Michael Biddiss
University of Reading
As the leading athletes of all nations prepared to come together last summer in Atlanta, the global communications media of the late twentieth century constantly reminded us that 1996 marked the first centenary of the modern Olympic Games. The world-wide impact now made by these sporting Festivals is all the more remarkable in that they were initiated chiefly through the energetic drive of one man, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Why did this young and wealthy French aristocrat set out, in the early 1890s, to span the gulf of 1500 years elapsing since the original series of Olympics had ended? And to what extent did his efforts involve an `invention', rather than a straightforward restoration, of classical tradition?
Born in 1863, Coubertin belonged to the generation of Frenchmen who grew up in the immediate shadow of `1870' - the humiliating defeat inflicted upon their country by Prussia. Though never a narrow nationalist, he was typical in coming to experience la crise allemande de la pensée française - a pervasive anxiety about France's apparent inability to match the dynamism of the new German Empire.
* We gratefully acknowledge the permission by THE HISTORIAN, vol 50, Spring 1996, pp. 2-7, to reprint the paper by Michael Biddiss, parts of which he presented at the Annual Conference of the British Society of Sports History at the London School of Economics on 13 April 1996.
After being schooled at a Jesuit college in Paris, Coubertin was conscious of a family expectation that he should make his contribution to national regeneration by training at St Cyr as an army officer. But he left the military college prematurely, having himself chosen another kind of approach that would involve subtler weaponry. By the early 1880s he was convinced that his principal duty lay in revitalising French education, or at least that part of it experienced by the five per cent of boys who at that epoch proceeded to secondary schooling. It was with this end in view that, at the age of twenty, he embarked upon the first of his visits to Britain.
This choice of destination was determined by Coubertin's infatuation with the English public schools. Even more precisely, it reflected his admiration for what we might call `the Three Thomass'. The first was the novelist Hughes, who through the title of his most famous book directs us immediately to the second; and from Tom Brown's School Days (with its heady mixture of religiosity, Homer, and games) we are led no less promptly to the third and greatest hero, Dr Arnold of Rugby. By the time that Hughes had finished with the early nineteenth-century headmaster, the latter was hardly less of a fictional creation than young Brown himself. However, such distortions as the novel presented were precisely those that Coubertin found it most convenient to develop. On this kind of interpretation, sport and physical prowess tend to bulk larger in the Arnoldian firmament than the real Doctor was ever likely to have wished. Coubertin marginalised the evangelical aspects, and emphasised instead a simpler and more direct complementarity between virile athleticism and Hellenic classicism. Here, he thought, were the dual foundations for a proper balance of mental, moral, and muscular endeavour. According to him, their eventual impact on the whole public school system clearly provided the key to much of the Victorian achievement - and no less obviously suggested some urgent lessons for the French to learn. As he later recorded,
How often, at dusk, alone in the vast Gothic chapel at Rugby, with my eyes fixed on the funeral slab inscribed simply with the name of Thomas Arnold, have I thought to myself that here was the cornerstone of the British Empire.
Inspired by his tour of such colleges, Coubertin returned to France with a determination to promote `a whole scheme of moral and social education concealed beneath the guise of school games'. He proved relentless in gaining influence both through his journalism and through his `networking' amongst a circle of increasingly prominent political and social contacts. His efforts were all the more timely in that they coincided with a phase of national agonising over surmenage scolaire, or `academic overload' in the lycées. In 1887 one of Coubertin's firmest allies, the former premier Jules Simon, expressed the essence of the matter thus:
We create a bachelier, a licencié, a docteur - but what about a man? There's no question of that. On the contrary fifteen years are spent destroying his virility. We give society a ridiculous little mandarin who hasn't any muscles, who doesn't know how to leap over a gate, to elbow his way forward, to shoot a gun, or to mount a horse, who is afraid of everything.
France's senior doctors solemnly debated the same issue within their Academy of Medicine, urging the Government to reduce teaching hours. Coubertin, on the other hand, thought that this would merely release more time for unhelpful periods of idleness or unstructured play. The proper solution, he argued, was actually to extend the curriculum towards more organised programmes of sport and exercise. In the late 1880s we can see this theme running strongly through his books on L'Éducation en Angleterre and L'Éducation anglaise en France. After a semi-official tour of colleges in the USA and Canada, he also published Universités transatlantiques (1890) as further evidence of his admiration for the growing scope of Anglo-Saxon pedagogic achievement.
