In 1922, the daily cultural journal Comoedia launches the competition “Art and Sport”, which asks musicians, poets and architects to “glorify the modern athlete”. The winning musical piece, Cortège d’athlètes by Louis Vuillemin, is an overtly military and nationalistic work. This article traces out the relationship between gymnastics, sport and music in France from 1870 to the beginning of the 1920s, in order to understand how and why a military music connected to sport came about.