Page 17 - Sports Facts

Art competitions used to be part of the Olympic Games!

The International Olympic Committee was formed in 1894. Its founder was French Baron Pierre de Coubertin who desired to have men compete in sport instead of war and to combine sports and the arts. It wasn’t until 1906 that the Baron called the IOC into a meeting and they constructed the framework for artistic competitions with 5 areas to be added into the Olympics. 

The five areas of art were architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture and the works of art had to be inspired by sports. There wasn’t enough time or resources to have the artistic competitions ready for the 1908 Olympics that were set to happen in Rome and switched at the last minute to London. The Baron had patience and began the preparations for the 1912 Summer Olympics held in Stockholm, Sweden. 

At first, the art wasn’t taken seriously and it took a few Olympics before numerous artists submitted their work. By the 1920s, it became a more important part of the Olympics. The artistic part of the Olympics continued until 1952 and was then cancelled. 

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A woman struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back to back and for that she was banned from playing Baseball!

This is wild. A 17 year old girl named Jackie Mitchell rocked baseball in the 1930s. Mitchell was one of the first female baseball players in history. Her father began teaching her to play baseball as soon as she could hold a ball. She happened to be neighbors with MLB Hall of Famer Dazzy Vance who continued to teach her how to pitch. He taught her what became her signature pitch; a devastating sinker. 

When she was 17, she began touring around with different teams and making a name for herself. At one point she even struck out 9 batters in a row! The owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, Joe Engle, spotted her in 1931 and signed her to a contract to play for the New York Yankee’s AA minor league baseball club, Lookouts.

It was with this team that she faced some of the greatest players. She was put in a game to pitch with her first batter being Babe Ruth himself. She threw a high ball first, but the next two Ruth swung and missed. He didn’t even nick the ball. She then threw her sinker and he struck out, pissed.

Lou Gehrig strode onto the field next and she threw him three consecutive sinkers and he too struck out. She ruffled too many feathers and within a couple days of that game, her contract was voided and she wasn’t allowed to play ball anymore.

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A British Olympian got into his sport because of Pokémon

If you take a poll of Olympians and ask them why they got into the sport they practice, they will probably tell you the sport runs in their family, or it was an after school activity or some other reason. For Ashley McKenzie, a British judoka though, the reason is far cooler and nerdier: a Charizard card. 

The facts are these: When he was 11, he got into a fight because another kid tried to take his Charizard card. Those of you who played the Pokémon trading card game will remember that Charizard was pretty much the best card in the game, so losing it was a big deal.

Ashley says he tried to grab the other kid's shirt, and didn't even realize when he was thrown over the kid's shoulder. He tried again, and the same thing happened. Confused and defeated, he looked on the Internet and found that a simple Judo move had done him in.

Inspired by this finding, he joined the local judo club, where he befriended his attacker (who gave the Pokémon card back). Ashley also used the sport to turn his life around. He was a troublesome kid, and even spent time in a young offenders institution. 

Have you heard of any other interesting stories of how big time athletes got into their sport? Tell us in the comments!

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The 10 most interesting facts about the London Olympics!

The 2012 Summer Olympics are about to take the world by storm. Here's the list of the 10 most interesting Olympic 2012 facts that we've come across. Do you have any more? Let us know in the comments. 

10. Girl Power: The 2012 Olympics will have 2 significant milestones for female athletes. It's the first Olympics where every country has at least 1 female athlete. Also, Female Boxing was included this year, which means that every sport in the games will have male and female competitors.

9. The opening ceremony is based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest. The organizers have named the ceremony "Isles of Wonder" and it is taken from a speech given by Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest.  Academy award winner Danny Boyle will serve as the artistic director. Over 20,000 volunteers are working on it!

8. The London Olympic stadium is the lightest stadium ever built. Not just that, but they also used 2,500 tons of steel tubing that was recycled from old gas pipelines. That's a pretty green stadium!

7. There's going to be over 20,000 members of the media covering the event. The International Broadcast Centre that will house them during the games is huge: the size of six full size football pitches. 

6. More than half the world will be watching. The organizers of the game estimate that about 4 billion people will tune in to watch the games. 

5. London will be the first city to host the Olympics for a third time. They hosted the Olympics in 1908 and 1948. Although this distinction is only a technicality. Athens has also hosted 3 Olympic games, but one of them, the 1902 Athens Intercalated Olympic Games weren't counted as an official Olympic event. 

4. The Olympics will leave London with its largest piece of public art. The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a 377-foot observation tower that was built in the Olympic park and is supposed to be a permanent fixture of London, long after the Olympics are gone. The design so far seems to be polarized, some have said it's striking and daring and Olympian in its ambition. Others say it looks like a roller coaster collapsing onto itself. 

3. The games might include a Spice Girls reunion. The Olympic games will officially end on August 12. It's traditional that the mayor of the host city hands over the games to the mayor of the next host city (in this case, Rio de Janeiro). It's heavily rumored that the closing ceremony will feature the first Spice Girls reunion since 2008. 

2. Even though Adidas is the official apparel sponsor, Nike features prominently in the games! Not Nike the brand, but rather the Goddess of Sport. She's going to be engraved in front of every medal given out during the games. Ironically, Nike just came out with an ad poking fun at the Olympics. Watch it here.

1. The games cost almost $15 BILLION. The final estimated cost for the Olympic games was increased from £2.4 billion to £9.3 billion. That's 3.8x the cost! The reason for this was because London had to invest heavily in the Olympic venues and other infrastructure expenses. In fact, the Contingency Fund, for any unexpected expenses, was set at £2.7 billion. That means that the unexpected costs ended up  being costlier than they originally expected the whole thing  to be!

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An average professional hockey player loses 7 pounds in one game!

Hockey players are on the ice for only one minute shifts. The workout of the game is one of the most intense in professional sports. Players say that the time on the ice is spent holding their breath. They are pushing and shoving so much that they feel they exhale almost the whole time they are on the ice. 

Players don’t have time off in the off-season like they used to, either. The sport is so demanding that they do everything possible to stay in shape. Players can lose from 5 to 8 pounds in a single game. Of course most of the loss is water weight, but it causes the players to be very conscious of the amount of their fluid intake.

Goalies don’t make it to the bench as much as other players and can lose as much weight as a forward or defenseman. They began putting water bottles on top of the goals. Sometimes, the water bottles move when goals are made, and judges and announcers have actually used this more than once to determine if a goal counted or not!

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