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?Italian Dorando Pietri being helped over the marathon finishing line – to disqualification – by official Jack Andrew |
Edwardian fun and Games
As Beijing 2008 gets off the starting blocks, Catherine Etoe looks back
at London’s Olympic record
MADNESS, mayhem, cautionary tales… take heart Olympics organisers, when it comes to the biggest sporting event in the world, controversy is not the preserve of the self-conscious Noughties.
Nope, the Edwardians did it first and did it better judging by the myriad outrageous squabbles, snubs, disputed results and hissy fits that besieged White City in the 1908 London Games.
“The intrigue kept a huge Edwardian audience engrossed for months,” writes author Graeme Kent in the introduction to one of the most forensically researched books you are likely to read all summer.
Trouble flew out of the starting blocks right from the off, with giant Irish-American shot-putter Ralph Rose causing uproar by rudely refusing to bow his flag to the King at the opening ceremony.
The mood worsened when the Americans pulled out of the tug-of-war (!) in protest after “cheating” Liverpudlian policemen won the right to wear steel tipped boots.
The bickering came to a head when further American withdrawals left English-born Scot “Jock” Halswelle running the 400m – on his own. As Kent notes, the “serious business of taking offence and expressing grievances” had begun and the press and public lapped it up.
Yet it is not simply the backbiting that make 1908 a tale worth recounting in this Olympic year; in the true spirit of the Games, it is the athletes themselves that make the story.
Italian Antonio Braglia won gold yet had taught himself gymnastics in a barn, appeared in circuses as the “Bullet Man” and carried a dwarf in a suitcase to displays.
New York policeman Dennis Horgan finished second in the shot despite having had his skull smashed in by a shovel the year before.
“Fancy springboard” eventist Snowy Baker’s main diving experience was being tied up in a sack and chucked into a river in Australian country carnivals. While penniless swimmer Frank Beaurepaire slogged up to “Highgate Ponds” for training and lived on bread, cheese and water.
And as these colourful characters set about the business of winning medals, the glamorous Danish ladies’ gym team made it acceptable for women to compete, Olympic events were given their debut, old records smashed and new standards set.
The 1908 Games may not have put the great into Great Britain as the organisers had hoped, but they put it into the Olympics, warts and all. |
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