Meanwhile Coubertin had become more deeply involved in the politics of conflict between the major sporting associations that were emerging in France around this time. By 1889 he was the pivotal figure in the newly-formed `Union des Societés Françaises des Sports Athlétiques' (USFSA), and in its tussles with the more bellicose `Ligue Nationale de l'Education Physique' which owed less to Dr Arnold than to Vater Jahn and the Germanic tradition of gymnastic regimentation. Coubertin's desire to keep the upper hand amidst such rivalries between new federative bodies was part of the reason why in the early 1890s he arranged for the USFSA to host two famous meetings at the Sorbonne. However, these sessions stemmed also from the wider ambition that he was forming - to use sport as a means of promoting a healthier and more peaceful condition of international civilisation.
At the earlier gathering of sporting administrators and enthusiasts in November 1892, the programme centred on three talks about the history of ludic competition, in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Having reserved the third topic tor himself, Coubertin was able to finish with a dramatic appeal for the reinstitution of the Olympic Games. Years later, he recalled how his audience had cheered - and had done so even while entirely failing to grasp just how literally he wanted his words to be taken. Here were people, he suggested, who had come to regard Ancient Greece as something that could be brought back to life only at the Opéra! Such an unhelpful public reaction may also be explained by the fact that, even before this, others had occasionally indulged in similar flourishes about the Olympic spirit without doing much to begin turning rhetoric into reality. Now, however, the quest was being taken up by a man who possessed not only wealth and social contacts but also an egocentric single-mindedness that could take supporters and foes equally by surprise.
The second Sorbonne meeting came in June 1894. It was an even grander event than the first, with 2000 people gathered for the opening banquet and the other inaugural celebrations. Among them were 70 official delegates from 49 athletic and sporting bodies spread across a dozen countries. Much of their agenda focused on issues of standardisation, with regard both to the rules for international competition and to the definition of `amateur' status. But Coubertin had also included a renewal of his proposal about the revival of the Olympics `on bases and in conditions suited to the needs of modern life'. This time, he had prepared the ground more carefully. His organisational talents, especially for grandiose choreo-graphy, became amply apparent at the climax of the opening ceremony. How convenient it was that French scholars should have discovered so recently both the words and the musical notation for the `Delphic Hymn to Apollo!' This was now performed, to irresistible effect, in an arrangement made for harps and choir by Gabriel Fauré. As Coubertin recalled:
A subtle feeling of emotion spread through the auditorium as if the antique eurhythmy were coming to us from the distant past. In this way, Hellenism infiltrated into the whole vast hall. From this moment, the Congress was destined to succeed.
There was, however, one surprise ahead. Coubertin had envisaged that the first modern Olympics would be held in Paris six years hence, thus coinciding with the Universal Exhibition planned for 1900. Even so, while the Sorbonne conference was in progress, he yielded to the private pleas of the principal Greek delegate that the sportsmen of Hellas should themselves host the inaugural Games in a mere two years time. The decision to favour `Athens, 1896' was symbolically apt. But, as we shall see, it was also heavily fraught with risk.
This seems a good juncture at which to raise three general issues. Just what were these ancient Games that Coubertin was seeking to revive? Had any earlier efforts been made to restore them? And in what respects was `authentic' renewal most likely, or least likely, to be attained?
Coubertin was referring back to a spirit of panhellenic competition which had reached a climax every four years in the backwater province of Elis. There the plains of Olympia provided not only the site for the most important precinct dedicated to Zeus but also the venue for Games that were underway by 776 BC at the very latest. By the middle of the next century these had developed a pattern that would not be substantially changed thereafter. The first day was occupied by sacrifices; the second witnessed horse and chariot races, together with a form of pentathlon (including throws of discus and javelin); the third comprised a mixture of further religious observances and of boys' events; the fourth featured foot-races of varying distances (including one of armoured soldiers) as well as the combat sports of boxing, wrestling, and the hybrid `all-in' version known as pankration; and the fifth was taken up by banquets and concluding rituals. Among the later additions were championships for heralds and trumpeters. The quadrennial sequence of contests continued unbroken well into the period of Roman conquest, and indeed all the way down to 261 AD. After that there is little clear evidence, though it seems certain that the ancient Games must have ended (at latest) by 393 AD when the Christian emperor Theodosius banned all such `pagan' cults.
