The 1900 Olympics in Paris were chock-full of sports that would not again see the light of day on the world's biggest stage. Hot air ballooning. Kite flying. Fishing. Pigeon Racing. Yes, pigeon racing. We're not making this up.

The four sports (or, should we say, "sports") mentioned above were demonstration events, with results not counted in the overall tally. However, there were some eyebrow raisers among medal events as well. For instance, croquet. And obstacle swimming.

Apparently, someone thought that swimming in a straight line was not exciting enough, so an obstacle course was created in the river Seine. The 200 meter race was interrupted three times: the swimmers had to climb over a pole and a row of boats, then swim under another row of boats. Sounds kinda exciting, actually. We'd love to see Michael Phelps try to do that.

The race was won by an Australian. A Jew, Otto Wahle of Austria, finished second. Wahle was not just an obstacle course one-trick pony: he collected another silver in the 1000 meter swim, and picked up a bronze four years later in St. Louis. By then, the obstacles were retired... sadly, forever.

And, no, we couldn't find a Jewish kite flying champion. We'll keep looking...