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The True Story of the 1971 and 1972 “Lunar Olympics”: What They Are and Who Participated

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It’s really true that it Olympic spirit infects everything and everyone. The astronauts of the missions are witnesses to this Apollo 14 and 16 who during their missions to the Moon attempted what were later dubbed the first “Lunar Olympics”We are not talking about any special somersaults, but just a series of high jumps, javelin throws And golf shots aimed at showing (with little success due to the bulky equipment) how the most low gravity of the Moon would allow hypothetical lunar athletes to smash every record set by terrestrial athletes.

The first “Lunar Olympics” in 1971

After the “highly successful failure” of the Apollo 13 mission, the euphoria of the successful moon landing of the next mission Apollo 14 in 1971 brought astronauts Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell to try their hand at what would go down in history as the first “Lunar Olympics”.

The two astronauts engaged in a challenge with golf shots and javelin throws. In the first case, as the mission videos show, the astronauts used a real golf-club brought from Earth, while in the case of the second challenge, the part of the javelin was played by a piece of a solar wind collector.

For years the two astronauts had been baiting each other over the outcome of the contests, with Mitchell claiming the gold medal in the lunar javelin throw after besting his opponent by just 10 centimeters. In the absence of a lunar judge, the outcome will forever remain shrouded in mystery.

More famous and documented is the golf shot of Alan Shepard, who initially claimed to have thrown the ball miles and miles away, only to later be debunked 50 years later from the restored high-definition images of the mission that showed how the ball had actually traveled only a few dozen meters.

The second “Lunar Olympics” of 1972

In the’April 1972with just minutes left on the Moon until the end of the Apollo 16 mission, the astronauts Charles Duke and John Young they decided to try their hand at a second edition of the “Lunar Olympics” to celebrate the Olympic spirit that preceded the – then tragically known – 1972 Munich Olympics.

The two astronauts tried their hand again at javelin throwusing a piece of equipment ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package) and in a series of high jumpsconvinced that they could easily beat athletes on Earth thanks to the lower lunar gravity (about one sixth of Earth’s).

The result however it wasn’t the best because of heavy backpack containing the survival gear that the two astronauts were wearing. Not only did the backpack not allow them to beat the athletes on Earth, but even Charles Duke, after a 1.2 meter jump, fell ruinously on the back, running the risk of irreparably damaging the survival backpack and thus dying during the “Olympic” effort.

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The “Sky is the limit” trophy presented to astronaut Charles Duke by the IOC in 2018. Credit: IOC/Christophe Moratal

Fortunately, the backpack resisted the impact, and so for his display of courage and Olympic spirit, Charles Duke was awarded the 2018 IOC (Olympic Games Committee) prize “The Sky is the Limit”which in the words of then IOC President Thomas Bach “truly demonstrated that the Olympic spirit knows no boundaries.”