SYMHC Classics: 1900 Olympic Games

Published Jul 20, 2024, 1:00 PM

This 2012 episode from prior hosts Sarah and Deblina explains how the 1900 Paris Olympics are considered some of the strangest. Many of the events were so under-promoted, the athletes competing in them didn't know they were even in the Olympics.

Happy Saturday. One of our episodes this week is going to describe a number of things that happened at the nineteen hundred Olympic Games. Prior hosts Sarah and Doblina did a whole episode just on these games on July twenty fifth, twenty twelve, so that's today's Saturday Classic. A little bit of the general history of the nineteen hundred Games also came up in our previous.

Episode on Pierre de Kuberptin and the Modern Olympic Games, which we already ran as a Saturday Classic in November of twenty twenty. Today's Classic has a little bit about him as well. So all of these episodes kind of knit together with one another, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hello, Welcome to the podcast.

I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm Dablina Chockerboardy and today.

The Olympic Games like such an institution that it's hard to believe they almost didn't make it past their second time out in nineteen hundred. But of course, then with only one previous modern Olympics on the books, the Paris Games just proved to be such a disaster and often hilarious disasters. We're going to see that. It's pretty remarkable that everyone agreed to give it another go four years later in Saint Louis, and even the founder of the modern Games himself, Pierre Baron de Coupetin, later said quote, it's a miracle the Olympic movement survived these games.

So we'll tell you just a few of the issues as kind of a teaser here. For one thing, the game stretched from May to October. I mean, can you even imagine something like this no going on today. They were so poorly organized as well and poorly promoted that the athletes often didn't even realize they were competing in the Olympics. And if you knew you were competing, it wasn't because of the flashy venues and the high quality equipment that you were working with. You were swimming in the sun, you were competing in track and field events throughout the woods and using old utility polls as hurdles. So not exactly top of the line, not stuff going on here.

So because of the odd circumstances that surround the nineteen hundred Games, some sport historians don't even consider them Olympics at all. They don't even consider them part of the modern Olympic tradition, at least according to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement. They're seen simply as sporting events that were held as a side show for the Universal Exposition. Still though, I mean, we're going to go ahead and consider them real Olympics. And if we do that, the Paris Games did include some pretty notable First one, it was much larger than the first modern Games that had been held in Athens, and the Paris Games attracted athletes from more foreign nations than ever, so it was more of an international event that the organizers were striving for.

It also featured the first women competitors, which was significant, and it helped set the precedent for rotating the Games between cities. But to really understand the bizarre side show that was the nineteen hundred Games, it helps to go back a little bit. So we're gonna take you back to some other Olympics, way back. The ancient Olympics may have their roots in Greek myth, but the first official games were actually held in seven seventy six BC, So after trekking on for centuries with foot races, chariot competitions, and wrestling matches to the death. The games were banned in three ninety three a d by Christian Emperor Theodosius due to their polytheistic roots, and the history of the modern games might lead you to believe that there was then a lull of more than fifteen hundred years with no games at all, but that's actually not quite accurate. Athletic competitions, both local and national, which build themselves the Olympics and took at least some Hellenic inspiration, are documented as far back as the Renaissance.

It's a little known fact here. So we're just going to give you some examples of these Olympic Games that occurred in the meantime and some of the events they featured too. Competitors in Robert Dover's Olympic Games, and that's Olympic with a K added on. I really like that touch. Those games started in sixteen twelve, and people would compete in events based on their position in society, something that seems pretty unusual, but maybe doesn't seem quite as strange as if you look at it as a country fair, that sort of thing. So gentry might compete in hunting or even chess. Townspeople could wrestle or do something called fighting at the barriers. Rural folk might participate in something called cudgel play or shin kicking, tumbling, something called skittles, or pipe and tabor music. So a varied repertoire of activities for the rural folk.

