Compiled by Janet Hamilton
From the OrigamiUSA Newsletter Issue 79, 2003/Volume 1
While origami is not usually considered an athletic pursuit, the members of the origami-l email list have noted a number of origami sightings related to sports:
“Have Business Card, Will Tee Off”, by Teresa Riordan, from the September 30, 1996 NY Times Patents column:
“Robert J. Veylupek and George Wallace Jr. of Las Vegas, Nevada have patented a "combination business card golf tee". The golf tee is formed when a perforated tab is locked into an opening at one end of the card. "The tee comprises the card in an arched form, with the ends of the card acting as legs for the tee, and the absence of the body portion of the tab forming a saddle elevated above the ground into which the ball may be placed," the patent states. Patent # 5,503,396”
In the 2/23/98 issue of the Globe & Mail (a Canadian newspaper), there was an ad for Visa showing a 4-man bobsled team made of origami. The work consisted of the sled as well as the faces of the team members (each folded separately). Another Visa ad had an origami figure skating duo. The skirt of the female skater was pleated.
Ros Joyce created some models of Olympic symbols for IBM. They chose to use only the flower she created which was the symbol of 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.
From The Washington Post's sports section on Sunday, August 2, 1998, page D4, "When Flyfishing, Capt. Bartlett Makes Sure Humor Runs Through It", by Angus Phillips. Capt. Bartlett uses crisp $1 bills to make fish flies.
Reuters, 4/30/2002, “Japanese go ori-barmy over Becks” – “In line with a Japanese origami tradition that folding 1,000 paper cranes will make a wish come true, Japanese soccer fans have folded 6,000 for the recovery of injured England captain David Beckham in time for the World Cup.”
7/2002 - Sports Illustrated Women carried a Joseph Wu-designed ad for Luna nutritional snack bars. The focal point of each ad is an origami LUNA wrapper that represents a particular aspect of freedom or empowerment. The first ad, “Shield,” features a woman with a LUNA wrapper shield facing a storm of arrows. “Flying,” features an origami woman with LUNA wings, flying over a cityscape. “Sailing” features a boat on a paper sea with a Luna bar wrapper for a sail. http://www.wongdoody.com/current_news.asp?Id=3&pressId=41 and http://www.wongdoody.com/work.asp?id=2&page=work#
8/2002 - During the Little League World Series, the Japanese team had a Senbazuru hanging in the dugout.
Darren Scott and Michael Janssen-Gibson created Olympic rings and 200 Olympic athletic figures in 5 designs to decorate some of the Official Sponsor dining suites for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The athletic designs were inspired by a photo in an ORU magazine, and included a runner, fencer, soccer player, gymnast and hurdler. Darren designed the Olympic Rings model. The models formed part of the table decorations, housed in clear frames.
An old episode of Saturday Night Live had Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell acting as 2 Olympic skaters having a conversation with Michelle Kwan They talked about their visit to Japan, and after a flashback scene, they were playing with rather large flapping cranes.
The 2002 Soccer World Cup soccer finale in Yokohama, Japan included millions of folded paper cranes dropped from the sky. Most of the cranes were folded by the students in Japan as part of the "Wings of a Dream" project. The cranes were made using special colored paper that bears the World Cup emblem and allowed the cranes to stay in the air longer than regular paper.
Geocaching is an adventure sport for GPS (Global Positioning System) users. Participants set up caches all over the world and share the location coordinates of these caches on the internet. Once found, a cache provides the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache. Kim Best created a One Thousand Cranes geocache that includes instructions and paper for making a crane. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=35953
Erica Westcott, on a recent Appalachian Trail hike, reported spotting a bear, interesting flora, fauna, and fungi, and origami! Along the route are shelters containing journals so that hikers can leave stories, comments, etc. On the inside front cover or one journal was taped a traditional crane folded from a silver Hershey's wrapper. The folder was only identified by his trail name, Bird Man. Erica reported leaving a origami butterfly with the only paper available - a teabag.
The Great Cardboard Boat Regatta organizes events featuring human sized cardboard boats. The sport originated in 1974 at Southern Illinois University. Now Regattas are enjoyed by more than 1,500 participants and more than 100,000 spectators across the USA (mostly in the mid-west). For photos and information, see http://www.gcbr.com/index.html