“Today,” Shane Caffrey announced at the outset of last Sunday's inaugural Art Handling Olympics, "we find the best of the best of people you’ve never heard of." An eager crowd had gathered in the Lower East Side basement gallery Ramiken Crucible for the event, which Caffrey, head preparator at Marianne Boesky Gallery, had organized as a way of finally bringing into being a tournament that art handlers had joked about for decades. As the men and women who put in the hard labor behind the deceptively frictionless shows in the city's galleries and museums, these unsung heroes of the art world — many of them artists themselves — are rarely visible after the art is on the walls. This was their day of glory: a chance to compete with their peers in a series of physically and mentally demanding events highlighting the everyday situations they encounter when wrapping, transporting, or installing art.

After meeting early in the afternoon for team photos, groups with names like the Well Hung and the Stripped Screws massed downstairs in the dingy East Broadway gallery — a far cry from their accustomed white-cube environs. (Caffrey lovingly referred to the space as “a place where rats go to die.”) Tricked-out with a sturdy wooden stage, a sheet-rock wall with a mural of a wild boar, and a live DJ, the arena was filled with hundreds of revelers who greeted the participants with whoops of approval.

The first event, “Special Delivery,” was essentially a brutal elimination round to quickly pick the four teams to advance to the medal events. Asked to assemble a corrugated cardboard box atop a dolly outside the gallery, two team members then had to jump into the makeshift transport while the others pushed them through the streets to Dispatch gallery, several blocks away. At Dispatch they had to pick up a delivery and make it back — in one piece — to the starting point. There was one catch: on the way, two members of each team were required to make a pit stop at a local tavern, 169 Bar, where they had to down a box of dumplings followed by a shot of whiskey.

The teams that emerged victorious from this manic race were the Well Hung, Quick and Dirty, the King of Cleats, and Dept. 13. For the first medal round, “How’s it Hangin?,” the teams were asked to hang two framed prints of kittens on a wall, perfectly centered. Judging the teams on a scale of one to ten for this portion of the games were Paper magazine senior editor Carlo McCormick, Michael Werner Gallery director Justine Birbil, and Filippo Gentile, head preparator at the Brooklyn Museum. Since the judges were encouraged to comment during the proceedings, the games soon became as much about verbal abuse as physical endurance. “I’m not sure if you know what a straight line is," Gentile remarked when giving out one score, "but I never want to be standing next to you in a urinal.”

Next up was “The Static Hold,” in which the strongest member of each team had to hold a fifty-pound framed lead-cast painting against the wall while artist and art handler Ted Riederer, playing the role of an effeminate German curator, yelled “higher, higher!” and “lower, lower!” at them. Riederer jokingly chastised one participant as he tried to use his knees to balance: “No knees. Later we go on the knees.”

The following event, “Pack it in,” saw the teams attempt to wrap a large wooden sculpture in bubble wrap and cardboard. After this laborious task, the two top-scorers, the Well Hung and the King of Cleats, advanced to the final round, “The Eliminator.” The challenge? To open a large red crate, assemble a series of found objects into something that resembled a sculpture, and then pack it back into the crate. After the points were tallied, in something of an upset, the King of Cleats won the gold, with silver going to Well Hung, and the bronze to Dept. 13. Mike Recken, a member of the team, attributed their success to “good looks and brains.”

At one point in the evening, Caffrey proposed to the rapt crowd that a West Coast games be held in the future — a sure provocation to the proud New York audience. The notion was greeted by a round of boos and indignant shouts (“They smoke too much weed!”). Mingled with the sweat in the air, the community spirit in the room was palpable. According to Caffrey, the Olympics were really an excuse for these hard-working professionals to have fun and bask in a little fleeting recognition. “It’s a way to get together," Caffrey said. “We go back and forth between pulling our hair out and laughing hysterically. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you won’t last very long. A lot of stuff we have to do is really absurd.”