The 1891 International Gymnastics Festival, Sweden’s first international sports event and five years before the first modern Olympic Games, was hugely controversial. Many people argued that hosting the festival threatened the survival of Sweden’s own “Ling gymnastics” and even Swedish culture itself. These critics feared that hosting the competition, which would be shaped by outside influence, in turn would disadvantage Ling gymnastics and reduce confidence in a system that Swedes had believed to be the best in the world. The episode illustrates the complications arising from the emergence of international athletic competition and the underlying tension between nationalist and internationalist considerations.