As for projects invoking the spirit of Olympic renewal during the modern era, there seems to be only one significant instance prior to 1800 - the `Cotswold Games' run by Robert Dover in pre-Civil War England. Among Coubertin's forerunners from the nineteenth century we should certainly include Gustav Schartau, a Lund professor who in the mid-1830s organised at Ramlösa two sessions of short-lived `Scandinavian Olympic Games'. The Greeks themselves also made spasmodic efforts, which produced some ill-organised national `Olympics' at Athens in 1859, 1875, and 1888. The most sustained venture came, however, from England. Annually from 1849 onward a Shropshire surgeon and magistrate called Dr W.P. Brookes could be found acting as archon to the `Olympic Games of Much Wenlock'. In essence, he had founded a festival where the mock-Grecian and the mock-medieval were richly mingled, and one that in 1890 Coubertin himself had been pleased to attend as an honoured guest.
These nineteenth century initiatives all benefited from the spur of classical archaeology. The ancient site of Olympia (buried under river-silt) had been rediscovered in 1766, but it was not until the late 1820s that a significant area began to be dug, and indeed plundered. The most vital investigation eventually came at the epoch when Heinrich Schliemann's work on Troy was all the rage. At Olympia it was his German compatriot and rival, Ernst Curtius, who gained the crucial permit for an excavation of the sacred precint in the years from 1875 to 1881. Amongst the resulting treasures was the magnificent Hermes, once sculpted by Praxiteles and now retrieved from the Temple of Hera. A model reconstruction of the whole complex featured prominently in the Paris International Exhibition of 1889. Against that background of spadework in Elis - and indeed of Dr Brookes' pig-sticking competitions for the Shropshire lads - it is plain that Coubertin was remarkable less for thinking about Olympian sport than for possessing the determination to implement his ideas with a boldness that would leave Wenlock far behind.
What, then, of the `authenticity' attached to any revival? Here Coubertin took a relatively relaxed view, arguing that the challenge was one of `separating the soul, the essence, the principle [...] from the forms that had enveloped it'. Though he often called modern Olympism a `religion', he recognised that the interconnections between secular and sacred had slackened since the epoch when altars were raised to Zeus and Hera - and, indeed, when the Games, precisely because they were dedicated to the Gods, inevitably had to be controlled by the Elean state. Although the restored Olympics eventually developed elaborate rituals, the dominant liturgical tone would soon be that of some vast and joyful humanist rally. While being strict about adherence to the ancient quadrennial pattern of timing, Coubertin was more flexible about questions of location. He never argued for the modern Games to return to the wilds of Elis, nor had much enthusiasm for any kind of permanent venue. The revived Olympics would best proclaim their international stature - and their need to keep free of state control - by moving from country to country.
From the outset Coubertin stressed that the range of contests must relate to contemporary forms and not become fossilised as a quaint copy of ancient pursuits. On the competitions scheduled for 1896, Finley and Pleket comment thus:
Not much about these first modern Games [...] was genuinely `Olympic'. There were forty-two events in ten sports with 285 participants, all men, and without team competitions except in gymnastics. But only the running events, the long jump, the discus throw and wrestling were `borrowed' from the original Games; the rest were either unknown to the ancients or were not included by them in their major Games.
When these authors allude to the marginalisation of team events and to the exclusion of women, they are highlighting features with which in the 1890s (despite whatever happened later) Coubertin was entirely content. He and the other aristocrats and gentlemen of the new International Olympic Committee (IOC) were also keen to ban `the professional', though perhaps without understanding that their own modern criteria for `amateurism' were altogether tougher than those which had prevailed in classical Greece. Champions were not supposed to profit at the ancient Games, but they would have been greatly upset not to receive substantial benefits from them - through the patronage that operated richly once they returned as heroes to their own city-states. In further contrast to the original organisers, Coubertin and his fellows put less emphasis on athletics as a form of military preparation. They were also more generous than the ancients in praising those who thought that participation, rather than victory, lay at the heart of Olympism. As Pindar's odes confirm, the earlier Games were ones where the winner was destined to take all.
Such were the aspirations, prejudices, and compromises that Coubertin had in mind when, as Secretary General of the IOC, he set out during autumn 1894 for a preparatory visit to Greece - a land hitherto viewed only from afar, through the rosy lenses of his philhellenic telescope. He was greeted at Piraeus with the stunning news that Athens was no longer able to host the Games. In essence, the seemingly essential financial help from the Greek government could not be supplied, because the state was almost bankrupt. Under these circumstances Coubertin's determination was to be sorely tested before he managed to retrieve the situation. He moved swiftly to cultivate the support of the Athenian press, and of the parliamentary opposition. Not least, he won the backing of the royal family. A Danish dynasty that had been installed only in 1863 readily saw how this piece of `heritage' could be exploited to its own advantage. Royal patronage of the games would enhance the monarchy's prestige abroad. Moreover, internally, King George and the princes could prepare to emphasise their particular delight at Hellenic victories and thus employ those gestures of nationalistic identification which might serve to convince their often sceptical subjects that the family was now more Greek than Glücksburg.
