“Give Life and Animation to Those Noble Games!” Or: The 1896 Olympics – Part Two:

Last week we looked at the origins of the modern Olympics, and learned that we owe their return to the sporting calendar in 1896 after a 1,500 year hiatus to Pierre de Coubertin. This week, we shall explore the actual games. What happened? Who won what? And what were the Olympics like then, as opposed to now?

First of all, we all know that the Olympics begin with an opening ceremony. Who can forget the archer in the wheelchair at Barcelona in 1992, or the drummers at Beijing in 2008? So, what did Athens in 1896 do to herald this new era of international sport?

Well, an estimated eighty thousand people made their way into the Panathinaiko Stadium, (to put that in a little context, that’s five thousand more people than it takes to fill Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium) including the Greek Royal Family, one member of which, Prince Constantine, had been instrumental in drumming up enthusiasm and funds for the games. As president of the IOC, he made a speech, after which his father, King George I declared the games officially open. The ceremony itself consisted mostly of music. There was no Olympic Flame here, that didn’t appear until 1928 (Neither were the famous Olympic rings present, they were not designed until 1912). So instead, there were nine bands and a hundred and fifty choir singers, who performed Spyridon Samaras and Kostis Palamas’s Olympic Hymn;

Immortal spirit of antiquity,
Father of the true, beautiful and good,
Descend, appear, shed over us thy light
Upon this ground and under this sky
Which has first witnessed thy unperishable fame.
Give life and animation to those noble games!
Throw wreaths of fadeless flowers to the victors
In the race and in strife!
Create in our breasts, hearts of steel!
Shine in a roseate hue and form a vast temple
To which all nations throng to adore thee.

Opening Ceremony in the Panathinaiko Stadium

In 1957, the IOC declared this hymn the official Olympic anthem. The Pall Mall Gazette covered the Olympics quite extensively, and printed results of the events. They also did a short write-up about on opening ceremony:

THE OLYMPIC GAMES AT ATHENS:

The spectators of yesterday's events were calculated to number eighty thousand. The Royal party arrived at three o'clock. They were met in the centre of the arena by the Crown Prince, surrounded by the members of the organizing committee. His Highness in a short speech then formally begged the King to take over the Stadion, the restoration of which had been rendered possible by the generosity of a wealthy Greek. His Majesty, in reply, expressed his admiration for the incomparable beauty of the structure. He also cordially welcomed the athletic youth who had come from all parts of the world to lend additional brilliance to the festival. His Majesty finally took formal possession of the Stadion in the name of Greece. The King and the other members of the Royal party then proceeded to their allotted seats. The united bands then performed the special Olympic anthem, composed by M. Samara, which was conducted by the composer himself. The games commenced immediately afterwards.

            - Pall Mall Gazette, April 7th 1896

So what exactly were the events in which the athletes took part? There were nine sports at the Olympics back then (in contrast with the 28 at the 2008 games in Beijing) They were:

Gymnastics

Athletics

Cycling

Fencing

Shooting

Swimming

Tennis

Weightlifting

Wrestling

The first event to take place was the hundred metres, which was won by Francis Lane of USA, and his victory, and the subsequent impressive medal-haul of the USA team would become a stalwart of all future Olympics.

The greatest joy for the home support was to see one of their athletes, Spyridion Louis, win the marathon by a huge seven minutes. The marathon is an event of great historical importance to Greece, as – so the legend goes – the first marathon ever to take place was in 490 BC, when Pheidippides, a soldier from Athens, ran 26 miles from battle in Marathon, in which the Greeks defeated their Persian invaders, in order to tell his fellow Athenians that they had been victorious. After relaying his message, he died from exhaustion.

Spyridion Louis (Left) being cheered as he nears the marathon finish line in the stadium

The Greeks then, were overjoyed when messengers outside the Panathinaiko stadium (where the marathon finishing line was situated) relayed the chant of ‘Hellene! Hellene!’ (A Greek! A Greek!) as Louis approached well-clear of his rivals to become a national hero and emulate the success of Pheidippides over two thousand years before him on Athenian soil. Even more satisfying was that Louis was not a professional athlete, and turned down riches and fame to go back to his simple as a shepherd in a small village after his success at the games.

The swimming sounds like a rather more dangerous event than we know today. Hungarian swimmer Alfred Hajos won both the 100 metre and 1,200 metre races, the second of which involved the athletes being ferried out 1,200 metres to sea on a boat before jumping into the water and swimming back to land. Hajos went on to say that his; “…will to live completely overcame the desire to win”. Which is not a surprise.

