The Strangest Games: The 1900 Paris Olympics

In 1900 Paris Olympics are considered some of the strangest. Some sport historians don't even consider them true Olympic Games. Many of the events were so under-promoted, the athletes competing in them didn't know they were even in the Olympics.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to stuff you missed in history class from house
works dot com. Helloo, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sair
Dowdy and I'm Deblin a Chruck reboarding and today. The
Olympic Games seemed like such an institution that it's hard
to believe they almost didn't make it pass their second

(00:23):
time out in nineteen hundred. But of course, then, with
only one previous modern Olympics on the books, the Paris
Games just proved to be such a disaster and often
hilarious disasters, we're going to see that. It's pretty remarkable
that everyone agreed to give it another go four years
later in St. Louis, and even the founder of the
modern Games himself, Pierre baron De later said quote, it's

(00:47):
a miracle the Olympic movement survived these games. So we'll
tell you just a few of the issues as kind
of a teaser here. For one thing, the games stretched
from May to October. I mean, can you even imagine
something like this going on today. They were so poorly
organized as well and poorly promoted that the athletes often

(01:07):
didn't even realize they were competing in the Olympics. And
if you knew you were competing. It wasn't because of
the flashy venues in the high quality equipment that you
were working with. I mean, you were swimming in the sun,
you were competing in track and field events throughout the
woods and using old utility polls as hurdles. So not

(01:27):
exactly top of the line stuff going on here. So,
because of the odd circumstances that's around the nineteen hundred Games,
some sport historians don't even consider them Olympics at all.
They don't even consider them part of the modern Olympic tradition,
at least according to the Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement.
They're seen simply as sporting events that were held as

(01:49):
a side show for the Universal Exposition. Still, though, I mean,
we're gonna go ahead and consider them real Olympics, and
if we do that, the Paris Games did include some
pretty notal well. First one, it was much larger than
the first modern Games that had been held in Athens,
and the Paris Games attracted athletes from more foreign nations

(02:09):
than ever, so it was more of an international event
that the organizers were striving for, and also featured the
first women competitors, which was significant and it helped set
the precedent for rotating the games between cities. But to
really understand the bizarre side show that was the games,
it helps to go back a little bit. So we're

(02:30):
gonna take you back to some other Olympics, way back.
The ancient Olympics may have their roots in Greek myth,
but the first official games were actually held in seven
seventy six BC. So after trucking on for centuries with
foot races, chariot competitions, and wrestling matches to the death,
the games were banned in three D by Christian Emperor

(02:52):
Theodocious due to their polytheistic roots, and the history of
the modern games might lead you to believe that there
was then a lull of more than fundred years with
no games at all, but that's actually not quite accurate.
Athletic competitions, both local and national, which build themselves the
Olympics and took at least some Hellenic inspiration, are documented

(03:14):
as far back as the Renaissance, a little known fact here.
So we're just gonna give you some examples of these
Olympic Games that occurred in the meantime and some of
the events they featured. Two competitors in Robert Dover's Olympic Games,
and that's Olympic with a K added on. I really
like that touch. Those games started in sixteen twelve, and

(03:35):
people would compete in events based on their position in society,
something that seems pretty unusual but maybe doesn't seem quite
as strange as if you look at it as a
country fair that sort of thing. So gentry might compete
in hunting or even chess. Townspeople could wrestle or do
something called fighting at the barriers. Rural folk might participate

(03:57):
in something called cudgel play, or in kicking, tumbling, something
called skittles, or pipe and tabor music. So a varied
repertoire of activities were for the rural folk. Moving on
to the nineteenth century, there was an explosion in Olympic events.
In the eighteen thirties. There were the Olympic Games of

(04:18):
rum Lursa with events like mass climbing, and the much
Weelock Olympian Games with sports like wheelbar racing, plus some
competition for the less athletically inclined, like knitting and a
biblical history contest. There was also evangelist Sappa's Olympics in Greece,
the pretty famous one, which was heavily influenced by ancient traditions. Still, though,