By the end of Coubertin's three-week stay, the worst of the crisis had passed. At the start of his journey home he detoured via Olympia, to walk about `the sacred landscape which I had often seen in my dreams'. He left behind in Greece a national organising committee under Prince Constantine, whose talents for the fundraising version of `the royal touch' were such that adequate private financing for the Games soon became assured. The most crucial donation came from George Averoff - an Alexandrian Greek merchant, already prominent as a benefactor of major public building in Athens - who agreed to fund a reconstruction of the Panathenaic Stadium of Herodes Atticus. Thus, from an ancient site that had been reduced to a despoiled quarry overrun by brambles and chickens, there began to arise the clearest physical evidence that the Greek capital would indeed be the scene for the relaunching of Olympism in April 1896.
This was a year when, with the date of Easter happening to coincide as between the Western and Greek calendars, it seemed fitting to hold the Games in the week immediately following that festival. Sadly, however, winter chose to linger. The temperatures must make us sympathize with the sole American swimmer who, having jumped into the chill water, instantly leapt out again - for good, and with a most un-Olympic oath of `Jesu Christo!' Reviewing the competitors overall, it is evident that the internationalism of the 1896 Games had severe limitations. There were a good number of Greek contestants, and quite impressive US representation from some of the `ivy league' colleges. However, the British presence comprised only a handful of Oxbridge men, a tourist in search of a tennis court, and two employees from the Athens embassy who were nearly debarred as `servants'. Coubertin's own compatriots were a similarly motley band. Eight Hungarians (noisily mindful of their Magyar rights under Habsburg dualism) came with official government backing, while Germany mustered ten gymnasts and three other athletes. Such remaining nationalities as participated were operating with even thinner numbers.
The Games opened on Easter Monday (6 April), with King George presiding over an inaugural ceremony conducted before a crowd of some 100,000 - probably one of the largest gatherings ever assembled for peaceful purposes up to that date in history. Two contests reached their finals that day. In the triple jump Jim Connolly of Boston became the first Olympic champion of the modern era. Then a Princeton man who had never seen a proper discus before coming to Athens stole victory from the Greeks in an event about which the host nation had been supremely confident. On the second day another American won the shot put, while a Dane and an Englishman came through as champions in weightlifting, and an Australian triumphed in the 1500-metre race held on the awkward U-shaped track. Not until Thursday, 9 April was the Greek flag itself raised to the top of the pole in the Panathenaic Stadium, by virtue of two gymnastic successes. But neither of these could stir the national soul in the way that a major running victory must surely do.
On the Friday, all excitement focused on the most extraordinary event of all. This was `the Marathon'- a race which commemorated the defeat of the Persians in 490 BC and which, though it seemed to be supremely hallowed by classical tradition, actually constituted a complete novelty. Not least, with a length of 42 km or so, it violated every ancient rule of moderation. By early afternoon thousands were lining the course set along the coastal route from the battle-site to the capital, where in turn the stadium and its surroundings were even more densely packed than they had been four days earlier. At two o'clock 25 runners set out into the physiological unknown. The race had a certain Aesopian quality: if none of these brave men should be called a tortoise, we might still note some excessively eager hares. All the early leaders (including a Frenchman eventually knocked over by the bicycle of his own trainer!) had shown insufficient stamina by the end. As five o'clock approached those within the stadium began to hear distant cries of `Elleen! Elleen!' And so it was to be. A small figure wearing the Greek national colours found himself running the final metres almost dwarfed by the two hulking Danish-Hellenic princes who now trotted as his flankers. This supreme moment of epic glory belonged to Spyridon Loues of Maroussi, whose peasant wisdom had prompted him to pace himself sensibly and indeed to quaff a bracing glass of wine in the taverna before tackling the crucial climb out of Pikermi!
The 1896 Games also featured, at other venues beyond the stadium, competitions in cycling, fencing, shooting, swimming, and wrestling, together with tennis. In that last case, Mr Boland (the English tourist) obtained not only a court but two victories - the first in singles, and then in doubles as part of an unusual international partnership with a German. A yachting programme was also planned, but then abandoned due to gales. Other difficulties stemming from the bad weather meant that it was not until Wednesday, 15 April that the general prize-giving and closing ceremonies could take place at the stadium. Here one of the Oxford men got into the act by reciting an ode which he had composed in ancient Greek upon the Pindaric model. Then the King distributed awards to those who had come first and second in each event. In 1896, at any rate, gold was deemed to smack of mere lucre. So to each winner there went a silver medal, together with a branch of olives from Olympia, while each runner-up carried off the bronze and laurel.
