If Animals Could Compete In The Olympics, Which Events Would They Win?

When they were created, the Olympics were only open to amateurs, a restriction dropped decades ago. Nevertheless, at least one form of discrimination still stands – you need to be a member of the species Homo sapiens to compete (equestrian events aside). With the Paris games about to open, it’s time to consider what would happen if we made the ultimate sporting contest a true event for the entire planet.

One can think of all sorts of sports that could be added to an all-species festival, but for practicality, we’ll restrict discussion to those sports that will feature in Paris. A quick examination leads to the conclusion that humans have little to fear when it comes to the overall medal tally. 

Where Would Humans Still Win?

Most sports require skills at which humans are unmatched, such as hand control. One might teach a chimpanzee or elephant to hold a badminton racquet in hand or trunk, but there is little danger they would be able to hit a shuttlecock well enough to match it with a champion – that’s even if they didn’t get bored quite quickly.

Tempting as it might be to imagine the effect a gorilla would have on an opposing football team’s defense, there is also little chance any non-human species would be capable of the coordination required by Olympic team sports. It’s one thing for a group of lions or wolves to work together when hunting a specific target that also happens to be tasty, but good luck getting them to spend 90 minutes passing a ball around so one can put it in a net.

Where tools are used in sports, these are specified in ways that suit only humans. For the Summer Olympics, this particularly applies to cycling, canoeing, and golf, but it includes almost everything in winter. Fortunately for us, shooting and archery are also sports where humans face little competition – we might not be the ones holding the Olympics if some of the animals we hunt with weapons could fire back.

Consequently, of the 329 gold medals on offer, there are more than 200 where humans have nothing to worry about. 

Where Humans Would Lose

In fact, there is a very small list of sports where humans would almost certainly not emerge victorious in an all-animal competition. These include running, swimming, jumping, and weightlifting events, but even on that list, there are some exceptions.

Running

The fact that cheetahs are the fastest land animal is well-known even to children. Humans certainly don’t enter into it. It’s also been verified by science, with one specific cheetah averaging 29 meters per second (95 feet per second) over three trials of a 201-meter (660-foot) course.

Many are also aware that cheetahs are limited to short distances – if they cannot catch their prey swiftly, they give up and find a different quarry. The course for the above experiment wasn’t an even 200, but a cheetah in the 100- or 200-meter races would have only members of its own species to fear if it wanted the gold.

Perhaps there would be difficulties in training them not to jump the starting gun without the enclosures used in greyhound racing, but if the incentives were strong enough there is probably a way.

On the other hand, cheetahs would be out of the running over greater distances. At the longest Olympic running race of all, humans might even get a look in. Some anthropologists argue that prehistoric humans were persistence hunters.  We couldn’t run as fast as our prey initially, but that didn’t mean all we had in our favor were tools, the claim goes. Instead, we wore our meals down as more slow-twitch muscles allowed us to keep going. The truth of this remains debated, but there is certainly some evidence. If so, might humans win the Marathon, even if entries were open?

Man Versus Horse Marathons occur annually in several places around the world, most notably in Llanwrtyd  Wells, Wales, where hundreds of humans take on dozens of horses. Horses have won the original contest most years, but it’s usually close, and a human won on foot in 2004, the race’s 25^th year, as well as in 2023. (Cyclists have won on several occasions, which is less surprising). Conducted over 35 kilometers (22 miles) the Llanwrtyd race is somewhat shorter than a true marathon, but that only adds to the case that humans would win over the Olympic distance, given a horse would certainly win at shorter lengths. Then again, the horse competitors have human riders, which presumably slows them down, but also provides for more tactical thinking than a horse alone could muster.

There doesn’t seem to be much evidence of whether any other species could beat both horses and humans in an Olympic marathon. After all, others do not have the benefits of thousands of years of selective breeding like horses do.

There are certainly plenty of animals that could beat humans over 400 to 10,000 meters (1,312 to 32,808 feet) – although cheetahs would only be among them at the shorter end – as long as they could be trained to stick to the course. For example, zebras are reported to sustain speeds over a distance of 20 kilometers (12 miles). faster than the best human sprinter can manage over 100 meters (328 feet). No comprehensive analysis appears to be available over all distances, but judging by one study impalas might be strong contenders in middle-distance races. 

Swimming

Water is not humans’ natural element, so you’d expect us to have no chance here, but we’d still probably scoop the pool. It’s very unlikely anyone else could even qualify for a stroke as weird as the butterfly, handing those events and the medleys to humans. Frogs’ swimming motions might qualify them for the breaststroke, but we’d probably beat them over 100 meters (328 feet), even if they could stand the chlorine.

Seals sometimes like to do something that looks like backstroke, however, and if their movements were deemed suitable would certainly have us beaten on that account. 