(04:42):
it took Pierre Baron de Couberton, an enthusiastic supporter of
physical education in general, to draw inspiration from these different
local Olympic traditions and push for an international game, something
more like how we think of the Olympics today. So
Coubert had become an ardent supporter of reviving the Olympics

(05:03):
since he met with Englishman Dr William Penny brook in
eighteen ninety and Brooks had started the much Wenlock Olympian
Games forty years earlier, and he had also corresponded for
years with evangelist Appa's had sort of incorporated some of
those Greek traditions that were going on into his own games.
But since the eighteen sixties, Brooks had been really interested

(05:25):
in promoting the idea of an international games. The problem
was he just couldn't get that much interest for it.
So after seeing the articles and ideas of the elderly Brooks,
Cooperton took up the torch and went back to France
and pitched the idea himself at the Union de sport
Athletique in eighteen ninety two, he couched the event as

(05:46):
a diplomatic opportunity. He said, quote, let us export our oarsmen,
our runners are 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. Again, though there just
wasn't that much interest in this. Couberton, though, was undeterred,

(06:07):
and he tried to pitch his idea this Athletic Congress
again in eighteen nine four. This time there was some success.
He says that people probably just went along with it
for his benefit, but still they went along with it,
and Kuberton, being French, naturally suggested that his hometown of
Paris would be the perfect spot. In nineteen hundred would be,

(06:29):
you know, as a new century, the perfect year to
commence the modern Games after this long lull. Somehow, though
both the date and the host city changed, it was
Athens that would host the inaugural Games. Things went well,
both for Cuberton and the new International Olympic Committee. Though
the Greek Prime Minister had initially refused to stage the games,

(06:50):
his successor was game for to make this happen. And
the King of Greece opened the events on Greek Independence
Day in eighteen. There were athletes from four teen different
countries international, just like they had hoped exactly. The first
medalist was American James Connolly, but the Greeks took home
their most coveted prize, first place in the marathon, with

(07:11):
more than one hundred thousand spectators showing up to watch
the race. Yeah, due to the historical significance of the marathon,
which we've covered in an earlier episode on the Battle
of Marathon, you can understand why the Greeks really wanted
that one. Some of the events that these Olympics sound
a little bit risky today. For instance, Hungarian Alfred Hios,

(07:31):
who won the one hundred meter and twelve swimming events,
remembered being taken out to see on a boat and
left to swim to shore. That was how they were
going to cover the long distance swimming, and he said
that quote his will to live completely overcame his desire
to win. I can understand that perspective too. So even

(07:53):
though there are some things that might seem a little
bit strange today, like that the first Olympics were considered
a success and the Greeks wanted to post them permanently.
They wanted to host the nineteen hundred Olympics and on
from there the IOC. However, the Olympic Committee they preferred rotating,
especially since the Greek Turkish war made a second Athens

(08:14):
game seem a little less appealing. Plus, Paris, even without
Kuberton's hometown boosterism, was due to host the nineteen hundred
Universal Exposition. A great opportunity to kind of double up
on major crowds. They're already, you've got the infrastructure. Seems
like a perfect opportunity to being operative. Word, they're exactly

(08:37):
really Doubling up proved to be almost the undoing of
the Paris Games because it left no one definitively in charge.
Instead of being this special quadrennial celebration, the Olympics just
became a sideshow of the exposition, a fairground side show.
Part of the problem was that the French government was
already planning sporting expositions for the fair and remember this

(09:01):
is the early years of physical education, so it was
hoped that these public displays of sport, alongside other public
displays of industry and culture, would not only encourage folks
to get out there and move and exercise things. We
might expect events like this to encourage today, but also
promote quote moral energy as well, according to the Encyclopedia

