The participants and their olympic records

Running

The cheetah is the fastest land animal: 120 kph. It is faster than the antelope, one of the animals it hunts, which can reach nearly 90 kph. To match it, a human would need a motorbike or a car.
With peak speeds of 70 kph, the ostrich can get away from most of its enemies. With its powerful legs, knees that are flexible and supple, and feet reduced to just two toes, the ostrich is a real speed merchant.
Grevy's zebra is the largest of the zebras. When galloping, it can reach 65 kph, what enables him to escape from the lion, a major natural enemy.
Over short distances, the African elephant can reach speeds of 40 kph - an Olympic sprinter cannot achieve such a performance.
In 1896, Tom Burke ran the 100 m in 11.8 s, equivalent to 30.5 kph. Donovan Bailey has held the record since 1996: he ran the 100 m in 9.85 s, at a speed of almost 36.5 kph.
The rabbit is a good jumper, and a good runner too. Usually it runs at a speed of 25 kph. But if it has to escape, its gait becomes more bounding and it can hit speeds of 38 km an hour!
With a somewhat...slower gait, the spur-thighed tortoise can still manage to travel at 250 m an hour!
The snail is not really very fast: 4.5 m an hour...Maybe it's because it is carrying its house on its back?

Jumping

The eastern grey kangaroo is a jumping champion. It has powerful hind legs and jumps the length of a bus: 12 m!
The impala can jump 3 m high and 10 m long. And when it jumps forward, it is seldom in a straight line: a leap to the left, a leap to the right ... here is an effective method for escaping the cheetah's claws.
The agile frog makes use of its long, muscular hind legs for jumping. It's a champion: 2 metres, without any run-up!
The grasshopper can move very rapidly, by jumping. How does it score? Leaps of 1.20 m. To match that, we would have to jump over 50 men stretched out one behind the other.
At the first modern Olympic Games (1896), Ellery Clark won the gold medal for the long jump, with a jump of 6.35 m. The current record has been held by Bob Beamon since 1968: 8.90 m.
A flea jumps between 20 and 30 cm...Derisory? It's still 30 to 200 times its length (depending on the species it belongs to).
The hippopotamus is far too heavy to jump, but its 3 tonnes don't stop it floating like a buoy! It's a good runner too (30 kph).

Shooting

When it sticks out its tongue, the chameleon rarely misses its target. The tongue shoots out towards its prey at 100 kph. As the end is sticky, the prey remains stuck to it.
The archerfish turns its palate and its tongue into a min-canon: the projectiles are water droplets. If its shots fail to bring down its prey, the archerfish can jump out of the water - to a height of 30 cm - to catch it.
The lesser black backed gull is voracious and not very fussy: it roots around in bins and pilfers from holiday-makers' picnics. Just as frequently, it steals eggs from nests. To open one, it uses a kind of shooting: it rises to a height, with the egg in its mouth; then lets it fall, aiming for a rock.
The llama has a fairly placid character, but it defends itself by spitting!
The bombardier beetle is a chemical arsenal on legs! As soon as it feels threatened, it expels an irritant jet towards the aggressor, up to 5 cm!
In clay-pigeon shooting with a shotgun, the idea is to hit clay plates in full flight. In rifle and pistol shooting, the shooter aims to make the projectiles strike as closely as possible to the centre of the target. In archery, it's the same.

Swimming

The swordfish is the fastest swimmer of all, at almost 130 kph. It is a good diver too: it can go down to 800 m when it is following a shoal of fish!
At its cruising speed, the bottlenose dolphin swims at 10 kph, but in a sprint it can reach 45 kph. When it is hunting, it can go 10 minutes without breathing.
Between 1968 and 2002, competitive swimmers knocked more than 5 s off the record for the 100 m. Right now, the very fastest exceed 8 kph (yes, indeed, only 8).
Underwater, the king penguin uses its little wings as fins. It cruises at 7-8 kph, with peaks of 12-15 kph. It is an excellent diver: it can stay underwater for an hour and go down to a depth of 200 m.
The common cuttlefish moves along very slowly (2 to 3 kph), by undulating. But when it has to flee, it reaches 11 kph.

Orientation

Not only does the rock pigeon have a sense of direction, but it has staying power too: in 1931 a carrier pigeon made a journey of 11 275 km in 7 days! During races the pigeon, in a hurry to get back to its loft, doesn't stop to drink: it skims the surface of a body of water with its beak open!
The Atlantic salmon has an exquisite sense of smell! This enables it to find the river where it was born.
The millipede has the memory of an elephant: it remembers the number of steps it has taken in each direction.
The bonobo is a forest treasure-hunt enthusiast. It uses plants as markers.
An orientation competition is a race against the clock through woodland over a route that has been marked out. Men cover 10 to 20 km in 90 minutes and women 7 to 15 km in 75 minutes.