There are a great many fish and cetaceans that would easily outswim us at freestyle, but few would survive waiting on the blocks for the gun. On the other hand, a gentoo penguin would have no such problems and has been timed at 35 kilometers per hour (22 mph) underwater, so would probably win those events.

Jumping

Humans would stand no chance at either the long jump or the high jump; the interest would be in watching kangaroos battle impalas. Both have been reported as capable of reaching heights of 3 meters (10 feet) and lengths of 10 meters (33 feet), and that is without any training. Both are skittish beasts, so the hard part would be to get them to do it in the right direction. 

When most people imagine such a contest they’d probably think of red kangaroos, the largest surviving species, as the champions of the Australian continent. However, when interviewing marsupial expert Dr David Taggart for the piece on whether a wombat could beat an Olympic sprinter, he told us otherwise. Rock-wallabies are the true jumping champions, Taggart told IFLScience, “I’ve seen a yellow-footed rock-wallaby jump 10 meters and one go 9 feet upwards.” The figures are similar to those quoted for their larger cousins, but there’s one big difference: Taggart’s observations were of jumps from a standing start – with an opportunity to get a run jump-up, the wallabies should be far ahead.

Climbing

Humans gave up some of our climbing skills when we came down from the trees, so it’s not surprising more arboreal species could easily beat us to the top of a climbing course. In bouldering contests, humans would certainly be beaten – although whether the winner would be an orangutan, a mountain goat, or those leaping rock wallabies might depend on the details of the course. The Olympic sports of lead climbing and speed climbing require the use of ropes, however, which might put humans back on the podium, or at least restrict the competition to our fellow apes.

Weightlifting

Humans really are not that strong, which is probably one reason we developed our large brains. It’s unlikely we could win in any Olympic weight division in an all-species contest, so who would?

When it comes to the open category, African bush elephants have been known to lift 9,000 kilograms (20,000 pounds), and that’s for much longer than the competition requires. That means they could carry the weights that would win a human the gold medal, and all three podium finishers in both men’s and women’s divisions all at once. Their trunk alone can carry more than any Olympian will lift, hopefully resolving questions about hold legality.

Things get trickier when you’re looking at the lower-weight categories. Relative to body weight, beetles are thought to be the champion lifter, although sources vary as to whether dung beetles or rhinoceros beetles are best of all. Still, there’s no Olympic division for those weighing a few grams, and even being able to lift 1,000 times your weight won’t win any medals in a human-centered contest.

Stories of chimpanzees being able to pull far greater weights than humans have been refuted, but they are considerably stronger relative to body weight than us, so it’s possible our closest relatives would win the lowest weight division for each sex. 

Male orangutans can reportedly lift 225 kilograms (500 pounds), which if true should see them able to win most of the middle divisions, depending on the individual’s weight class. We haven’t been able to find an original source for that, but comparisons of their muscle distribution with gorillas suggest their arms are stronger, relative to their weight, so the claim seems plausible

Subjective Judgement

Not everything in the Olympics depends on objective standards like speed and strength. Diving and gymnastics are greatly influenced by the biases of the judges. Until animal representatives can award marks out of ten, humans will still be making the assessments.

Therefore, it would seem likely that however well animals can perform in Artistic swimming, Diving, Breakdancing, or certain aspects of gymnastics, there’s a high chance we’d still be awarding the medal to ourselves.

You Might Think So, But Probably Not

Kangaroos are known for their boxing prowess, to the point where a kangaroo wearing boxing gloves served as Australia’s unofficial sporting emblem in the 1980s, and is still sometimes used today. However, kangaroos do very little actual boxing with their forelegs, merely holding their prey steady while they attempt to disembowel them with their sharp hind claws. That’s a quick route to disqualification under Queensbury rules.

Some human versus kangaroo fights have been staged for entertainment (of human onlookers, not the kangaroo), but besides the cruelty, these are only really contests if the kangaroo can use all its limbs. So under Olympic rules, letting kangaroos in would be wrong and pointless.

Uncertain Cases

Having put together this list, there are a few sports we will admit to remaining unsure about. There are plenty of animals that are physically much stronger than us – see the weightlifting section – but how would they go in the wrestling? If a human, even a champion wrestler, were to try to take on some of these in the wild, it’s unlikely they would win. 

On the other hand, freestyle wrestling, and Greco-Roman even more so, ban certain holds and moves. A chimpanzee, as just one example, wouldn’t need to use these to beat a human – their muscles are at least 35 percent stronger than humans. The question is whether an ape could be sufficiently trained as to not do anything illegal – including biting or scratching – when tackled by a formidable opponent. 

As far as we know, no one has tested this, for fairly obvious reasons.

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