Alfred Hajos

My favourite story of the Olympics, though, concerns Tennis and the MP John Boland. Boland was in Athens during the Olympics to visit his friend, Thrasyvoulos Manos. Manos was a member of the Athens Lawn Tennis sub-committee of the IOC, and had struggled to attract athletes to compete in the tennis. With the numbers a little short, Manos entered Boland, and the MP went on to win the singles tournament, defeating the Egyptian Dionysios Kasdaglis in the final. Even more impressive, Boland was also entered into the doubles competition, pairing up with Friedrich Traun (whom Boland had defeated in the first round of the singles competition) and the pair went on to win the event, giving Boland his second gold medal and making him the most successful Brit at the games, despite travelling to Athens with no intention of even competing in them. After the Olympics, the Pall Mall Gazette gave a rather waspish account of the inadequacy of the Greeks, and poked a bit of fun at their famous historical figures:

John Boland

The Olympic Games are over. It is to be hoped that the resurgent glory of Greece is not overshadowed by the victory of Mr. Boland (Dublin) over Mr. Themistocles (Athens) at the gentle game lawn tennis, and by the swimming performance of Mr. Hajos (Hungary), who easily defeated Mr. Nicias, Mr. Eschylus, Mr. AlcIbiades, and other members of the best-known Greek families…
               - Pall Mall Gazette 16th April 1896

The closing ceremony took place on 15th April, with, once again, the Royal Family present. The Greek national anthem opened the ceremony before the King distributed the prizes to the winners. In 1896, first placed athletes received a silver medal, an olive branch and a diploma, and second placed athletes received a copper medal, olive branch and diploma, whilst third placed athletes received nothing.

After this, marathon winner and new Greek hero Spyridion Louis lead the athletes on a lap of honour around the stadium whilst the Olympic hymn was played, before King George pronounced the games officially at an end.

Awarding the Prizes

So what was the final result of the 1896 games? Medal-wise, host nation Greece fittingly won the most medals overall, with a total of 46, but the USA were not far behind.

When the Olympics came to an end, the officials were full of praise for Athens, and suggested the games should be held there every four years. The American team even sent a letter to King George I to suggest as much, but Coubertin preferred the idea of the Olympics being an international event, and that the host city could be changed every year in order to bring the joy of sport to as many different parts of the world as possible. Athens would have to wait another 108 years until the Olympics returned in 2004.

The Olympics that followed the Athenian games were held in Paris in 1900, but were a bit of an anti-climax since the Parisians decided to incorporate the games in the World’s Fair they were hosting, meaning that the sporting events took a back seat to the technological exhibits, such as the first escalators, Rudolf Diesel’s engine, and the star attraction, the Great Exposition refractor – the largest refracting telescope ever seen. The shame about the lack of interest in the Paris Olympics is that Paris was Coubertin’s home town, and I imagine that he would have been overjoyed had the Olympics been a success there. He would go on to see eight more Olympic games take place before his death in 1937, however – and happily – the 1924 Olympics returned to Paris, beating competition from Los Angeles, Rio and Rome. This time around the city got it right, and Coubertin, at the age of 61, got to see his Olympic dream take place in his home town.

The London Olympics has had its naysayers and doom-mongers, and some of their objections I agree with, but there can be little doubt that the Olympics is an event of global and historical significance, as well as, of course, a great showcase for the world’s greatest athletes, and London should be proud to be hosting for the third time.

I just hope the swimmers a grateful they’re not being ferried out to the English Channel and dropped overboard for their event...

"I declare the opening of the first international Olympic Games in Athens. Long live the Nation. Long live the Greek people." Or: The 1896 Olympics – Part One:

This is a big year for sport in the UK, with the Olympics and Paralympics set to descend upon us in the summer after a seven year wait, and make London the first city to stage the event three times, after previously hosting in 1908 and 1948.

Naturally, I was interested to see how the Victorians got on with the Olympics (the games having been revived for the modern age five years before Victoria’s death after a 1,500 year Hiatus) and so I set about looking at details of the 1896 and 1900 games.

The Olympics were – and still are – associated with Greece. The oldest Olympics for which records still exist are the games of 776 B.C, and during this era the sporting event was held every four years in Olympia, Greece, in honour of the God Zeus. This carried on until the Olympics were abolished in 393 A.D by the Roman Emperor Theodosius.

