AMAZING & EXTRAORDINARY FACTS
THE OLYMPICS
STEPHEN HALLIDAY
CONTENTS
Introduction: ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’
Made in England: Reviving the Olympics
The first Modern Olympian: William Penny Brookes and Much Wenlock
The Modern Olympics take shape
Athens 1896: the first Modern Olympics
The Professionals arrive and TV takes hold
INTRODUCTION:
‘THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH’
In Trafalgar Square, London, on Wednesday 27th July 2011 the Belgian President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Jacques Rogge, called upon the athletes of the world to assemble in London exactly one year later for the 30th Olympiad of the modern era for what has been described as ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, speaking shortly afterwards, observed that, since the Olympic venues were ready a year in advance, they should call a snap Olympics there and then and catch the world napping. Boris wasn’t quite right. The stadia were built but had to be tried in test events while timing mechanisms and other essential equipment had to be installed. However, it was undoubtedly the case that a previously derelict and much-polluted post-industrial site had been transformed into an Olympic Park and a much-needed green space in a deprived area of East London. This was only the latest miracle in the story of the Olympic Games.
In a sense, by coming to Britain the Modern Olympics were coming home. The ancient games, which ran for over a thousand years, owed their origin to a desire to bring peace to warring Greek city states like Athens and Sparta, and the ancient games had many characteristics in common with the Modern Olympics, including cheating and the adulation of successful competitors. But the abolition of the Games in 393 AD on the grounds that they were pagan meant that they were forgotten for almost 1500 years except in England where the Olympic Games were remembered and celebrated by a motley collection of scholars, con men and a country doctor. Baron Pierre de Coubertin is rightly credited with being the inspiration behind the Modern Olympics. But it is usually forgotten that he drew his inspiration from some unlikely figures including Doctor Thomas Arnold of Tom Brown’s Schooldays at Rugby School and Dr William Penny Brookes whose ‘Much Wenlock Olympics’ from 1850 inspired the Frenchman to press ahead with plans to revive the Olympics, beginning at Athens in 1896. The Paralympics were also inspired by an English doctor, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, whose work at the spinal injuries unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Buckinghamshire, led him to conclude that exercise was beneficial to seriously injured people. It is not by chance that the mascots for London 2012 are called ‘Wenlock’ and ‘Mandeville’.
The Modern Olympics are undoubtedly a triumph and have more than justified their motto ‘citius, altius, fortius’ (Latin for faster, higher, stronger) as records are broken at every games. But they have also been dogged by controversy and involved some very strange people. These range from the man who hitched a lift to win the St Louis Marathon in 1904 (he was caught out); Communist and African dictators who were awarded the Olympic Order for illustrating the Olympic Ideal; drug cheats; and bribery. They have also involved some unusual events including ‘The Old Woman’s Race for a Pound of Tea’ (Much Wenlock, 1850s); live-pigeon shooting (Paris, 1900); the two-handed discus, shot and javelin (Stockholm, 1912); rope-climbing, tumbling and club swinging (Los Angeles, 1932); and medals for art, architecture, literature, painting and music, last awarded in London in 1948.
London thus looks forward to hosting the Olympics for the third time. No other city has achieved this treble though Athens staged the Olympics of 1896 and 1904 and the unofficial ‘intercalated games’ of 1906. Any account of the Olympics, especially one which focuses on records and other amazing facts as this one does, is dependent upon a variety of sources, many of them contradicting one another.
Stephen Halliday
THE ANCIENT GAMES
The Ancient Games
Holding hands
According to legend the original Olympic Games were founded by the Greek hero Herakles (Roman Hercules), better known for being obliged to complete twelve apparently impossible tasks, the ‘Labours of Hercules’ – known as his ‘athla’ – which is one contender for the origin of the word ‘athlete’ though one of the rivals is mentioned below.
NOT LIKE NEWMARKET
One of Herakles’ labours was that of cleaning the stables of King Augeus. According to this legend Herakles, having completed the task by diverting a river through the ‘Augean’ stables, was denied his reward by the king whom Herakles then defeated (or possibly killed) in a wrestling match. According to the legend this wrestling match was the first Olympic event.
Herakles
The first clear record of the games credits them to King Iphitos of Elis, a small state on Greece’s Peloponnesian peninsula, south of Corinth. It included the site of Olympia on which, according to an equally convincing legend, a thunderbolt had landed, tossed from Mount Olympus by Zeus, king of the gods, in one of his frequent bouts of irascibility. Consequently Olympia contained a shrine and temple to Zeus including a famous statue of the god, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was made of ivory and gold by the most celebrated of Greek sculptors, Phidias, who had also carved the statuary on the Parthenon in Athens. There is, however, some earlier evidence that games involving several cities began as early as 1300 BC under King Aethlius, also of Elis. Some sources