Moving on to the nineteenth century, there was an explosion in Olympic events. In the eighteen thirties. There were the Olympic Games of ram Lursa with events like massed climbing, and the much Winlock Olympian Games with sports like wheelbar racing, plus some competition for the less athletically inclined, like a knitting and a biblical history contest.

There was also Evangelist Sappus Olympics in Greece, a pretty famous one which was heavily influenced by ancient traditions. Still, though, it took Pierre Baron de Couberton, an enthusiastic supporter of physical education in general, to draw inspiration from these different local Olympic traditions and push for an international game something more like how we think of the Olympics today. So Kubertant had become an ardent supporter of reviving the Olympics since he met with Englishman doctor William Penny Brooks in eighteen ninety and Brooks had started the much win Lock Olympian Games forty years earlier, and he had also corresponded for years with evangelist Zappas had sort of incorporated some of those Greek traditions that were going on into his own games. But since the eighteen sixties, Brooks had been really interested in promoting the idea of an international Games. The problem was he just couldn't get that much interest for it.

So after seeing the articles and ideas of the elderly Brooks, coupertant took up the torch and went back to France and pitched the idea himself at the Union d sport Athletique in eighteen ninety two. He couched the event as a diplomatic opportunity. He said, quote, let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true free trade of the future, and the day it is introduced into Europe, the cause of peace will have received a new and strong ally.

Again. Though there just wasn't that much interest in this Coubertant, though, was undeterred, and he tried to pitch his idea at this Athletic Congress again in eighteen ninety four. This time there was some success. He says that people probably just went along with it for his benefit, but still they went along with it, and Kubertant, being French, naturally suggested that his hometown of Paris would be the perfect spot. In nineteen hundred would be, you know, as a new century, the perfect year to commence the modern Games after this long lull.

Somehow, though both the date and the host city changed, it was Athens that would host the inaugural games. Things went well, both for Couberton and the new International Olympic Committee. Though the Greek Prime Minister had initially refused to stage the games, his successor was game to make this happen, and the King of Greece opened the events on Greek Independence Day in eighteen ninety six. There were athletes from fourteen different countries international, just like they had hoped exactly. The first medallist was American James Connolly, but the Greeks took home their most COVID prize, first place in the marathon, with more than one hundred thousand spectators showing up to watch the race.

Yeah, due to the historical significance of the marathon, which we've covered in an earlier episode on the Battle of Marathon, you can understand why the Greeks really wanted that one. Some of the events that these eighteen ninety six Olympics sound a little bit risky today. For instance, Hungarian Alfred Hyos, who won the one hundred meter and twelve hundred meter swimming events, remembered being taken out to sea on a boat and left to swim to shore. That was how they were going to cover the long distance swimming, and he said that quote his will to live completely overcame his desire to win. I can understand that perspective too. So even though there are some things that might seem a little bit strange today, like that the first Olympics were considered a success and the Greeks wanted to post them permanently. They wanted to host the nineteen hundred Olympics and on from there.

The IOC, however, the Olympic Committee they preferred rotating, especially since the Greek Turkish war made a second Athens game seem a little less appealing. Plus Paris, even without Kuberton's hometown Boosterism, was due to host the nineteen hundred Universal Exposition. A great opportunity to kind of double up on major crowds.

They're already, you've got the infrastructure. Seems like a perfect opportunity.

To double being operative word there exactly.

Really doubling up proved to be almost the undoing of the Paris Games because it left no one definitively in charge. Instead of being this special quadrennial celebration, the Olympics just became a side show of the exposition, a fairground side show. Part of the problem was that the French government was already planning sporting expositions for the fair and remember this is the early years of physical education, so it was hoped that these public displays of sport, alongside other public displays of indus and culture, would not only encourage folks to get out there and move and exercise things we might expect events like this to encourage today, but also promote quote moral energy as well. According to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement.