(09:22):
of the Modern Olympic Movement. But as the IOC lost
control to the French government, the difference between the Olympic
sporting displays and the non Olympic displays became very unclear.
As we already mentioned, some athletes didn't even know that
they had participated in the Olympics. Their confusion was heightened
by a couple of things. For one thing, the vast

(09:43):
number of Olympic events. According to Olympic dot org there
were events and nine competitors from twenty four different countries.
Another problem was the extreme under promotion. That telltale word
Olympics wasn't you used on event programs. So even though
there were scores of visitors in Paris for the Universal Exposition,

(10:06):
the Olympic displays were sometimes poorly attended, both by the
press and spectators. The women's croquet match, for example, had
only one person in attendance, an Englishman who had traveled
from Nice specifically for this event. So I hope he
enjoyed the show. At least he got a good seat.
I'm sure he did so. Many of the events also

(10:27):
seem pretty bizarre today, aside from the whole organizational issue.
Some of them, like archery or equestrian were new to
the Games at the time, but are normal now. They
seem like Olympic staples. Others, like gymnastics, were simply a
lot different from what we know today. In nineteen hundred,
gymnasts had to complete sixteen different movements, including lifting a

(10:49):
fifty kilogram stone, climbing a rope, and pole vaulting. So
I'm imagining the little little, tiny teenage Olympians doing the
thing like the pole vaulting in the fifty kim stone? Interesting?
What's weirder as an event like say tug of war
at the Olympics. Incidentally, tug of war was one of

(11:11):
the five sports where people from several nationalities competed on
the same team too, so like a field day event. Yeah,
lots of strange stuff going on there are strange to
us today. At least, swimming events included oddities like an
obstacle race where you would duck under boats. Doesn't sound
very safe. Yeah, but even traditional events got sort of

(11:32):
an unusual twist because of the venues that they were
held in. So I mean we all goggled at beijing
stunning watercube Aquatic Center during the two thousand eight Games,
but competitors in the nineteen hundred Games had to do
their swimming competitions in the then, where currents would just
create these insane records. I mean, we were just talking

(11:52):
about the Games where you'd be towed out to see,
but swimming in a river wouldn't be much easier either, No,
it would not. And there was also the fencing, which
at one event pitted teachers against students, so that was
one thing, but it was also held at the Universal
Expositions Cutlery area, so almost as if there was some
sort of early Olympic marketing. Couldn't be it because they

(12:16):
didn't market anything, right, Just easier access, to guess, just
seemed to make logical sense to put it there. Track
and field events were held on the grass center of
a horse track where there were mounds and dips, and
the straightaway headed off into the woods and was uphill,
so spectators trying to see the finishes would stand up

(12:39):
and they would actually interfere with the runners the hurdles
as we mentioned were old utility poles and jumpers had
to dig their own pit and discuss, and hammer throwers
frequently hit tree just wasn't enough room. But worse than that,
the Hungarian medalist Rudolf Bauer actually had throws enter the crowd.
According to Ambarrewski and the Cleans, Yeah, I didn't see

(13:02):
anything about those throws injuring someone, which seems fairly miraculous.
But I would imagine he wouldn't know meddled if he
had hurt somebody. But maybe so, I don't know, may
I'm wrong about that of The marathon course was another
bizarre case in this Olympics. It went through the middle
of Paris, but it was so poorly supervised that many

(13:24):
of the finishers accused the three French victors of taking
some secret shortcut, something that they backed up by the
fact that the winners looked pretty comfortable. They didn't look
like they had just run a marathon. But everyone knows
athletes are really the true stars of the Games, and
Paris and nineteen hundred had its fair share of notable
competitors too well. French athletes won the majority of events,

(13:47):
which wasn't surprising at all since they were the only
nation competing in several so there were some events where
they were right they were the only ones competing. American
Alvin Kruntzline became the biggest name at the Games. He
won the team meter, the one meter hurdles, and the
two hundred meter hurdles. He also won the long jump
after his teammate and Meyer prince Stein, was forbidden to

