#12: Obstacle Swimming — Paris 1900
Freestyle swimming apparently seemed insufficiently difficult, so Paris organizers added furniture. In the 200-meter obstacle race, swimmers crossed the Seine while navigating three obstacles: climbing over a pole, scrambling over a row of boats, and swimming underneath another row. Australian Frederick Lane won in a little over two and a half minutes. It appeared only once at the Olympics. Modern obstacle-course racing has become fashionable again, but nobody has yet proposed returning floating boats to an Olympic swimming lane—which feels like a missed opportunity.
