20 Times Olympic Rules Sparked Chaos And Controversy

In 1908, Dorando Pietri, an Italian marathoner who was also a baker of pastries, was in the lead in the Olympic marathon in London. He became dehydrated, turned the wrong direction inside the White City stadium, and fell down five times, nearly dying. Officials picked him up and assisted him across the finish line. An American named Johnny Hayes protested. Pietri was disqualified, and Hayes took the gold. Fair or not, it’s still the rule today. If anyone helps you even a little, you’re disqualified regardless of the circumstances.

Weeks after Soviet troops crushed an uprising in Hungary, the two countries met in a water polo semifinal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. The match quickly turned ugly on both ends, and late in the match, with Hungary up 4-0, Soviet player Valentin Prokopov punched Hungarian player Ervin Zádor near his eye, leaving a gash that bled onto the pool’s edge. Angry fans rushed onto the pool deck and were only held off by riot police. The referees called the game early and handed Hungary the victory, and they went on to take gold.

The 1904 Olympics marathon in St. Louis included the story of Fred Lorz, who cramped up after 9 miles and hopped into his manager’s car, which broke down after 11 miles. Lorz ran to the finish and crossed first, letting the crowd cheer him as the winner before he admitted it was a joke. He was disqualified, and Thomas Hicks won the gold. The cheating was already against the rules, but the humiliation forced the race organizers to actually check.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, an intersex athlete named Dora Ratjen competed in the women’s high jump and finished fourth. Raised as a girl since birth, Ratjen set a world record at the 1938 European Championships. But shortly afterward, a train conductor saw something suspicious about Ratjen and notified the police. A doctor who examined her discovered male sexual organs. Ratjen’s achievements were voided, and her name was changed to Heinrich. This was a case of medical error, not a grand conspiracy. But it made many sports officials nervous enough to institute formal sex testing.

During the 1900 Paris Games, organizers staged a live pigeon shoot as an official medal sport. Pigeons were released from spring-loaded boxes, and competitors had to shoot them out of the air. Léon de Lunden from Belgium took gold by shooting 21 birds out of the sky, and over 300 pigeons were killed throughout the competition. Among those witnessing the contest in horror was founding Olympic organizer Pierre de Coubertin. Public outrage played a role in pushing the sport to eventually implement a permanent ban on shooting live animals, replacing them with clay targets.

There were no painted lanes in the 400m final at the 1908 London Olympics, so when American John Carpenter moved outside to impede British runner Wyndham Halswelle’s path, it was a strategy allowed by American rules, but not British rules. Race steward Roscoe Badger called a foul and tore down the finish tape. Carpenter was disqualified, but officials rescheduled the race for a track lined with chalk. The other two Americans who had reached the final refused to run. Halswelle ran the final alone and took gold.

At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Francisco Lázaro, a 21-year-old Portuguese carpenter running the marathon, had smeared suet and wax on his skin to protect it from burning in the sun. The wax prevented him from sweating in the heat, and he collapsed partway through the race with a dangerously high body temperature. The next morning he was found dead. He became the first athlete to die during the Olympics, prompting officials to insist that athletes be medically examined before participating in endurance events.

At the 1924 Paris Olympics, a judging dispute in the France-Italy team foil match started when the referee awarded a touch to France. An irate Italian fencer, Aldo Boni, called the judge a name, and the Italian team walked off the strip, resulting in Italy’s disqualification. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. After an Italian fencing master was publicly rebuked by a French fencing critic, the master’s son challenged the critic to a duel with swords on the Franco-Italian border. The duel left the critic wounded in the arm. The incident led to the widespread adoption of neutral referee panels for fencing matches.

Melbourne had been awarded the Olympics of 1956. But Australia’s laws at the time forbade horses from entering the country without a six-month quarantine period. So in 1954, the International Olympic Committee changed its rules to allow equestrian events to be held elsewhere. The Stockholm equestrian events were held in June 1956, five months before the main event opened in Melbourne in November that year. It’s the only occasion on which the Summer Olympics have been staged across multiple continents.

For the first time, women competed in Olympic track events at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, which featured the 800m, won by German runner Lina Radke with a new world record. All nine starters completed the event, and some lay down on the grass to catch their breath afterwards, which is only normal fatigue following a tough run. However, male reporters wrote about runners collapsing from exhaustion, although the newsreel footage of the event shows this never happened. Following the chaos, officials banned women from competing in track distances longer than 200m until 1960.

