#14: Club Swinging — 1904 and 1932
Club swinging resembled a mixture of gymnastics, juggling, and somebody enthusiastically conducting an invisible orchestra. Competitors held wooden clubs shaped somewhat like bowling pins and swung them around their bodies through elaborate patterns while remaining mostly stationary. The sport had roots in nineteenth-century physical culture and appeared at the Olympics in 1904 before unexpectedly returning in Los Angeles in 1932. It then vanished again. Watching old demonstrations makes one thing clear: accidentally standing too close to an Olympic club swinger would have been an extremely poor decision.