Meanwhile, what of Coubertin himself at Athens? With some justification, he felt that the local Olympic organisers had become increasingly bent upon marginalising him. After their initial hesitancy, the modern Greeks had warmed deeply to the exciting display of `invented tradition' which was now occurring on their own soil. Thus, even before 1900, they had suffered a severe bout of that jingoistic Olympism which we tend to associate rather too casually with the twentieth century alone. The Games did not exactly cause the Cretan crisis and the war that Greece launched and lost against Turkey in 1897, but the atmosphere of nationalistic fervour which they encouraged may well have hastened the conflict. By the time of the 1896 competitions Coubertin had already come to suspect, rightly, that the Hellenic state now wanted to steal his non-governmental and potentially universalistic invention by insisting that its own capital should become henceforth the stable and permanent seat of these quadrennial contests. As in late 1894, he needed all his resourcefulness to deal successfully with this second Athenian crisis - one which came close to snatching from his own native Paris the honour of hosting the Games of 1900.
Many other difficulties would lie ahead for modern Olvmpism, and indeed for Coubertin himself as he exhausted his personal fortune on the further promotion of `his' movement. The last Games that he personally attended were those held for a second time at Paris, six years after the end of a Great War which progressive internationalisation of sport had been impotent to prevent. He was still alive twelve years later, when in 1936 Berlin provided the venue for Olympics that were, sadly, even more significant for enhancing the authority of Adolf Hitler than they were for revealing the superb talent of the black athlete, Jesse Owens. One happier point is that Coubertin, long before his death at Lausanne in the following year, had at least made his peace with modern Greece. Indeed, while most of him was to be buried in Switzerland, he actually willed one portion of his remains to Hellas. Back in 1927 he had paid a second and final visit to Olympia itself, to celebrate the erection of a column honouring his revival of the Games. On 26 March, 1938, at the same spot, Crown Prince Paul of the Hellenes presided at another ceremony. Within the base of the monument he deposited a funerary urn - and, as the cavity was sealed, a romantic cliché became a literal reality. Thus we can rightly say that, at the end of his life, Pierre de Coubertin had given to ancient Olympia nothing less than his whole heart.
Ian Buchanan
President, International Society of Olympic Historians
To describe Great Britain's representatives at the 1896 Olympic Games as a `team', in the sense that any selection process was involved, would be a mistake. The British competitors in Athens had all entered individually and made their own travel and accommodation arrangements. All-rounder, Launceston Elliot, and hurdler, Grantley Goulding, sailed together from Marseilles aboard the SS Congo while the London Athletic Club members George Robertson and Edwin Flack of Australia, the English-born winner of the 800 metres and 1500 metres, travelled together and shared an apartment in Athens. Marksman Sidney Merlin and track athlete George Marshall lived in Greece as did the cyclists, Battell and Keeping, who both worked in the British Embassy. John Boland, the tennis player, happened to be on holiday in Athens at the time of the Games and 400m finalist, Charles Gmelin, apparently travelled independently. In view of the apparent lack of publicity in England regarding the Games, Britain were perhaps fortunate to be represented at all at the first Modern Olympics.
Considering that Britain had a considerable involvement in the revival of the Games it is surprising that the British Olympic Association was not founded until 1905; but as early as 1894 two British members, Lord Ampthill and Charles Herbert, had been elected as founding members of the International Olympic Committee. Neither of these two IOC members seem to have done a great deal to promote the Olympic cause at home but part of the blame must lie with the organizers who first issued the programme and rules in French, then in German but never in English!
Well in advance of the Games, Baron de Coubertin approached the Amateur Athletic Association with a view to soliciting British entries but it is alleged that the request apparently never went further than the AAA offices. This seems distinctly unlikely as Charles Herbert, already an IOC member and a dedicated disciple of de Coubertin, was Honorary Secretary of the AAA at the time and would surely have spread word of the Olympic gathering.
In March 1896, one month before the Games were due to start, a direct appeal was made to Oxford and Cambridge Universities. At Oxford a small announcement was placed on a College notice board and a passing reference was made to the Games in an obscure Oxford journal and no doubt the Games received similar minimal publicity at Cambridge. All of which was a great pity as the Olympic Games coincided with the vacations at the two leading British Universities and, given more time, no doubt some of the wealthy sporting undergraduates would happily have made arrangements to take their holiday in Greece.