(14:09):
participate in the finals by his university since they were
to be held on Sunday, even though prince Stein was Jewish.
When prince Line won by one centimeter, prince Stein was
apparently so angry he punched his teammate in the face.
Another strange athlete story, George Orton became the first Canadian
to medal eight years before Canada even sent a team

(14:31):
to the Games. And that's because Orton, who had been
attending University of Pennsylvania, where a lot of the American
track and field team members were based, just joined up
with their team. His first event, he came in last
place in the four hurdles, but he still meddled because
there were only three competitors. An hour later, though, he
got kind of a more prestigious medal than that. He

(14:52):
won the steeple chase, which was considered his specialty, and
broke a world record, one of the six world records
open at the game. Stan Raleigh, who was an Australian
track star, one third place in the sixty race, a
hundred meters and two hundred meter race. After his victories
for Australia, then the British got him to join their

(15:13):
team for the five thousand meter event since they were
one man short. Now Raleigh had never run a distance race,
but because of the points scoring, all he actually had
to do was cross the finish line. In the end,
he didn't even have to do that. Race officials got
so tired of waiting for him that they automatically gave
him last place, which was enough for his team to win.

(15:33):
And I was a little amazed by this. Apparently he
was kind of walking, but five thousand meters, I can
see how a sprinter wouldn't be able to compete in that.
It's funny he took the long enough for them to
cancel it. So of the twenty two female competitors, though
British tennis player Charlotte Cooper was the first woman to
win an Olympic event, Margaret Abbott though I think is

(15:55):
a particularly interesting case. She was just a Chicago girl
who was studying art in Paris and entered the golf
competition on a whim and one so not the sort
of traditional Olympic process you might expect today. But I
think the best athletes story has to be that of
an unnamed and unknown French boy. On August, during the

(16:17):
coaxed pair rowing event, the Dutch team needed a replacement
coxin and they drafted a French boy who was believed
to be somewhere around seven or or was believed to
be somewhere around seven and twelve years old at the time,
and with this kid on their team, they rode to victory,
and according to Olympic dot org, the French kid did

(16:39):
join in the ceremony. He was photographed, but nobody got
his name. In years of research haven't been able to
uncover his identity. He's the lost Olympian. Well. The thoroughly
bizarre Paris Games closed October dred and even though they
seem so disastrous, at least some people were convinced by
the Olympic message. A writer for Ltevello wrote November nineteen

(17:03):
hundred that since the game's quote, sport has definitely become
a new religion. And in nineteen o four the St.
Louis Olympics were again swallowed up by a world's fair
and went on for way too long. Once again four
and a half months. Organizers didn't even learn lessons from
the disastrous Paris Marathon. American Thomas Hicks won the gold

(17:23):
after his teammate was disqualified for driving most of the course.
How do you even do that? It's nineteen o four,
I don't know. Still though, even at that Games, the St.
Louis Games records were broken. Archie Han, for instance, the
Milwaukee meteor set a time for the two race that
stood for twenty eight years, and athletes again captured public attention.

(17:48):
American George iSER, for instance, won six medals in gymnastics,
even though he had a wooden leg uh the nineteen
o eight London Games. By that point things were beginning
to look a little bit more official. They finally stopped
trying to double them up with these worlds there, and
by nineteen twelve, with the Stockholm Games, for the first time,

(18:08):
teams from five continents competed. Strangely, it may have been
the Olympics cancelation during World War One that really led
to its ultimate endurance. During that time, Couberton worked on
reshaping the game's identity, moving its headquarters to Switzerland, and
promoting its ideology as quote, the pursuit of peace and
intercultural communication through international sport. After the first post war Games,

