At the 1905 Olympic Congress in Brussels, a delegation of aero-club presidents (which included Henry, Count de la Vaulx, who had competed in the 1900 Olympics in ballooning) presented their sport to the IOC. The Congress, impressed, adopted a resolution asked for an international federation to be formed to regulate the sport of flying. A few months later, the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) was formed in Paris.
Strangely, the FAI was not recognized as an international federation by the IOC until 1938, when the sport of gliding was put on the Olympic program following a successful demonstration at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. However, in 1921 a prize for aeronautics appears in the minutes of the IOC Executive Committee meeting, together with a prize for alpinism. While the latter was awarded three times through 1936, the aeronautics prize remained unused for 15 years.
In 1946, the IOC Session decided to cancel the prize for aeronautics (along with that alpinism), and so 1936 remains the only time the prize was awarded at the Olympics.
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