This Oxbridge approach is chronicled in the writings of George Robertson - of whom more later - but Robertson's writings are contradictory. On the one hand he tells of the announcement displayed at Oxford1 while in another source he says that he first learned of the Games from a notice in the Oxford Street shop window of the travel agent, Thomas Cook.2 Anyway, there was clearly rather more to the whole matter than Robertson claimed. Of the five competitors who travelled from Britain, two (Launceston Elliot and Grantley Goulding) had no connection whatsoever with the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge. So one must ask how did they hear of the Games?
There is more evidence, admittedly circumstantial but to my mind conclusive, that publicity for the Games was rather more widespread than Robertson suggests. The Times and the Birmingham Post both sent their own correspondent to cover the Games and before the age of air travel this would not have been arranged in a matter of days. Similarly, the authorised Travel Agent, Thomas Cook, could not have organized and marketed their tours to Athens without adequate notice. Additional `evidence', is provided by the Englishman, Charles Perry, who was responsible for laying the track in Athens. This was a project which entailed a number of visits to Greece over a period of months and as the groundsman for the London Athletic Club at the Stamford Bridge headquarters of British athletics he must surely have told many of Britain's leading athletes, with whom he was in daily contact, of the forthcoming Games. Perry was the world's greatest expert on running tracks. Not only did he supervise the laying of the track for the 1896 Games, he organised the refurbishment of the same track for the Inter-Calated Games of 1906 and was then in charge of the construction of the tracks for the Games of 1908 (London), 1912 (Stockholm) and Antwerp (1920). It can safely be said that for one man to be responsible for four Olympic tracks is one record that will never be beaten. Charles Perry also acted as a timekeeper at the Games and his brother was coach to the Hungarian team. Eventually, nine - or possibly ten - Britons took part in the first Modern Olympic Games and, as can be seen from the following brief biographies, they represented a broad spectrum of British sport. Let us consider the two champions first.
Among the many fascinating characters to be found in British sporting history, Launceston Elliot, the weightlifting champion, must rate as one of the most intriguing. A relative of the Earl of Minto, who was Viceroy of India (1905-1910), he was born in India where his father was a magistrate. While his father, Gilbert Elliot, and his first wife were staying in a hotel in Tasmania, the first Mrs Elliot met her death in mysterious circumstances in a fall from a hotel balcony. Gilbert Elliot returned to the hotel with rather indecent haste and married the receptionist! The Olympic champion was a result of this marriage and, although he was born in India, he was given the name Launceston as he had been conceived in the Tasmanian city.
In 1887 Gilbert Elliot gave up his post as a magistrate in India and returned home to farm in Essex. Thirteen-year-old Launceston saw England for the first time where he soon became a pupil of the legendary strongman Eugen Sandow. After winning the British title in 1894, he went to Athens two years later for the Olympic Games where he won the one-handed lift and took second place in the two-handed lift. He also competed - although without comparable success - in the 100 metres sprint, the rope climbing contest and the heavyweight wrestling.
A strikingly handsome man, Launceston Elliot was the idol of the Greek crowds and was offered the hand of a `highly placed lady'. The offer was declined and in 1897 he married the daughter of a Kentish vicar. As he approached the age of 30, he became a professional `strongman' and took his popular Music Hall act all over Europe and to South America. In 1923 he settled in Australia where he died in 1930 after failing to recover from an operation for cancer of the spine.
Apart from being Britain's first Olympic champion, Elliot, because of his relationship to Lord Minto, has the highly unusual distinction of being the only Olympic weightlifter listed in Burke's Peerage.
The other British winner in Athens was John Pius Boland who was the winner of both the singles and the doubles in the lawn tennis tournament. As a Member of Parliament and distinguished academic, Boland's career is well documented in the standard reference books but some vital background information has recently come to light in a most unusual way. At the end of last year (1995), his hand-written diaries, which included his notes on the 1896 Olympics, were delivered, quite out of the blue, to the offices of the British Olympic Association. The diaries had been sent anonymously and the unsigned covering letter explained that they had been borowed from Boland so long ago that the writer was embarrassed to give his name. As Boland died in 1958 the diaries must have been on loan for something approaching 40 years!
