Political friction tarnished Coubertin’s swan song. The French, like their counterparts in Antwerp, did not extend an invitation to Germany.18 The British Olympic Association insisted on an “empire plan”; rather than enter alphabetically during the opening ceremony, Great Britain would walk in first, followed by its “Dominion teams” from countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.19 During a rugby match between France and the United States, the Americans were drowned in boos; two US fans were roughed up in the stands.20 After a contentious fencing match between a Frenchman and an athlete from Italy, the Italian squad stalked off chanting the Fascist anthem. Against this backdrop, the IOC argued against calculating standings based on a point system in an effort to minimize jingoism. Nevertheless, a whole host of entities—from journalists to sports lovers—devised point systems and then argued over which one was most just.21 All this led the New York Times to report that the Games “have left in the minds of not a few of the contending teams and with the public a feeling of irritation and distaste.”22 Ever the optimist, the Baron acknowledged the “irreparable repercussions” of the funding battles prior to the Games, before extolling “the universal good humour of the athletes” and the steady progression of Olympic spirit. “From Stockholm to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Paris, its encouraging action continued,” he wrote.23 Perhaps most significantly, the 1924 Olympics brought the first incarnation of what eventually became the Winter Games, as the IOC gathered athletes to compete in Chamonix, France, ahead of the Summer Games in Paris.24
For Coubertin, the Olympics were a religion. Fortunately for him, there were enough disciples to carry on the five-ring gospel. In 1925, at its meetings in Prague, the IOC replaced the retiring Baron with a Count—more precisely Count Henri Baillet-Latour of Belgium. More arbiter than firebrand, Baillet-Latour had long been a member of the IOC, serving competently on various committees. Most observers saw Baillet-Latour’s selection as staying the Coubertin course.25 But one place where the Count differed was his grudging willingness to allow the increased participation of women at the Games.26
The 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam—the first without Coubertin at the helm—doubled the number of female participants: almost 300 women took part in the Games, thanks largely to the inclusion of a small slate of women’s track and field events. However, citing medical “evidence,” the IOC ruled after the Amsterdam Games that the 800-meter run was too dangerous. In Amsterdam, after completing the race, a number of competitors fell to the turf to regain their strength. Anti-feminists pounced at the opportunity, arguing that women were too frail to run such distances, and quite remarkably their views won out. Women were not allowed to compete in the 800-meter run until the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Still, in 1928 women comprised about 10 percent of all Olympic athletes. Germany was also allowed through the Olympic gates for the first time since World War I. The Amsterdam Olympiad continued the trend started in Paris four years earlier of including all sports played on snow or ice in a separate Winter Olympics, this time at St. Moritz, Switzerland. The Summer Games featured an Olympic flame for the first time, thanks to architect Jan Wils, who designed a cauldron for the Amsterdam stadium. On the commercial front, Coca-Cola became an Olympics sponsor, a relationship that has lasted through the present day.27
Amsterdam was nearly derailed as host when the Dutch Parliament rejected public funding for the Olympics, partly because of fiscal considerations but also because many parliamentarians felt holding sports competitions on Sundays would desecrate the Sabbath. The Dutch Olympic Committee, forced to conjure an end run, found financing through a hefty loan from the Municipal Council of Amsterdam: some 5 million guilders (about $2 million at the time). The Dutch East Indies also kicked in a substantial sum, backed by a group of wealthy Dutch bankers. Nevertheless, the center of gravity for Olympic funding was shifting toward the state.28
The Amsterdam Games was the five-ring farewell for one of the most successful Olympians ever, Paavo Nurmi of Finland. Nicknamed the Flying Finn, Nurmi won nine gold medals and three silvers over three Olympic Games in 1920, 1924, and 1928. Nurmi was a long-distance specialist who excelled in the 1,500-meter, 5,000-meter, and 10,000-meter runs. The working-class runner who was famous for training with a stopwatch in hand might have won more medals, had the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) not deemed him ineligible ahead of the 1932 Olympics for allegedly accepting money to compete. Athletics honchos, including Avery Brundage, ruled that Nurmi had sacrified his amateur status on the altar of cash-compensated professionalism.29 The battle over amateurism had flared up once again.
Women’s Games
The Olympics echoed the gender and class structures of the time, but marginalization sparked an innovative response. In the 1920s, dissident athletes teamed up in solidarity with sympathetic supporters to organize alternative athletic competitions rooted in principles of equality.
To challenge IOC sexism, women and their allies organized alternative games, a vital yet largely forgotten act of political dissent. Everywhere women looked, the Olympic cards were stacked against them. The IOC, as led by Coubertin, opposed women’s full participation, as the minutes of the 1914 IOC general session made clear: “No women to participate in track and field, but as before—allowed to participate in fencing and swimming.”30 Discrimination was baked into the master plans.
Enter Alice Milliat, a French athlete and activist whose bold actions scythed a path for women’s participation in the Games. After the exclusion of women from track and field in Antwerp, Milliat founded the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale (FSFI) on October 31, 1921. At its first meeting, the group voted to establish a Women’s Olympics as an alternative to the male-centric Games. In total four Women’s Games were staged, in 1922 (Paris), 1926 (Gothenburg, Sweden), 1930 (Prague), and 1934 (London), with participants coming mostly from North America, Western Europe, and Japan.
Milliat and the FSFI found a way into the Olympic structure, thanks to a highly placed, grudging ally, J. Sigfrid Edström of Sweden. In 1912 Edström, a longtime Olympic movement booster, founded the International Amateur Athletic Federation to govern Olympic track and field, with Coubertin’s blessing. In 1922, following the successful Women’s Games, Edström and his colleagues brought the FSFI under the umbrella of the IAAF. This opened a path for women’s participation in the Olympics, but the price to the FSFI was forfeiting a certain degree of autonomy to the IAAF. As part of that price, the FSFI had to rename its event the Women’s World Games to avoid mentioning “Olympics,” a foretaste of the hypervigilant defense of branding to come.31
The first Women’s Olympics in 1922 were largely a success. More than 20,000 people attended the single day of competition at Paris’s Stade Pershing, where athletes from five countries (Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Switzerland, and the United States) competed in eleven events, more than twice as many as the IOC would include when it finally allowed more women’s track and field events in 1928. Newspapers of the day reported favorably, if somewhat backhandedly, on the strides women were making in sports. According to the New York Times, 1922 “was notable for the development of women athletes in all branches of competitions fitting to their sex. Remarkable progress was made by them, and almost overnight, they assumed a place of great prominence in the world of athletics.” No longer were “girl athletes … a decided novelty,” but “capable of impressive performances.”32
Four years later at Gothenburg, the now renamed Women’s World Games were also a one-day affair, although with athletes from eight countries. In 1930, Prague played host to a three-day gathering featuring more than 200 top-flight female athletes from seventeen countries. Media coverage was typical of its day, if belittling by present-day standards. In an article titled “Girls Go to Prague,” one newspaper reported, “Nine girls from Vancouver B.C., young, athletic and socially prominent, accompanied by a chaperone, are on their way to Czechoslovakia.”33 Nevertheless, the event drew considerable public interest, with more than 15,000 spectators. The fourth