If there's anything we can really count on as institutions crumble around us on a seemingly weekly basis, it's the Olympics. The international sport competition returns on a regular basis to hoist that familiar five-ringed flag, to parade around a flaming torch, and to award gold, silver and bronze medals to some of the world's top athletes. And, whatever new sports the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adds for each go-around, we can be sure it won't ever feature vehicles powered by combustion engines or electric motors in competition.

Except for the one time that it did, kinda.

Reader Eddie Eddindale recently submitted a question to Ask a Hemmings Editor wondering why he hadn't seen auto racing in the Olympics:

I'm 73 years old and can't recall once in my life ever hearing this being discussed. I think racing drivers are just as much athletes as any skier, shooter, sailor or skateboarder. They have to train for years to become competitive, and they have to be in peak physical condition to race at extreme speeds under daunting conditions. Does the Olympics exclude racing, and if so, why?

The short answer, Eddie, is that the IOC apparently did ban auto racing for a time, and though it appears to have lifted the ban and taken steps to recognize motorsports, it doesn't appear likely to put cars on a track anytime soon. The long answer gets more complicated and goes back to the second-ever Olympics, which weren't really Olympics, and which featured competition in a number of different categories, including delivery vans and fire trucks.

To begin with, the second-ever Olympics were supposed to be the first modern Olympics. In 1894, Pierre de Coubertin proposed bringing back the Greek sporting tradition to coincide with the 1900 Paris World's Fair, but his co-organizers decided they couldn't wait that long, so they got him to agree to let Athens host the first modern games in 1896. Paris was still on track to host the 1900 games, but de Coubertin's IOC ended up losing control of the 1900 Olympics to the organizers of the World's Fair, who then put together a schedule of events that lasted from May to October of that year and included a number of sports not typically associated with the Olympics, including ballooning, cricket and croquet. To be fair, the modern Olympics were just in their infancy, so traditions were not yet rooted; still, even the organizers of the games refrained from actually calling them the Olympics, and later Olympic historians have downplayed the 1900 games as "farcical" and unofficial in the Olympic canon. "The organisers... under-promoted their Olympic status to such an extent that many athletes never knew they had actually participated in the OlympicAlfred Veghle (Levegh) in a Mors. Source: Hemmings Games," the IOC noted in its entry on the 1900 Olympics.

Among those new and non-traditional sports at Paris were a variety of motorsports, including motorcycle racing, motorboat racing and automobile racing. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, France had been an automotive powerhouse, and amid the backdrop of an exposition meant to showcase the country, it only made sense to include automobiles in some manner. The organizers broke the competition down into a number of categories and sub-categories - touring cars, two-seater; touring cars, four-seater; voiturettes under 250 kilograms; voiturettes under 400 kilograms - as they did for track and field events. They even included categories for taxis, delivery cars, light trucks, electrics, and fire engines.

The highlight of the competition, however, would be the Paris-Toulouse race. While the other dozen categories focused on reliability and the juried results could be a little wonky (four vehicles won gold in the heavy truck category; silver wasn't handed out in the small truck or four-seater categories but both gold and bronze were; gold wasn't handed out in the seven-seater category, but silver was), the Paris-Toulouse race would be a timed over-the-roads race on a there-and-back course between the two cities measuring more than 800 miles. Total elapsed time and nothing else would determine the winners. Competitors could enter in either the small car or large car category.

That's not to say the Paris-Toulouse race was without its quirks. Entries were under the car manufacturer, not the driver's name, though drivers have since been recorded and recognized for participating in the race. Racing was not head-to-head, rather conducted in time trial format over three different stages. Prize money was awarded, which isn't so unusual for auto racing but is for the ostensibly amateur Olympics. And as with the reliability contests, the fields for both races were almost exclusively French: a couple Germans, a Belgian and a Brit entered the large car category, while only Frenchmen competed in the small car category.

The race was to take place from July 25-28, with two-minute intervals between starts. A number of drivers already famous in motorsports or who would soon become so showed up: Rene de Knijff, the Belgian driver, who had won multiple major intercity races over the previous two years; Alfred Velghe, one of France's first racers of note and uncle to Pierre Levegh, of 1955 Le Mans crash infamy; Eugene Brillie, of later Gobron-Brillie fame; and Louis Renault, just then getting his eponymous carmaking concern underway.

Both Louis Renault and his brother Marcel, who also entered the Paris-Toulouse race, believed in using motorsport to publicize car sales, and while Marcel DNF'd in the race, Louis did much to advance that cause by not only winning the small car category but also by finishing more than 11 hours ahead of the only two other entrants to complete the race, both of whom also drove Renaults. He won a prize of 4,000 francs along with the gold medal.

Ernest Montaut drawing of the 1900 Paris-Toulouse race. Source: Ernest Montaut

Velghe, who raced professionally under the Levegh name, took the large car category win, driving a Mors. His margin was slimmer than Renault's, coming in about an hour ahead of the second-place finisher. For his efforts, he won a 4,000-franc prize.

As for the reliability contests, French cars dominated. It's difficult to say anything about the drivers because their names weren't recorded; the only name that seems to appear in any records is that of American Gilbert Brown, who won the gold in the fire engine category. A Riker Electric from the United States took bronze in the small truck category, but every other recorded medalist in the reliability contests drove one of a number of French cars: Panhard et Levassor, Peugeot, Delahaye, Serpollet, Renault, Georges Richard,Source: Jules Beau Brought, Hurtu, deDion-Bouton, and so on.

And, uh, that's it for auto racing in the Olympics. The sport was supposed to return with motorboat racing for 1908 (the 1904 Olympics was another fiasco altogether) but was canceled after it was announced. The 1936 Berlin Olympics did include auto rallying as an exhibition event, with Swiss driver Paul Abt in a Riley Falcon and British driver Betty Haig in a Singer Le Mans both taking gold medals, and the 1972 Berline Olympics included a similar rally run as an exhibition event. As the IOC has noted, it has conducted electric karting races at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires and it did organize the FIA Gran Turismo Championships as part of the video game-centric 2021 Olympic Virtual Series.

Still, the Olympics has yet to feature proper tire-to-track auto racing in the quadrennial games. A number of sources, including the IOC, note that the Olympic Charter for many years prohibited "sports, disciplines or events in which performance depends essentially on mechanical propulsion" under Rule 52.4.2. A 2002 report from the Olympic Program Commission, for instance, addresses the specific implications of the rule and recommended that "sports and events in which athletes directly use and control automated propulsion as a component of competition should not be eligible for inclusion in the Olympic Programme."

That changed in 2007 when that language was removed from the charter. Then, five years later, the IOC included the FIA - the organizing body in charge of Formula 1 and World Rally Championship - in its Association of Recognised International Sports Federations, making the FIA "part of the Olympic Charter," according to the IOC. The IOC does require that a sport have an international federation and for that federation to be a part of the ARISF for that sport to be played at the Olympics; it's the same process that led the Olympics to include baseball, karate, and surfing, so it should theoretically pave the way for motorsports to appear in the Olympics.

That doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see hot rods in the Olympics anytime soon. Former IOC president Jacques Rogge said in 2012 that "the concept we are having is the games are about the competition for athletes, not for equipment." Notwithstanding the argument that bicycles and sailboats constitute equipment, his comments reflect a widespread notion that success in motorsports is far more reliant on having the faster car than on pure athleticism.

The IOC hasn't addressed the topic of motorsports in the Olympics beyond that.

Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Hemmings Motor News.