The Games of the Nineteen Thirty Six Olympiad

Scholars of sport histoy will often point to the 1936 Olympic Games when conversing about famous "flops." I am speaking of course NOT of Adolph Hitler's attempt at proving his theories of Aryan supremacy, a ploy that was foiled by the success and popularity of sprinter Jesse Owens - but rather the inclusions of three new events.

1936 was the first and last times for the following events:

• "Predictable comically long-named fake combination event that comprises many sports that clearly do not belong together in the same contest (such as Greco-Roman wrestling, the hundred meter dash, archery and beach volleyball) which every single two-bit hack standup comedian in the world adds to their material once every four years"

• "Slip to the Dark Side"

• "Whoring"

The first and third events are fairly self-explanatory, and one can clearly see why these contests did not stand the test of time...but scholars were baffled by the failure of the extremely popular "Slip to the Dark Side" event until 1983, when John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band released their classic hit On the Dark Side.

The sport itself was ingeniously simple. The "Slip to the Dark Side" court consisted of a single line connecting (but not touching) two circles on opposite sides of the line. One half of the court was to be painted a light color, like yellow or pink. The other side was to be painted a dark color, like forest green or brown. The circle on the light half would remain the color of the light court, but the opposite circle was always painted blue. There were a series of hashmarks along the light half of the court, along which was placed a banana peel (the interval would vary based on the skill of the player. See diagram below.)



The object was to stand in the light circle and take off in a sprint down that line, then slip on the banana peel so that the athlete would cross that line, and land with his legs in the blue circle. (I only say "his" because "Slip to the Dark Side" was a men's only event in its only year of Olympic inclusion) The athlete whose heel came closest to the outside of the blue (without touching the white outline) would win the event.

The 1936 Olympic contest consisted of a quadruple elimination round-robin tournament, in which the eventual winner was Austria's Klaus "Sweet Pickels" Moser. The event proved hugely popular, as crowds not only packed the stadium at which the event was held, but stopped all traffic and gathered on street corners throughout the city to watch the event on any of the 20 giant televisions set up around Berlin so that those unable to get tickets could also see the games. So then why was this sport nixed from all subsuquent Olympiads? This is a question the answer to which was shrouded in secrecy until John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band released their classic hit On the Dark Side in 1983, and inspired the reopening of a journalistic investigation.

It turns out that when Klaus Moler slipped to the dark side and crossed that line, he began what was to be an endless downard spiral of heavy drinking, drug abuse, and alternating feelings of "crazy" and "so mean." It was discovered by Washington Post writers Rogers and Hammerstein that things became so bad for Moler, in 1938 he paid another man, Gustav Schülte, to assume his identity while he fled to America to escape his demons. (Little known fact: Upon arrival in America, Moler assumed the name of "Arnold Boyardee" and became a world-renowned chef!)

While it is unknown what specifically caused the reaction; the act of slipping to the dark side, or the act of crossing that line, one thing remains clear:

Nothin' was real for Klaus Moler.

Nothin'.