1904 : The Forgotten Olympics
- Suppose you held an Olympics and nobody came? Well, not many non-Americans made it to St. Louis for the
1904 Olympics: only 12 nations including the USA were present; there was no official team from Britain (the
organisers labelled a couple of Irishmen resident in the USA as from "Great Britain", much to their disgust),
and nobody from France (not even Baron de Coubertin).
- Why St. Louis? The Games were supposed to be in Chicago: St. Louis was planning to stage an
International Exposition to celebrate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, and decided
that they wanted the Games as well: they threatened that they would stage rival sports events to
clash with anything that Chicago tried to stage, and (doubtless after some behind-the-scenes
politicking) de Coubertin's Olympic Committee gave way.
- "Hang on, the Louisiana Purchase was in 1803, so the Exposition should have been in 1903". Yes,
but the buildings weren't ready in time.
- "But St. Louis is in Missouri, not Louisiana". The "Louisiana" which the Americans bought
from the French covered the area drained by the Mississippi and its tributaries, in other words
a large chunk of the present USA.
- Between Which Dates? As with the Paris Olympics of 1900, the sporting events were spread out over
several months. Some were official Olympic competitions; others were schools or college championships;
other events included oddities such as Turners Mass Exercises. The recognised Olympic athletics programme
(29th August to 3rd September) included handicap events now not recognised as Olympic events.
Who Won Most Gold
Medals? The USA, naturally, with 78; next came Germany and Cuba with 4 each. But of rather
more interest was the contest for the athletics overall team award, which set "east" (New York AC) against
"west" (Chicago AC, so not that far west): with the result of the contest depending on the final event, the
Team Race (which is as near as they got to a cross-country event), which the New Yorkers won.
- The 400 metres. The track (3 laps to the mile) was wide enough to allow 12 athletes to start in
the final, as shown in the photo on the right. Hang on: is that a "second row" consisting of an
unlucky thirteenth athlete at the right of the image?
- The 400 metre Hurdles. This event, which bobbed in and out of early Olympic programmes, was notable for the
bronze medal won by George Poges, the first-ever black medallist. In fact these Olympics were the
first in which actual medals were awarded to the first three in each event.
- The Marathon. The race day was hot, the course largely stony and very dusty: the race officials' car in
the photo on the left must have churned up its fair share. As with the 1972 Olympic Marathon, the first into the
stadium was an intruder, in this case a retired/disqualified athlete Fred Lorz. The actual winner, Thomas
Hicks, was given strychnine (now on the WADA Banned Stimulants list; a poison except in tiny amounts) by his
support team mid-race. The fourth finisher (Luis Carvalho, Cuba) ran in what was
virtually street clothing; ninth-finisher Lentauw, a black South African, was reckoned to have run
an extra mile after being chased off the course by an aggressive dog.
- The Anthropological Games. The least credit-worthy part of the whole St. Louis operation. Members of
various "primitive" peoples (i.e. not conforming to American ideas of progress) were persuaded to take
part in a range of activities; some mainstream athletics events, some imitations of their own leisure activities.
Some competitors refused to take part on learning that, in the spirit of amateurism, they wouldn't be
paid (can you blame them?). The organisers tried to pass the events off as being done in the spirit of
scientific enquiry: hopefully such pseudo-science is now dead and buried.
- Well, maybe you would have preferred to take part in the Swimming events. Are You Sure?
- The International Olympic Committee ruled that no Games would ever again be run in conjunction with an International
Exhibition (as the dismal 1900 and 1904 Games had been). Ironically it was the 1906 Games in Athens, a far better organised and
attended meeting but not recognised as a genuine Olympics, which helped restore the credibility of the Olympic movement.