But as the IOC lost control to the French government, the difference between the Olympic sporting displays and the non Olympic displays became very unclear. As we already mentioned, some athletes didn't even know that they had participated in the Olympics. Their confusion was heightened by a couple things. For one thing, the vast number of Olympic events. According to Olympic dot Org, there were ninety five events and nine hundred and ninety seven competitors from twenty four different countries. Another problem was the extreme under promotion. That telltale word Olympics wasn't used on event programs, so even though there were scores of visitors in Paris for the Universal Exposition, the Olympic displays were sometimes poorly attended, both by the press and spectators. The women's croquet match, for example, had only one person in attendance, an Englishman who had traveled from Nice specifically for this event.

So I hope he enjoyed the show.

At least he got a good seat.

I'm sure he did so. Many of the events also seem pretty bizarre today, aside from the whole organizational issue. Some of them, like archery or equestrian were new to the Games at the time but are normal now. They seem like Olympic staples. Others like gymnastics were simply a lot different from what we know today. In nineteen hundred, gymnasts had to complete sixteen different movements, including lifting a fifty kilogram stone, climbing a rope, and pole vaulting. So I'm imagining the little, tiny teenage Olympians doing the things like the pole vaulting and the fifty kilogram stone.

Interesting, what's weirder as an event like say tug of war at the Olympics. Incidentally, tug of war was one of the five sports where people from several nationalities competed on the same team too, so.

More like a field day event.

Yeah, lots of strange stuff going on there, or strange to us today. At least, swimming events included oddities like an obstacle race where you would duck under boats. Doesn't sound very safe.

Yeah, but even traditional events got sort of an unusual twist because of the venues that they were held in. So, I mean, we all goggled at Beijing's stunning water cube Aquatic Center during the two thousand and eight Games, but competitors in the nineteen hundred Games had to do their swimming competitions in the Seine, where currents would just create these insane records. I mean, we were just talking about the eighteen ninety six Games where you'd be towed out to see, but swimming in a river wouldn't be much easier either.

No, it would not. And there was also the fencing, which at one event pitted teachers against students, so that was one thing, but it was also held at the Universal Expositions cut area, so almost as if there was some sort of early Olympic marketing.

Except we know that couldn't be it, because they didn't market anything.

Just easier access to somebody's joke. I guess it just seemed to make logical sense to put it there. Track and field events were held on the grass center of a horse track, where there were mounds and dips, and the straightaway headed off into the woods and was uphill, so spectators trying to see the finishes would stand up and they would actually interfere with the runners. The hurdles, as we mentioned, were old utility poles, and jumpers had to dig their own pits, and discus and hammer throwers frequently hit trees. But worse than that, the Hungarian medallist Rudolph Bauer actually had throws enter the crowd, according to Tom Boreski and McLean's.

Yeah, I didn't see anything about those throws injuring someone, which seems fairly miraculous.

But I would imagine he have meddled if he had hurt somebody. But maybe so, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about that.

The marathon course was another bizarre case in this Olympics. It went through the middle of Paris, but it was so poorly supervised that many of the finishers accused the three French victors of taking some secret shortcuts, something that they backed up by the fact that the winners looked pretty comfortable. They didn't look like they had just run a marathon.

But everyone knows athletes are really the true stars of the Games, and Paris in nineteen hundred had its fair share of notable competitors too well. French athletes won the majority of events, which wasn't surprising at all since they were the only nation competing in several so there were some events where they were the Frenchmen right, they were the only ones competing. American Alvin kurnz Line became the biggest name at the Games, he won the sixty meter, the one hundred ten meter hurdles, and the two hundred meter hurdles. He also won the long jump after his teammate Meyer Prinstein, was forbidden to participate in the finals by his university since they were to be held on Sunday, even though prince Stein was Jewish. When Princelin won by one centimeter, prince Stein was apparently so angry he punched his teammate in the face.

Another strange athlete story, George Orton became the first Canadian to medal eight years before Canada even sent a team to the Games, and that's because Orton, who had been attending University of Pennsylvania, where a lot of the American track and field team members were based, just joined up with their team. His first event, he came in last place in the four hundred meter hurdles, but he still meddled because there were only three competitors. An hour later, though, he got kind of a more prestigious medal than that. He won the steeplechase, which was considered his specialty, and broke a world record, one of the six world records broken at the Games.

