There is a week left until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, a competition that has been marked by controversy almost from the start. What if the lack of air conditioning was a mistake, or the lack of food, or the Seine is dirty (and it is being shown to be so). Then came the lavish opening ceremony, the delays in the triathlon due to the roughness of the Seine, and the difficulties of the anti-record pool.

But if there is something that has captured the public beyond mainstream sports, it is competitive shooting. The charisma that some participants in this discipline exude has not only created a stir in the networks, but has also led to a surge of interest in these lesser-known competitions, which have become sources explaining how this sport works.

But Olympic shooting doesn’t make sense when you consider that they use rifles and pistols. In the 1900 Olympic Games, they used something much more powerful for a discipline called cannon shooting.

Olympic ball shooting

Paris was a very popular event at the beginning of the last century. In 1900, not only the Universal Exhibition, but also the Second Olympic Games were held here. The second Olympic games of the modern OlympicsAh. The games of a century ago were nothing like today’s games, and although they actually drew over 58,000 participants, only a little over a thousand of them were ‘Olympians.’ What the International Olympic Committee considers athletes to be.

In particular, there were 997 competitors from 24 countries, 22 of whom were women. The participation of women was a testimony, but still current, since it was the first Olympic Games they could participate in. And these were… strange games. There were sports similar to the current ones, and besides water polo, tennis, shooting, swimming, rowing, artistic gymnastics or fencing, we could also find American football, Basque pelota and tug-of-war. Yes, that thing you play at recess was once an Olympic game.

There were other sports that only appeared in that event, such as long jumping on horseback or hurdling, but as we have said before, these were rare. The IOC no longer recognizes it as an Olympic sportbut there was no distinction back then.

One example is angling. Another is hot air balloons. The one that interests us is artillery shooting. This discipline was held at the Vincennes Artillery Range and as collaborating organizers Canon tax community From Paris. There were individual methods, including the field battery (several guns operated by several people) and the assault battery (large-caliber guns to destroy fortifications and artillery positions).

The methods consisted of the following:

• Individual – An operator had to fire a 90 mm cannon to hit targets 60 meters away with the help of two assistants. They were able to fire four shots, and the test brought together 542 participants.
• Field battery – 16 officers and 30 assistants fired six guns. Participation was 46 batteries.
• assault battery – This was the most complex, as a commander, twelve gunners and eight assistants were needed to operate four guns.

The individual method was performed over six days, but the space was shared for the celebration of other shooting methods and, of course, cannon fire. Not something that can be combined well with other testsFor this reason, field and attack battery competitions were held in rounds in July and August, and after a break, the final rounds were held in October and November.

And although spectacular, the tests were only enjoyed by the contestants. The War Department’s decision that no spectators would be allowed to attend the tests angered some organizers who were hoping to get a good ticket. They threatened to not go ahead with the competition, but it was not to be.

It would certainly be a glamorous discipline, especially now that we have super-slow-motion replays, but for some reason I don’t understand, there’s no Olympic ball. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the Spanish Olympic team only won one medal during the Games: gold in Basque pelota.

Image | The Grand Air

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