailing and croquet – of (a few) women. By 1924, the sports of swimming, diving and fencing had been added, and 135 women took part.