The Olympics used to hand out medals for painting

For Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games, muscle alone was not enough: he wanted the muses too. So from Stockholm 1912 to London 1948, the Olympics included the "Pentathlon of the Muses": competitions in architecture, sculpture, painting, literature and music, with juries, podiums and the same medals as the athletes. One condition: the work had to be inspired by sport.

In 1912, the literature gold went to an "Ode to Sport" signed by Georges Hohrod and Martin Eschbach, two authors nobody had ever heard of. Hardly surprising: they didn't exist. They were pseudonyms of Coubertin himself, who entered his own contest and hung his own medal around his neck.

The arts left the programme after 1948 on a technicality: the rules demanded amateurs, and artists lived off their work, which made them professionals. Their 151 medals don't count in the official all-time tally. A shame — above all for the British engraver John Copley, silver in 1948 at the age of 73: he would still be, to this day, the oldest Olympic medallist in history.