1,503 years later, the Olympics returned; but why?

It all began with a young Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who, in 1870, experienced his country being overrun by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war when he was only seven years old. This event, and what Coubertin saw as the weakness of his country, would play a major role in the birth of the modern Olympics. So who was this Coubertin?

Coubertin

He was born into an aristocratic family, and so, when he became an adult, had the typical choices ahead of him, such as a military career, or one in politics. Coubertin, though, chose a different path, and became an intellectual. He studied a wide range of topics, from history to sociology, but the one that caught his imagination the most was education.

Coubertin’s studies in education soon led him to focus on physical education, and the significance of schools teaching competitive sports to their pupils. He came to England in 1883, when he was twenty, and studied the physical education system in English schools, (in particular, Rugby School in Warwickshire, where the great educator, Thomas Arnold put physical education systems in place in the late 1820’s) Coubertin saw a direct link between the standard of physical education in schools and the expansion of the British Empire, stating that “Organised sport can create moral and social strength.” In short, he believed that men who were well-practiced at sport would be better prepared mentally as well as physically, to fight in wars. Coubertin was thinking of the ease with which France – a country which practiced very little physical education in schools – was subjected to a humiliating defeat in 1870.

Being an intellectual historian, also, Coubertin knew of the Olympics of ancient Greece, and decided that an event such as the Olympics, if revived, could be key in stimulating not only physical, but intellectual improvements in men. In 1890 he founded Union des Sociétés Francaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA) a sports organization which he hoped would be able to drum up support for physical education in schools. His ideas were met with apathy. In 1892, he decided to make public his ideas for reviving the Olympics. In Paris, speaking at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques, he said:

“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. It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto you will extend again, so that together we may attempt to realise, upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games…”

Again, he was met with inaction and apathy. However, he persisted, and a further two years later he managed to organize a meeting made up of delegates of nine different countries at the Sorbonne Congress of 1894. At this meeting he made further passionate pleas and reasons why, in his mind, the Olympic Games should be revived for the benefit of the whole of Europe. This time, he garnered some interest, and the delegates present voted for a return of the ancient Olympic Games. Coubertin formed the international Olympic Committee (IOC) and set about organizing the first Olympics in over 1,500 years.

The obvious and most romantic choice for the first modern Olympics was, of course, Greece. The 1896 Olympics were awarded to Athens, and the city enthusiastically welcomed the impending festival of sport, but the Greek politicians were not so keen, and, according to some reports, asked to be relieved of their duty to host the games. Coubertin, along with the President of the newly formed IOC, Demetrios Vikelas, managed to convince the Athenian politicians to accept the games, and after much consideration, and the backing of the Crown Prince Constantine, who threw his weight behind the return of the games, the minds of the politicians were changed, and the organizing began.

Vikelas

The man charged with organizing the 1896 Olympics was the aforementioned president of the IOC, Demetrios Vikelas. The problem that faced him most immediately was, funnily enough, the fact that Greece was in a financially poor state, and politically very unstable (The country actually had two Prime Ministers at the time, who alternated the job of running the country between them) so the first thing Vikelas had to do was raise funds – and the Royal seal of approval from the enthusiastic Prince certainly helped his cause. Perhaps his biggest contribution was to persuade businessman George Averoff to fund a restoration of the Panathinaiko stadium, which had been built around 500BC to host athletics during the Panathenaic games in ancient Greece. Averoff donated 920,000 Drachma’s to the project, which saw the stadium rebuilt using marble from Mount Penteli. The stadium is – perhaps unsurprisingly – the only one in the world made of marble. A statue of Averoff still stands outside the stadium today.

The Greek public, having caught the wave of enthusiasm from the Prince, donated generously, raising 330,000 Drachma’s, the sale of commemorative stamps raised an impressive 400,000 Drachma’s, and along with successful ticket sales, these funds allowed everything to be put into place, and the first modern Olympic Games could begin.

The opening ceremony took place on 6th April 1896 (Unless you were Greek, and were using the Julian Calendar, in which case the opening ceremony was on 25th March) and the final address was made by Prince Constantine’s father, King George I, who proclaimed:

"I declare the opening of the first international Olympic Games in Athens. Long live the Nation. Long live the Greek people."

Next week…Part Two: In which we will explore the events that took place at the 1896 Olympics, the successful countries, the star athletes and the aftermath of the games.