Hey, did you know the Olympics were happening right now? Yeah, you knew. Everybody knows. Because the Olympics are great. And I'm jumping on the Olympic bandwagon by naming the late Fritz Hofmann August's "Hoffmann of the Month."
Fritz competed for Germany in the 1896 Games in Athens--that's right, the first modern Olympiad. My boy Fritz is an OG. He garnered a silver medal in the 100 m, the race now universally used to acknowledge "the world's fastest man."
But Hofmann wasn't just a sprinter; he actually had quite an eclectic Olympic resume, including a bronze medal performance in "Men's Rope Climbing" at those same '96 games. How cool is that? Apparently, this now-discontinued event crowned a champion "based on who climbed the rope the quickest and with the best style." Now I'm quite curious to find out what the various rope-climbing styles were back in the day. (In addition to being quirky, this is also quite impressive, since I had always agreed with Principal Skinner's assertion that it is not physically possible to climb a rope.)
That small picture above is the only one I can find of Fritz online, but it's practically life-size--at the turn of the 20th century, a 5'6" guy who weighed 123 pounds could be a dominant athlete. I wish he were still around and competing today, just so I could hear Bob Costas make a "bad puttin' on the Fritz" joke. You know he would.
Congratulations, Fritz! You're definitely one of the most-deserving Hoffmans of the Month ever.
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