WISCONSIN (NBC 26)-- Every four years the best athletes in the world are invited to compete on the global stage at the Olympics. And every year some of the sports they love are scrapped out and replaced, kind of like tug of war.
"Tug of war used to be in the Olympics until 1920. And since then, they cut out a lot of the team sports," says Shelby Richardson of Wisconsin, who is also the President of the U.S. Amateur Tug of War Association.
Richardson has been active in the sport of tug of war for over 40 years. The sport has brought her to Africa, Japan, England, Ireland, and Sweden for various competitions. She says the 8-person sport may not be an Olympic event right now, but interest continues to grow at a local and national level.
"People are more interested in the grass-root sports now more than they have been. Before, it was always the bigger names in sports, and the mainstream sports."
But, tug of war isn't the only sport to be removed from the Olympic games over the last century.
"It is actually a common thing and I actually enjoy it. The reason being is because you give the hosting cities a voice in what they want to host in their own city," says Boyd Smith the curator of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado.
Smith says sports are eliminated from the Olympic games all of the time to allow up-and-coming sports to have a global platform. For instance, surfing, skateboarding, break-dancing, and rock climbing are all newly introduced Olympic events. These sports may seem odd to some viewers, but just imagine living in the early 1900s when pigeon shooting was a competitive Olympic sport.
"That's a new one to me. It kind of reminds me of the running deer. The running deer was in 1908 to 1948 and they basically had like four seconds to shoot deer that were 110 yards away," says Smith.
Today though, Olympic athletes are no longer shooting live animals. But they're also not pistol dueling, shooting at mannequins; a short-lived sport introduced in 1912.
"They still do it (shooting) today. It's just more modernized I guess you could say. It's just shooting."
From the range to the pool, other sports didn't make a huge splash at the Olympic games either. One such sport was solo synchronized swimming, an event that is done with teams today.
"To do it solo, I guess that's a little different. So, I guess people want more of the team effort. But there are always reasons why people don't find interest in certain sports," adds Smith.
The Olympic games are constantly changing, trying to bring new sports into the fold to create more interest. And if history has taught us anything it's that sometimes old trends pick up speed again. So perhaps now is not the time to rule tug of war out of the games, indefinitely.
"I mean we need the young blood, to keep everything going. It's eight people who can work together and think as one and achieve a goal," says Richardson who is looking forward to the World Games next July.
