II Olympiad

Carl Posey

Description

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic movement, hoped to cement the future of the Games with a triumphant celebration of the second Olympiad in his native Paris in 1900. The II Olympiad-Paris 1900, the third volume in The Olympic Century series, tells the story of a fledgling movement caught up in the whirlwind of the greatest city of the age at the height of the Belle Epoch. The backdrop for the book is the decadent Paris of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergeres, the art of Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse and Gauguin, and the revolutionary "Metro" with its now iconic Art Nouveau architecture. The Games would be contested over five months and subsumed into the 1900 Exposition Universelle, a concurrent celebration of art, culture and technology. Alongside typical events like athletics, gymnastics and swimming, The II Olympiad explores unlikely events like auto racing, ballooning and croquet that characterized the Paris Games.In the wake of the confusion of Paris, the focus of the book shifts to the war for control that would threaten the very survival of the Games. But while the fate of the Games was in doubt, an enterprising Swedish sportsman named Viktor Gustav Balck created an event that would have long-term implications for the Olympic movement. The book concludes with a detailed look at Balck's Nordic Games, first staged in Stockholm in 1901, and draws a direct line to the ultimate creation of the Winter Olympics, first celebrated in Chamonix, France in 1924.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: 9781987944020
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

THE OLYMPIC CENTURY THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC MOVEMENT VOLUME 3
THE II OLYMPIAD
PARIS 1900 THE NORDIC GAMES
by Carl Posey
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 on-line 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 (24 Volume Series) 978-1-987944-24-2
ISBN (Volume 3) 978-1-987944-02-0
CONTENTS
I The Belle Epoque
II Boys in the Bois
III An Unsinkable Ideal
IV Northern Light
Appendix
Magazines
Photo Credits
Bibliography
Index

THE BELLE EPOQUE
PARIS 1900
Had Margaret Dunne been asked to list the greatest moments in her golf career, this early mistress of the short game would almost certainly have cited her best days at the Chicago Golf Club, or at the National, next to Long Island s Peconic Bay, or recalled any number of shots that she sent low and fast across the grassy sea of troubles that was St. Andrews, or the Royal St. George. Then there was the time in October 1900 when she d won the women s championship of France at Dinard, on the Bretagne coast, when she was 22. She always thought she won at Dinard because the French contestants, for reasons never revealed, had arrived to play in high heels and tight skirts, no match for her more flexible attire.

And then she might have remembered another match held a couple of weeks earlier. That had been an international event played on the superb links offered by the Soci t de Sport de Compi gne, about 50 miles (80.47 kilometers) northeast of Paris. But, of course, that had only been for a city title, not for all of France. Margaret Dunne died in June 1955, a pretty fine amateur golfer until sidelined by arthritis in her 60s, unaware that the match in Paris had made sporting history.
She d been born Margaret Ives Abbott in the Indian city of Calcutta in June 1878, the daughter of Charles P. Abbott, an importer from Massachusetts, and his wife, Mary. According to family legend, at least, the Abbott s Indian friends showered them with gifts but retrieved them when the baby turned out to be a girl. Had they known what a girl she would be, they might have reconsidered.
Widowed young, Mary returned to Boston with Margaret, then moved to Chicago, where she was literary editor at the Tribune and Times Herald, moving in the circles frequented by such literary luminaries as Mark Twain and Finley Peter Dunne, the freshly popular creator of a drolly philosophical Irishman named Mr. Dooley. She also wrote two of her three novels there. Margaret meanwhile grew up into the sort of willowy, confident youngwoman the Abbott s friend Charles Dana Gibson liked to sketch, becoming the object of one of his works in 1903.
At the turn of the 20th century, golf was a royal sport of long standing in Europe but relatively new and not entirely respectable in America. Mr. Dooley, whose author was himself a determined duffer, allowed that golf was Scotland s finest export with the exciption maybe iv th theery iv infant damnation . In 1888, two Scots, John Reid and Robert Lockhart, had organized the St. Andrews Golf Club in Yonkers, New York. The sport had then spread westward to Chicago largely through the efforts of Charles Blair Macdonald, a Scottish aristocrat of larger-than-life proportions.
With six sets of clubs ordered from a friend in Liverpool, he established the Chicago Golf Club at Onwentsia in 1892. By 1896, golf had so captured the fancies of well-to-do Chicagoans that the original club engaged in ferocious competitions with its newer rival at Wheaton-contests so closely followed that those favoring the blue and yellow livery of Onwentsia and those in Wheaton s red and white ceased speaking to one another. By 1900, however, 22 golf clubs had sprung up within 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) of downtown Chicago, and such ardor had begun to cool.
Mary Abbott joined the Chicago club because she was a friend of Charles Macdonald. Margaret joined in 1897 and stayed on because she discovered a passion-and a talent-for the game. At 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 meters), she was tall for her time, and gifted with what observers called a classy backswing that could power a ball on a low trajectory toward its target well down the fairway. In most tournaments, she could get around nine holes in under 60 strokes-unimpressive in the modern age of titanium and graphite clubs, but quite respectable given the technology and techniques at the time.
Below: A portrait of unintentional Olympian Margaret Abbott by artist Charles Dana Gibson from 1903 shows Abbott in the well-bred American style of the late-Victorian era. The female subjects of Gibson s widely circulated sketches are often tall, poised and feminine, yet exude a touch of mischievousness. The look became an American archetype known as the Gibson Girl.

Neither Mary nor Margaret was what one would call an Edith-Wharton girl, or a John-Singer-Sargent one either. But they had money enough to see the world and follow their creative spirits. In 1899, they packed up and sailed to Paris, driven perhaps by the Francophilia endemic among upper-crust Chicagoans. Mary planned to write a third novel with the working title of A Woman in Paris. Margaret, a painter and etcher of ability, studied art with Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin-it was the electric age when they and Claude Monet and Pierre Renoir and many others were discovering their impressionist voices. Margaret also found herself often in the company of one of her mother s good friends, Finley Peter Dunne, whom she would marry in 1902.
But the Paris sojourn was never intended to be all work and no play for this athletic pair. When they learned that, as part of the city s Exposition Universelle, an international golf tournament was to be played at Compi gne, they jumped at the chance to enter, despite having played little since leaving Chicago.
Accordingly, on Wednesday morning, October 3, 1900, the Abbotts, mother and daughter, joined eight other women golfers on the links of the Soci t de Sport de Compi gne. By noon, the morning s curtain of rain had been drawn back to reveal a warm autumn sun, and the ladies set out to play their nine, trailed by a large, noisy crowd interested in le golf. Noting the size and rowdiness of the gallery, Count Jacque de Pourtal s, a member of the Paris Golf Club and a steward of the tournament, was moved to exclaim, Why, it s as bad as St. Andrews! Such distractions seemed not to faze Margaret Abbott. The chief feature of Miss Abbott s play, reported the Paris-based New York Herald, is her driving and brassie play, her style being perfect. Her tall, supple figure allows her to bring her club on to the ball with a beautiful free body swing, and it rarely happens that she makes a bad stroke. Her short game, and particularly her approaches, would be much better with a little practice. Her success is all the more gratifying after such a long pause from regular play, and her victory is very popular in Paris, where she is a great favorite in American society.
The French capital s new women s champion had played the nine holes of the tournament in 47 strokes, just ahead of the 49 posted by runner-up Polly Whittier of Boston, who d practiced that summer at St. Moritz, and third-place Daria Huger-Platt, of Dinard, who scored a 53. Mary Abbott finished seventh in the 10-woman field, with a 65.
That evening, the winners collected their prizes. Margaret Abbott and