The British Olympic Association kindly gave me the opportunity of studying the diaries before they were lodged with the Olympic Museum in Lausanne and they are a real `treasure trove'. For example, we learn that the true reason for cancelling the scheduled yachting events was not, as had always been thought, gale force winds but the lack of starters after the three yachts which arrived from Alexandria had been placed in quarantine. On a more personal note, Boland, who went to Athens with no intention of competing, tells how he was invited to take part by his neighbour at dinner the night before the tennis tournament began. He goes on to explain his difficulty in getting kit together at such short notice and how he eventually finished up playing in leather soled and heeled shoes.
Boland was educated at the Catholic University School (Dublin) and Edgbaston Oratory (Birmingham) before going up to Christ Church College, Oxford and he later studied at the Universities of London and Bonn. Called to the Bar in 1897, he served as the Member of Parliament for South Kerry from 1900 to 1918. His daughter, Honor, also entered politics (as Mrs Crowley) and another daughter, Bridget, was the author of the highly-acclaimed play, The Prisoner.3
Two British cyclists, Edward Battell and Frank Keeping, competed at the 1896 Games and they were indirectly responsible for the first major incident of the Modern Olympics. Working as servants at the British Embassy in Athens, their entries for the Games offended a number of British residents in Greece who sought to have them barred on the grounds that, because of their occupations, they could not possibly be `gentlemen' and it naturally followed, according to the logic of the time, that if they were not `gentlemen' they could not therefore be amateurs. Despite these protests, the entries of the British cyclists were accepted but the incident clearly created quite a stir in the British community. 4
The Olympic historian, Stan Greenberg (GB), visited the Public Record Office at Kew to see what the British Ambassador's report had to say about the matter. Greenberg was advised that the Reports from our Embassy in Athens for that period had been rendered indecipherable `due to rain damage'. The Boland diaries refer to Battell and Keeping as being footman and butler to the British Ambassador, Sir Edwin Egerton. I cannot trace that Sir Edwin ever wrote his autobiography - which must be rather unusual for an Ambassador of that period. Despite their lack of support from the British residents, the two British cyclists performed creditably. Battell placed third in the 87 kilometres road race which was held over an `out & back' course. On reaching the turning point, the riders had to sign a document in the presence of a Commissioner to prove that they had reached the half-way stage. Keeping went one better than his team-mate by taking second place in the 12 hour track race. The race began at 5:00 am and by mid-afternoon of the seven starters only Keeping and the Austrian, Adolf Schmal, were left. These two were engaged in a titanic struggle which was graphically described by Richard Mandell in his book on the Games. He wrote:
"Neither man had eaten and had taken only sips of liquid. Both were squalid from excreta and delerious from fatigue. their churning legs had swollen gruesomely and Keeping's arms were swollen too, but still he battled on. Both could be heard audibly weeping as they passed and were passed in turn."5
Apart from the two cyclists, two other British competitors were resident in Greece: Sidney Merlin was the son of the British Vice-Consul in Athens and after three years schooling at Brighton College in England he returned to Greece where he helped supervise the family's substantial land holdings. The Merlin family were among the leaders of Greek Society and the main thoroughfare of Athens is still known as Merlin Street. Not surprisingly for one who moved in high social circles, Sidney married Zaira, the daughter of the Greek Prime Minister, George Theotokis, although they were subsequently divorced.6
At the 1896 Games, Sidney Merlin competed in four shooting events with his best performance coming in the 200 metres Rifle Match where he placed 10th. He also entered for the two weight-lifting events but did not compete. He later took part in the 1900 Games and in 1906 he was the winner of the Clay Pigeon (double shot) and placed third in the Clay Pigeon (single shot). He was the first Briton, in any sport, to take part in three Olympic Games.
In the programme for the Games, the affiliation for George Marshall is shown as `Oxford' against his entry for the 800 metres but University is not specifically mentioned. For the 100, 400 and 1500 metresd, his affiliation is shown simply as `London' but, again, the affiliation is not qualified and in the absence of further information it is unsafe to assume that he was actually a member of London Athletic Club. Although entered for four events, Marshall ran only in the 100 metres and 800 metres and was eliminated in the heats of both events. Little is known of Marshall but there is considerable evidence that he was a resident of Greece. In his reports to the Birmingham Post, Lawrence Levy wrote (16 April) that Marshall `had never been encountered by the little coterie of British athletes'. George Robertson also wrote that one of the British athletes lived in Athens and this was surely Marshall.
Although George Marshall also entered for the lawn tennis singles and doubles he did not take part in either event. In the doubles he entered with F.Marshall, who was presumably a relative, and they entered as members of the Panachaicos Club of Patras thereby giving a further indication of Greek residency.