Stan Rawley, who was an Australian track star one third place in the sixty meter race, one hundred meters and two hundred meter race. After his victories for Australia, then the British got him to join their team for the five thousand meter event since they were one man short. Now Rowley had never run a distance race, but because of the points scoring, all he actually had to do was cross the finish line. In the end, he didn't even have to do that. Race officials got so tired of waiting for him that they automatically gave him last place, which was enough for his team to win.

And I was a little amazed by this. Apparently he was kind of walking, but five thousand meters, I can see how a sprinter wouldn't be able to compete in that. It's funny he took so long enough for them to cancel it. So. Of the twenty two female competitors, though British tennis player Charlotte Cooper was the first woman to win an Olympic event. Margaret Abbott, though, I think, is a particularly interesting case. She was just a Chicago girl who was studying art in Paris and entered the golf competition on a whim. And won. So not the sort of traditional Olympic process you might expect today. But I think the best athlete story has to be that of an unnamed and unknown French boy. On August twenty sixth, during the coaxed paar rowing event, the Dutch team needed a replacement coxin and they drafted a French boy who was believed to be somewhere around seven or was believed to be somewhere around seven and twelve years old at the time, and with this kid on their team, they rode to victory. According to Olympic dot org, the French kid did join in the ceremony. He was photographed, but nobody got his name and years of research haven't been able to uncover his identity. He's the lost Olympian.

Well.

The thoroughly bizarre Paris Games closed October twenty eighth, nineteen hundred, and even though they seem so disastrous, at least some people were convinced by the Olympic message. A writer for to Velo wrote November nineteen hundred that since the Games, quote sport has definitely become a new religion. And in nineteen oh four, the Saint Louis Olympics were again swallowed up by a world's fair and went on for way too long. Once again, four and a half months. Organizers didn't even learn lessons from the disastrous Paris Marathon. American Thomas Hicks won the gold after his teammate was disqualified for driving most of the course. How do you even do that?

It's nineteen oh four, I don't know still though, even at that Games, the Saint Louis Games records were broken. Archie Han, for instance, the Milwaukee Metior set a time for the two hundred meter race that stood for twenty eight years, and athletes again captured public attention. American George iSER, for instance, won six medals in gymnastics even though he had a wooden leg the nineteen oh eight London Games. By that point things were beginning to look a little bit more official. They finally trying to double them up with these Worlds fare and by nineteen twelve with the Stockholm Games, for the first time, teams from five continents competed.

Strangely, it may have been the Olympics cancelation during World War One that really led to its ultimate endurance. During that time, Kubertant worked on reshaping the game's identity, moving its headquarters to Switzerland and promoting its ideology as quote, the pursuit of peace and intercultural communication through international sport. After the first post war Games held in Belgium in nineteen twenty, the Olympic rings appeared for the first time, and Coopertant retired from the IOC after seeing Paris finally make good with the successful nineteen twenty four games.

Yeah, and Cooperton Dublin and I were discussing this earlier has an almost poetic end here. He died in nineteen thirty seven, making his last game the nineteen thirty six Berlin Olympics and sparing him too from seeing the two games that were canceled during World War Two. He was buried in Lausan, which is the Olympic headquarters, all except for his heart, which was interred near the ruins of ancient Olympia. Pretty fitting, it seems. His idea, though, is I think a good point for us to close this episode on. He hoped that the games would really inspire international respect. That was the whole point of turning something that clearly, as we've seen with these examples from the earlier games from the Renaissance, was pretty common, turning it into something that people from around the world could participate in. And here's how he described it. To ask the peoples of the world to love one another is childishness, but to ask them to respect one another is not in the least utopian. In order to respect one another, it is first necessary to know one another through sport.

Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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