Can you name the all official Olympic sports? There has been one sport which hasn't been played for over 80 years: tug-of-war. It was an official sport from the 2nd Olympics in Paris in 1890 through to the 7th in Antwerp in 1920. The rules were very simple, but when some competitors started wearing special spikes, the organizers decided to drop the sport. Tug-of-war is still very popular at Japanese gym festivals. I recall my father use to join the tug-of-war team when I was in elementary school. I personally didn't like it because it's a very "collective effort" sport and your contribution is barely noticeable -- meaning that we always had people who pretended to pull but didn't really. And since we couldn't tell who they were, we couldn't weed them out and consequently got beaten (pulled over) a lot!