The British contingent was completed by the son of a Gloucester farmer, Grantley Goulding, who had begun to establish a reputation as a hurdler in 1895 when he was the winner at nine West Country meetings including a notable victory at Gloucester over the visiting South African champion, P Hunter. Later in the season, he made his only appearance in the AAA Championships when he finished last in his heat. According to Thomas Curtis (USA), the winner of the Olympic hurdles in 1896, Goulding was the most confident athlete he ever met and "strutted around Athens explaining the origins of the medals on his chest".7 His confidence proved to be misplaced as, after a poor start, he lost narrowly to Curtis in the Olympic final. In fairness to Goulding it should be said that he was running on cinders for the first time and experienced considerable difficulty in adapting to the unfamiliar conditions. Also, while practicing in Athens, he fell heavily, damaging a knee, and was unable to train for some days.
Unfortunately, nothing is known of Goulding's later life. Despite extensive searches at Somerset House and St Catherine's House, his date of death has not been traced and it is thought that he probably emigrated and died abroad.
A late entry for the Games, perhaps as a result of the last minute appeal to the Universities, was Charles Gmelin who finished fourth in the third heat of the 100 metres and, as the first Briton to actually compete in Athens, he has the distinction of being the first British Olympian. He fared rather better in the 400 metres and, after placing second in the heats to the winner of the title, Tom Burke (USA), he finished third in the final. Gmelin was educated at Magdalen College School and Keble College, Oxford and, after graduation, he took Holy Orders and became the Headmaster of Freshfields School, Oxford. Although he failed to win an athletics blue at Oxford he was a fine all-round sportsman and represented Oxfordshire at soccer and cricket.8
A three-time winner of the hammer throw for Oxford against Cambridge (1893-95), George Robertson was unfortunate that this event was not included in the 1896 Olympic programme. Instead he competed in the discus and it was reported that he "cut a very poor figure and it would have been better for his reputation if he had scratched".9 According to certain sources, he also competed in the shot putt but from a post card he sent to his mother it seems virtually certain that he did not, in fact, take part in the shot. Robertson did, however, play in the men's doubles in the lawn tennis tournament with Edwin Flack, the winner of the 800 metres and 1500 metres, as his partner. Robertson and Flack lost their first match but Robertson's most notable achievement at the Games was to compose and recite in classical Greek a Pindaric Ode before the King of Greece for which he was awarded a laurel branch by the King. Although a keen Olympian, he was not convinced, at least in his early years, of the value of the Olympic movement as a peaceful influence. Writing in 1901 of the 1896 Games, he expressed the view that "Politically, the Games undoubtedly did much to produce the subsequent War with Turkey".10 Educated at Winchester and Oxford he became a distinguished lawyer, was knighted in 1928 and, when he died at the age of 94, was thought to be the last surviving competitor from the first Modern Olympic Games.
Ture Widlund, a Swedish specialist on the 1896 Games, has traced that another British marksman perhaps competed in the Rifle Match (200 metres). Literally nothing is known about this participant and even his name has not been established with certainty. The record of his participation only appears in sources written in Greek and the nearest translation of his name into English appears to be Machonet or Mokchoinet. Hardly an English sounding name and, at least for the time being, the identity of this competitor remains a mystery.
Apart from the competitors there was quite a strong British presence at the Games. As we have already mentioned, Charles Perry supervised the construction of the track and acted as timekeeper and his brother was coach of the Hungarian team. John Graham, the coach of the Americans, had been born in England and another Englishman, Robert Finnis, the manager of the local office of the Eastern Telegraph Company, acted as an official in the stadium. Other Britons present included Lawrence Levy, who acted as a weightlifting official, and the well-known author and aesthete E F Benson whose autobiography devotes more space to the beauty of the Greek youth than to the sporting events .............. but that's another story!
Notes
1 Robertson, George. Fortnightly Review , Vol.LIX (January-June 1896).
2 Almanac of Sport, Sampson Low, London, 1966.
3 Who Was Who 1951-1960, A.C.Black, London, 1961.
4 Mandell, Richard. The First Modern Olympics, University of California Press, 1976.
5 Ibid.
6 Letter of 1 March 1979 to Ian Buchanan from George C.Courtiz of Athens who was a contemporary of Merlin.
7 Curtis, Thomas P. Sportsman, July 1932.
8 Keble College Register 1870-1925.
9 The Field, April 1896. As Robertson was the correspondent for The Field in Athens, he presumably made this comment himself!
10 Thomas, William Beach. Athletics.
The Isthmian Library, Ward Lock, London, 1901.