V & VI Olympiad

George Daniels

Description

Following the emotional success of the I Olympiad of the Modern Era in Athens in 1896, the Olympic movement struggled through more than a decade of disappointment and uncertainty. It would not be until 1912 in Stockholm that the Olympics rediscovered the magic of Athens, and struck on a model for the Games that endures to this day.The V & VI Olympiads, the sixth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the Games that finally showed the world what the modern Olympics could be-Stockholm 1912. Flawlessly planned and organized with typical Swedish precision, the Stockholm Games allowed the athletes to take centre stage. The book tells the story of Olympic heroes like Jim Thorpe, a Native American who claimed gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon before going on to play professional baseball, basketball and football; George S. Patton, the famed WWII general, who competed in the modern pentathlon; and Arnold Strode-Jackson who won gold in the 1,500 metres competing as an individual entry in what was called at the time "the greatest race ever run."Following Stockholm, the focus of the book shifts to the Olympics that never happened: the Games of the VI Olympiad - Berlin 1916. Planning for the Berlin Games began in 1912 and construction of the central venue, the 64,000-seat Deutsches Stadion, was completed in June 1913. But just over one year later, in July 1914, the start of World War I would postpone Berlin's Olympic dream for another twenty years. Juan Antonio Samaranch, former President of the International Olympic Committee, called The Olympic Century, "The most comprehensive history of the Olympic games ever published".

Informations

• Publié par: Warwick Press Inc.
• Date de parution: 18 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781987944051
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

THE OLYMPIC CENTURY THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC MOVEMENT VOLUME 6
THE V VI OLYMPIAD
STOCKHOLM 1912
PARIS 1919 THE INTER-ALLIED GAMES
by George G. Daniels
W
Warwick Press Inc. Toronto
Copyright 1996 WSRP
The Olympic Century series was produced as a joint effort among the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and World Sport Research Publications, to provide an official continuity series that will serve as a permanent online Olympic education program for individuals, schools, and public libraries.
Published by:
Warwick Press Inc., Toronto
www.olympicbooks.com
1st Century Project: Charles Gary Allison
Publishers: Robert G. Rossi, Jim Williamson, Rona Wooley
Editors: Christian D. Kinney, Laura Forman
Art Director: Christopher M. Register
Picture Editors: Lisa Bruno, Debora Lemmons
Digital Imaging: Richard P. Majeske
Associate Editor, Research: Mark Brewin
Associate Editor, Appendix: Elsa Ramirez
Designers: Kimberley Davison, Diane Myers, Chris Conlee
Staff Researchers: Brad Haynes, Alexandra Hesse, Pauline Ploquin
Copy Editor: Harry Endrulat
Venue Map Artist: Dave Hader, Studio Conceptions, Toronto
Fact Verification: Carl and Liselott Diem Archives of the German Sport University at Cologne, Germany
Statistics: Bill Mallon, Walter Teutenberg
Memorabilia Consultants: Manfred Bergman, James D. Greensfelder, John P. Kelly, James B. Lally, Ingrid O Neil
Office Staff: Diana Fakiola, Brian M. Heath, Edward J. Messier, Brian P. Rand, Robert S. Vassallo, Chris Waters
Senior Consultant: Dr. Dietrich Quanz (Germany)
Special Consultants: Walter Borgers, Dr. Karl Lennartz, Dr. Dietrich Quanz, Dr. Norbert Mueller (Germany), Ian Buchanan (United Kingdom), Wolf Lyberg (Sweden), Dr. Nicholas Yalouris (Greece).
International Contributors: Jean Durry (France), Dr. Fernand Landry (Canada), Dr. Antonio Lombardo (Italy), Dr. John A. MacAloon (U.S.A.), Dr. Jujiro Narita (Japan), C. Robert Paul (U.S.A.), Dr. Roland Renson (Belgium), Anthony Th. Bijkirk (Netherlands), Dr. James Walston (Ombudsman)
International Research and Assistance: John S. Baick (New York), Matthieu Brocart (Paris), Alexander Fakiolas (Athens), Bob Miyakawa (Tokyo), Rona Lester (London), Dominic LoTempio (Columbia), George Kostas Mazareas (Boston), Georgia McDonald (Colorado Springs), Wendy Nolan (Princeton), Alexander Ratner (Moscow), Jon Simon (Washington, D.C.), Frank Strasser (Cologne), Val ry Turco (Lausanne), Laura Walden (Rome), Jorge Zocchi (Mexico City)
All rights reserved. No part of The Olympic Century book series may be copied, republished, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written consent of the IOC, the USOC, and WSRP.
eBook Conversion: eBook Partnership, United Kingdom
ISBN (Series) 978-1-987944-24-2
ISBN (Volume 6) 978-1-987944-05-1
CONTENTS
I ENDLESS SUMMER
II FIRST CLASS
III INTO THE ABYSS
IV THE MILITARY OLYMPICS
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO CREDITS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