The British ice hockey team, led by captain Gordon Dailley, defeated Canada for the gold medal at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany. Canada protested that most members of the British squad had been born in Britain but trained and played entirely in Canada. As they were still British citizens according to the laws of the British Commonwealth, they were allowed to participate. However, the International Ice Hockey Federation considered banning two of the players. Britain threatened to withdraw from the Games if the decision was overturned, and the results remained unchanged. This controversy led to the development of more definitive rules regarding player eligibility and residency.

Jim Thorpe, an athlete of the Sac and Fox Nation, took gold in both the pentathlon and the decathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, and King Gustav V of Sweden also praised him. By 1913, Thorpe’s status as an amateur was called into question when it came out that he had been paid a few dollars a game while playing for a minor league baseball team before the Olympics. That January, the IOC stripped him of his Olympic medals, despite having missed its 30-day window to challenge the result. In 2022, Thorpe was awarded his medals back.

At the 1908 London Olympics tug-of-war competition, the Liverpool police team represented Great Britain. They wore regulation police boots with heavy soles and steel heels. Led by Martin Sheridan, the Americans were equipped with much lighter shoes. On the wet field, they were quickly dragged across the center line. Sheridan contended that such footwear violated the rules because of its added leverage. The officials determined that the shoes were legal, and the American team refused to continue the match. This controversy prompted a subsequent ruling prohibiting any type of boot with added weight or reinforcement in the sport.

At the 1924 Paris Olympics, the cross-country race took runners right next to a gasworks in an intense heatwave. Out of 38 competitors, just 15 made it across the finish line. Many ran out of breath, fell to the ground, vomited, or fell ill with sunstroke. One Spanish runner ran straight into the stadium wall. Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi won the gold medal, appearing completely unaffected by the conditions. None died, despite widespread rumors, but the event was close enough to disaster that cross-country running was cut from the Summer Olympics altogether.

In the 3,000m steeplechase final at the Los Angeles Games in 1932, the official counting laps got so engrossed by the decathlon high jump that he lost count of the number of times the racers had gone around the track. No bell sounded when they ran 3,000m, so they ran one more time, some 3,460 meters, before coming to a stop. Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland won the gold medal, and the silver medal went to Thomas Evenson of Great Britain, who edged out American Joe McCluskey on the additional lap. McCluskey was offered a re-run and turned it down. Lap boards and bell protocols became mandatory afterward.

At the 1900 Paris Olympics, competitors swam 200m of the River Seine next to the Paris World’s Fair. They had to clamber over a pole, cross the backs of moored boats, then dive under another row of boats, fighting the current all the way. The winner was Australian Fred Lane, who got around in under three minutes. The whole thing was more carnival than competition, but it did help push swimming toward standardized conditions.

The swimming competition at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics had to be held in a converted city defense moat because Belgium did not have the money after World War One to build a pool. The water was dark, muddy, and around 12-15°C (53-59°F). Despite the frigid conditions, Hawaii’s Duke Kahanamoku won the 100 meters freestyle, and American swimmer Ethelda Bleibtrey swept three golds. Several athletes required blankets and alcohol rubs to treat hypothermia. These dangerous conditions finally forced swimming’s governing body to require proper, temperature-controlled pools.

At the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, the men’s 10,000-meter speed skating competition took place on outdoor natural ice. At one point, a warm Alpine wind pushed the temperature up to 25°C, melting the ice. Early in the competition, the American Irving Jaffee finished ahead of Norway’s reigning world champion Bernt Evensen. However, subsequent competitors found themselves sinking into standing water. The Norwegian referee called off the remainder of the heats. The IOC initially credited Jaffee with the win, but skating’s governing body later overruled that and voided the event entirely, leaving no one with a medal, including Jaffee.

Gymnastics at the 1948 London Olympics took place in a post-war setting with limited resources at Empress Hall, meaning the equipment was made by various companies using whatever materials they could get. As a result, the uneven bars (really modified parallel bars set at different heights) used in each heat differed from each other in their degree of elasticity, width, and height, which led to falls and injuries. Scores given by judges were equally inconsistent and were also influenced by their national allegiance. There was no system for deducting points either. In response to these issues, Swiss official Arthur Gander’s federation created the sport’s first standardized rulebook, The Code of Points.

At the 1906 Games in Athens, Ireland didn’t have a national team, so Peter O’Connor, the world record holder in the long jump, was entered as part of Great Britain. After capturing silver, O’Connor was furious when the organizers flew the British flag instead of an Irish one at the medal ceremony. He took matters into his own hands by scaling a 20-foot flagpole in the stadium and unfurling a green flag, while his teammate Con Leahy kept watch at the bottom. Two days later, O’Connor went on to win gold in the triple jump.

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