Frank Parrington Sr., here plunging in competition, owns the world record in plunge for distance and is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. (Family photo/Family photo)

When Kristian Ipsen won a bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics, he joined an illustrious list of American men who have won diving medals, which includes the curious trio of William Dickey, Edgar Adams and Leo Goodwin. They swept all three medals at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics in plunge for distance. The sport had not been contested before and has not been held in the 112 years since. It has faded into history. Ipsen had not even heard of it.

“But I think I’m really intrigued by it,” Ipsen said this week. “I would like to hear more.”

Ipsen was informed of the rules of plunge for distance: A diver leaps from an 18-inch platform and has 60 seconds to travel as far across the pool as possible without moving his arms or legs. One way to describe it would be a contest of leg strength, body control and lung capacity. Another would be competitive floating. Upon learning about the plunge for distance, Ipsen burst into uproarious laughter.

“That’s amazing,” Ipsen said. “I think they need to bring it back. I would love to do that. Sign me up for another event.”

[From Greece to Rio: A brief history of the Olympic Games]

Kristian Ipsen, left, with diving partner Troy Dumais, doesn’t want to give up synchronized diving — he and Dumais won a bronce in London four years ago — but he’d love to see the Plunge for Distance in the Olympics again. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

Plunge for distance is one of dozens of discontinued Olympic sports, relics dropped from the program and into history’s dustbin. At the Rio Games, spectators will see no dueling pistol, standing high jump, underwater swimming or tug of war — all of which are among the sports once included in the Olympics.

“A lot of things that were in the early Olympics, the organizing committee could just do whatever they wanted,” Olympic historian David Wallechinsky said. “I like the swimming obstacle race. Are you kidding? I mean, the equestrian high jump? That was a good one. They set a bar, just like humans.”

Many discontinued sports made a brief appearance in one of those early Olympics and vanished. Plunge for distance belongs in that group. The Americans swept the event, which was derided as boring for observers — it was not so much different from watching an empty pool — and as an unworthy test of skill. In 1917, a New York Times story mentioned that organizers wanted to eliminate the sport from the Amateur Athletic Union “on the plea that it is a type of contest requiring neither athletic ability, nor especial skill of any kind.”

If the plunge for distance required no skill, though, there would have been little separation between competitors. In fact, there was a standard bearer. Britain’s F.W. Parrington owns the world record, set in 1933, of 86 feet 8 inches and also the second- and third-longest plunges for distance. He thrived on the strength of his barrel chest, an important factor in buoyancy. He is in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

F.W.’s grandson, David Parrington, is the head diving coach at the University of Tennessee. Plunging is a point of family pride. Parrington keeps loads of black-and-white photographs of his grandfather, who served in World War I and became a local celebrity in Liverpool, where he worked as a police officer. He died during a World War II bombing of Liverpool in 1941, killed while searching an elevator shaft.

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Parrington recently spoke to Tennessee’s swimmers about plunging and how studying plungers’ streamlining and angle of entry into the water could help their own starts. He encourages his divers to try plunging, and “they are not too good at it,” Parrington said. He plunges himself, and his best is 75 feet, about 11 feet shy of his grandfather’s record.

“His form and streamlining were excellent during the plunge, which is of great importance, as is shoulder flexibility, so as to narrow the gap between the shoulders and head, thus creating spear-like body line though the water,” Parrington wrote in an email. “. . . It certainly helps to be buoyant, so the barrel chest clearly helped here. Body awareness is important, too. My dad used to tell me that as a youngster, [F.W.] would ask him to watch and make sure his heels were touching the surface of the water while gliding, which ensured a flat body position in the water.”

While Parrington keeps alive plunge for distance in Tennessee, the U.S. diving team had no clue about the sport.

“I thought I was pretty seasoned in my diving knowledge,” said David Boudia, the reigning platform gold medalist. “But I’ve never heard of that in my entire life.”

Boudia had little interest. Ipsen and Abby Johnston, a silver medalist in London, loved the idea. Johnston expressed initial confusion. “Wait,” she said, “was this an Olympic event?” After hearing more, she and Ipsen were hatching a plan.

“Can that come back?” Johnston said. “Because then we can make our comeback.”

“That’s right!” Ipsen replied. “That’s exactly what it is!”

“We want to do L.A. 2024, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, but we’d be so old,’ ” Johnston said. “How are we going to do this? And so maybe that’ll be our event. I don’t have to be fit to do that.”

“I’ll be 70 pounds heavier, just like, floating across the water,” Ipsen said.

“Our arms can be flappy, so it’ll be kind of like a bat wing.”

Ipsen laughed so hard he made no sound and doubled over at the waist.

“Oh, man,” he said. “I can’t wait.”

[Complete guide to the Olympic Games]

While plunge for distance had a short-lived Olympic existence, other discontinued sports had longer tenures. Tug of war, for example, took place in all six Olympics from 1900 to 1920. The sport disappeared, Wallechinsky said, owing to rampant controversy: Some competitors wore illegal, weighted boots.

“I believe they should bring tug of war back,” Wallechinsky said. “It’s something everybody can relate to.”

People are pulling on that rope, so to speak. Organizers considered tug of war as an additional event for Tokyo 2020 before five other sports were chosen.

“Most people who have witnessed a high-class tug of war competition can appreciate that it aspires to the Olympic traditions of strength, skill and stamina as well as a lot of technique,” England Tug of War Association Secretary Mick Copper said in an email. “Unfortunately, tug of war wasn’t included, but the sport will keep aiming for this goal.”

Tug of war, like many defunct Olympic sports and a raft of other offbeat games, finds a home on the international stage at the World Games, a quadrennial competition that takes place one year after the Olympics. The World Games could share a slogan with the “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story” fictional network ESPN 8, The Ocho: “If it’s almost a sport, we’ve got it here.”

World Games events include canoe polo, trampoline gymnastics, lifesaving, fistball, floorball and flying disc. Nobody has yet deduced a way to play flying disc in a canoe, but maybe that’s an idea for Wroclaw 2017.

The line between “almost a sport” and Olympic-worthy, though, is more arbitrary than you might assume. Rugby sevens, which will make its Olympic debut Saturday, was part of the previous World Games in 2013. So was sport climbing, which will included at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Let it not be forgotten that the venerable Olympic sport of modern pentathlon combines pistol shooting, fencing, freestyle swimming, show jumping and cross-country running.

“If you can have synchronized diving, plunge for distance should definitely be in the Olympics,” Wallechinsky said. “I’m sorry.”

That sentiment may rankle Ipsen, who won a synchronized diving bronze medal at the 2012 London Olympics. But Ipsen certainly would agree about bringing back the plunge for distance.

“I’m going to go try it when I get back to the pool,” he said.