A closer look
Tug of war was an official, highly competitive Olympic sport from 1900 until 1920, featuring massive, heavily muscled international teams furiously pulling a rope in the middle of a muddy field to win actual gold medals. The rules allowed countries to enter multiple different clubs, which led to a completely chaotic situation where the British police forces simply entered three distinct law enforcement teams and absolutely dominated the podium in 1908. During that specific controversial tournament, the American team fiercely protested the results because the British cops wore illegal, heavily spiked police boots that gave them an unfair grip in the slippery mud. It is genuinely a tragedy that the International Olympic Committee removed the sport, because watching heavily armed tactical police units from different countries furiously yanking on a rope would drastically improve modern television ratings