ENDLESS SUMMER
STOCKHOLM 1912
When the curtain rose on the drama, it did not seem like the first act of a profound tragedy. But then it almost never does. It began as a classic tale of American boy makes good at the Olympics. Correction, please: American Indian boy stands the Olympics on its absolute ear.
The time was July 1912. The place:
Stockholm, Sweden, celebrating the V Olympiad since France s Baron Pierre de Coubertin and his colleagues on the International Olympic Committee revived the ancient Games at Athens in 1896. And there stood James Francis Thorpe, part Sac- Fox, part Potawatomi, part Irish-French, all set to represent the United States in four events, including the two most demanding-not to say cruelest-contests in track and field: the pentathlon and a newly invented discipline called the decathlon.
The pentathlon was an outgrowth of the competition devised by the ancient Greeks to select the greatest all-around athlete among them. It had five events, all completed in a single grueling day: a long jump, a discus and a javelin throw, a footrace, and a wrestling match. The Greek organizers of the Intercalated Games at Athens 1906 had reintroduced the ancient pentathlon to the modern Olympic program, but that was its only appearance in the four previous Games. The Swedes, however, were intrigued by a test of all-around athleticism, and reinserted a pentathlon contest, though a second footrace replaced the wrestling; otherwise, the program remained the same, with the victor determined by the lowest point score on a scale of 1 for a first place, 2 for the next best, and so on.
To look at him, Jim Thorpe would never inspire the poetry offered by Bacchlyides to honor Automededes, hero of the Nemean Games in 451 BC:
He shone among the other pentathletes as the bright moon dims the radial of the stars. At Stockholm, the 24- year-old Native American in no way appeared superior to his peers.
Below: Knees together in the less efficient style of the day, Jim Thorpe makes an attempt in the long jump. Thorpe s best mark reached (7.07 meters), which was the top performance of the day and gave him the pentathlon lead after the first of five events.

Though deep of chest, he carried his 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 meters) and 181 pounds (82.10 kilograms) on a narrow-shouldered frame supported by slender, slightly bowed legs; he walked with a shambling, careless gait, and indeed, only the eyes in his broad, native face showed much spark. True, at the American Olympic tryouts in New York, Thorpe had high-jumped 6 feet 4 3 / 4 inches (1.95 meters), less than 3 inches (8 centimeters) short of the world record. And he had long jumped 23 feet 6 inches (7.16 meters), which would have been good enough for second place at the 1908 London Games. It was true, as well, that he had a reputation as a demon football player and one-man track team at Pennsylvania s Carlisle Indian School, where the U.S. government sought to integrate a specially selected group of wards. But many people, Americans as well as Europeans, thought that the tryout spectaculars were probably a fluke and that the collegiate competition that Carlisle faced was definitely not of the same caliber as the Olympic Games.
It took only a few hours on the morning of July 7, 1912, for the skeptics to amend their thinking-and for the poets to start trilling. In the first event-the long jump--Jim Thorpe raced down the runway, pounded aloft, and soared 23 feet 2 1/2 inches (7.07 meters), not quite as good as at the trials, but a satisfying 7 inches (18 centimeters) better than the No.2 jumper, Norway s Ferdinand Bie. Next came the javelin, an event Thorpe had only learned two months earlier; he produced the third-best throw of just over 153 feet (46.63 meters). That gave him 4 points to 6 for Bie, whose best effort was only the fourth longest on the day-and after just two events some of the wiser heads began to suspect that it was all over.
How right they were. In the 200 meters, Thorpe flashed to victory in 22.9 seconds, leaving Bie 5 yards and 0.6 of a second behind. In the discus, Thorpe sailed the platter 116 feet 8 1/2 inches (35.57 meters) to win by more than a yard and outdo Bie by a dozen feet (3.66 meters). In the final event, the 1,500 meters, showing no signs of a full day of competition, Thorpe breezed through the metric mile in 4:44.8, nearly 5 seconds better than his closest pursuer and 23 seconds ahead of the weary Bie. With barely 7 points out of a perfect 5, Jim Thorpe had utterly demolished the field: Bie was a far distant second with 21 points, while the other five finishers each had 29 points or more. Among the also-rans, in sixth place with 31 points, was one Avery Brundage, later to become supremo of the International Olympic Committee.
Below: On-field judges carefully watch the flight of Jim Thorpe s discus. It was the fourth event in the pentathlon and the third in which Thorpe would achieve the best mark. The discus throw clinched the pentathlon championship for Thorpe even though there was still one event left.

Jim Thorpe s stunning triumph set a record that would stand for the next 12 years, until the pentathlon was discontinued after the 1924 Paris Games. In addition to the cherished gold medal, he received a massive trophy of a bronze bust of Sweden s king Gustavus V as a rotating gift from the monarch himself for the pentathlon champion at this and all future Games. Thorpe was mightily impressed with the trophy, though it has not been recorded what he thought of the comment that James E. Sullivan, the head of the American delegation in Stockholm, delivered to the world after Thorpe s crowning achievement. The victory, said Sullivan, answers the charge that most of our runners are of foreign parentage, for Thorpe is a real American if there ever was one. Sure enough-and the Sac-Fox-Potawatomi was just warming up.
Below: Industrialists and blue bloods formed the organizing committee for the Stockholm Games. It included Sweden s crown prince Gustavus Adolphus (seated third from left); Victor Balck (seated second from left), a charter IOC member; and Sigfrid Edstrom (seated third from right), who would become the fourth IOC president in 1947.

Coming at the start of the track and field competition, the brilliance of Jim Thorpe s pentathlon bathed the 1912 Stockholm Games in a warm, welcome light. For truth to tell, Coubertin s beloved Olympic movement was still in its groping infancy. After a triumphant revival at Athens 1896, succeeding Olympiads had proved unhappily disappointing. The 1900 Paris Games had been tacked onto the city s Exhibition Universelle as a mere afterthought; spread out over five months, the competitions were so low-key and poorly attended that some athletes didn t even realize that they had participated in an Olympic Games. St. Louis 1904 was worse: a mere