They Used to Award Olympic Medals for Art?

The Grand Palais in Paris was home to the arts portion of the 1924 Olympics. Among the pieces on display was the Discus Thrower (foreground), which won the gold medal.During all of the years that the Olympics gave out medals in arts, not just athletics — and if you didn’t know about that, the rest of this article may hold more surprises — the pinnacle came in Paris, 100 years ago this summer.

The gold medal sculpture at the 1924 Paris Olympics was by a Greek artist named Costas Dimitriadis. His nude, arching, 7-foot “Discobole” (Discus Thrower) was for weeks displayed prominently in the Grand Palais.

Two years later, before “a crowd of light-frocked women and straw-hatted men,” as The New…