(18:32):
held in Belgium in nineteen twenty, the Olympic rings appeared
for the first time, and Couberton retired from the IOC
after seeing Paris finally made good with the successful nineteen
four games. Yeah and Cooperton, Deblan and I were discussing
this earlier has an almost poetic end here. He died
in nineteen thirty seven, making his last game the nineteen

(18:54):
thirty six Berlin Olympics and sparing him too from seeing
the two games that were canceled during World War Two.
He was buried in Lausan, which is the Olympic headquarters,
all except for his heart, which was interred near the
ruins of ancient Olympia. Pretty fitting, it seems. His idea, though,

(19:16):
is I think a good point for us to close
this episode on. He hoped that the games would really
inspire international respect. That was the whole point of turning
something that clearly, as we've seen with these examples from
the earlier games from the Renaissance, was pretty common, turning
it into something that people from around the world could
participate in. And here's how he described it. To ask

(19:38):
the peoples of the world to love one another is childishness,
but to ask them to respect one another is not
in the least utopian. In order to respect one another,
it is first necessary to know one another through sport.
Just one final note on the strangeness of the Paras Olympics.
The Paris medals were rectangular. I mean, come on, Paris

(19:59):
like rectangular medals. I guess I shouldn't really judge. They
only had one previous metal shape too to go on
at that point, but it is very funny today. If
you look at a slide show which you can find
online of Olympic medals, there are a lot of round
medals and then there's this rectangular one. So I think

(20:20):
that's a good time to bring us to listener meal.
So we got a message from Arena in Toronto and
she was writing about the Freya of Arabia episode and
she said that the timing of that episode turned out
quite perfectly for me. So I thought I should share
this with you. My brothers and I bought my mom

(20:41):
and iPod for Mother's Day, and I loaded it up
with lots of stuff, including your podcast and the recent
episode on Freya of Arabia. The next day, I listened
to the episode at home and couldn't believe the timing.
The gift for our mom was also a going away present,
as she is heading out tomorrow for a three week
trip to Israel. She hasn't been to Israel since the
nineteen seventies, and more than one person raised an eyebrow

(21:04):
at the idea of a woman in her fifties spending
three weeks completely by herself in the Middle East. What
a perfect coincidence that the first episode of Yours she'll
hear on the plane over there is the story of Freya,
who had people telling her the very same. Although my
mom won't be doing anything extreme like crossing borders in
secret or exploring harems, I couldn't help but smile at

(21:24):
the thought of Freya's adventurous spirit living on in women
like my mom. I'm sure she'll have the time of
her life exploring such a fascinating part of the world.
Go Mom, that's cool. So thank you Rena for writing
in and I hope your mom had an awesome trip
and did take a little inspiration from Freya. I'm sure
we all could. Yeah, I'm taking a little inspiration from

(21:46):
your mom. I think that's pretty cool. We have another
note here from Laura. She says, as a home educating mom,
I use your podcast for my own background knowledge, but
I also love to share them with my oldest daughter,
because of these podcasts is a big history buff. Listening
to your podcast is her favorite audio, which is a compliment.
Whoever heard of a teenage girl preferring history to Justin Bieber.

(22:10):
I honestly have to say I didn't know, Laura, that
there was so much competition out there, such stiff competition.
I would say, yeah, that we were considering Justin Bieber
one of our competitors. I know if I knew that,
I'd be a lot more nervous coming in here. Well,
but thanks for writing and we love to first of all,
just here when people are using our podcasts as part

(22:31):
of education, and you know, we love to hear that
you can bring family members together. So so we have
to mother daughter um to mother daughter listener meals that's
our common theme for this, so thank you both for
writing in. If you guys want to share anything with us,
where at History Podcasts at Discovery dot com. We're also

(22:52):
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you want to learn a little bit more about previous
games and some of the strange or sports editions that
we discussed today, we have an article on our site
called ten Bizarre Olympic Events and you can find that
by searching for the Olympics on our homepage, which is
www dot how stuff works dot com. H for more

(23:20):
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