Steel and Grace: Sheffield's Olympic Track and Field Medallists

Steel and Grace: Sheffield's Olympic Track and Field Medallists

by Matthew Bell and Gary Armstrong

[Smashwords Edition]

Published in 2014 by Bennion Kearny Limited.

Copyright © Bennion Kearny Ltd 2014

ISBN: 978-1-910515-09-9

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Table of Contents

Title Page

About this eBook - Images [read me]

Dedications

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Chapter 1: The Olympic Games: Principles, Peoples and Places

The Restoration Principles

Faster, Higher, Stronger – For Men?

The Price of Olympic Glory

Faking It? ‘Shamateurism’

The English and their Influence

Sport and the British: Politics and Purpose

Sheffield: A City on the Move?

The Tough of the Track (and Field)

Chapter 2: Harold Wilson and Archie Robertson: The Odd Couple in London

A Pedestrian City?

Run for Fun?

A Splendid Finisher

Modesty of the First Order

Sporting States of Mind

The Spiritual Home of Olympism?

The Member for Sheffield

Racing Supremacy

West Side Story

Welcome to Our World

Qualifying or Disqualifying?

Screaming Youths?

Who Foots the Bill?

The Sheffield Man Defeated

An American Achievement

More Work for Robertson

The End of the Road

Go West

Seeking Active Service

Chapter 3: Ernest Glover and William Cottrill: Harriers in Sweden

The Magnificent Harriers

Running with Envy

Trials and Preparation

Stockholm Syndromes

Harrowing Thoughts

Cinders and the Ugly Family

Not Cross-Country

Outside their League

Talent Trek: Where to Begin?

Brilliant and Hip

Needing a New Mind-Set

Sport in its Place

Running in War-Time

Goodbye to All That

The Finishing Line

Chapter 4: Ernie ‘Evergreen’ Harper: Longevity and the Long-Distance Runner

The Conquering Hero

Cross-Country Man

First and Last

Rolling and Running

After You, Sir

Don’t Broadcast It

French Hosts, British Ways

Heat-Defying Finn

Peerless Nurmi

Amsterdam Blow-Out

Dutch Pragmatism

Legless in Amsterdam

The Jew-Nazi Altercation?

Olympic Lebensraum

Trial by Ordeal

Black and White Issues

To Dip or not to Dip?

Sporting Gestures

A Proud Sohn of Korea

The Finishing Line

Virtue and Reward

The Sun and the Shame

Doing Not Speaking

Gratitude and Reward

The Victorian Era

Chapter 5: John and Sheila Sherwood: Family Fortunes

Life on the Cross

Room for Cilla?

Pints and Pole Vaulters

The Precocious Winner: John Sherwood

Fashion Faux-Pas

Falling into Place

Wedded Bliss and the Mexican Wave

Heights and Hot Air

The Starting Guns

Carry On Regardless

Attitude or Altitude?

The Tartan Winners

The Family Silver

The original ‘Colemanball’[5]

Third Place Mattered to Some

What’s Going On?

Race Policies

Black and Gold

Berating Others

Angrier and Nastier?

Awards and Washing

Back Home

Hot Air and Quarry Dirt

Facilitating Injuries

The Golden Couple

The Smell of Team Spirit

Designs and Costs: Munich 1972

Long-Distance Loner

The Old and the New

Mumbo-Jumbo

Racing Certainties?

Enhancing Performance?

To Teach to Serve

Peace through Sport?

The Sacred and the Profane

The Closing Ceremony?

Retirement Beckons

Feet-up Time?

Honours and Inheritance

Chapter 6: Sebastian Coe: Fight or Run?

The Child Prodigy

A Principled Father

Schooled to Win

Gandy’s Co-Existence

Record Breaking

Mutually Assured Destruction

The Six-Week Sensation

The Parentage of Success

Slow Down, Speed Up

Invasive Politics: Moscow 1980

Hands Off, Hands On

Heads in the Sand?

Rights and Responsibilities

Choose Your Weapons

Trading Compromises

Coe and Ovett: A Local Issue

Seating and Funding

Political Baggage

Language, Peter

Finishing, Not Finished

The Unique City?

Changing Prices

The Open Market

Athletic Assistance

MBE and ICI

Duels Old and New

Racing Rest Days?

The Toxic Armpit

Cloud and Smog

Doping or Dignity?

Our New Buddy?

Intrigue and Selection

LA Raiders

Muscles from a Shell

Back at His Best

The Dash for Cash

Easy as ABC?

Picking and Choosing

Sport for All, Drugs for None

Subvention and Public Confidence

Taking the Urine

Grace and Favour

Financial Chaos

A Politician’s Answer

The Final Lap

A Different Race

A Big Head from London?

Coaching the Leader

London (2012) Calling

Respected, Admired, Loved?

Chapter 7: Jessica Ennis-Hill: The Reluctant World Beater

Events and Choices

Refusing to Lose

Throwing Away Victory

Don’t Call Me Tadpole

Predictive Profiles

The Future is Jess

The Agony of Injury

The Myla Method

Tonking It

A Handbag for the Girl

The Dizzy Captain

Digging It

The Girl without Weakness?

A Famous Whinger?

Korea Second-Best

A Place You Can’t be Touched

Watching Countdown?

A Chippy Personality

Short Corners and Free Kicks

The Politics of 2012

1856 + 6955 = Gold

What Next?

The Cult of the Coach

The Unemployed Award Winner

Fashionista, Role Model

Epilogue

Bibliography

Other Books From Bennion Kearny

About this eBook - Images [read me]

The print version of this eBook contains more than one hundred images of Olympic athletes from across the decades. A number of the images were taken a long time ago and were never particularly sharp; they look especially poor on a grayscale eReader. In turn, were the images to be included here, the file size of the eBook itself would be HUGE!

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Dedications

To those who trained long and hard – and cleanly – to achieve Olympic success. Matthew Bell

To Dr Rosemary Harris, friend and mentor who gave confidence, a title and a career. Gary Armstrong

Acknowledgements

The completion of this text in July 2014 was a podium moment for the two authors. Some three years of training – mostly in intervals but always intensive – has produced what we consider our personal best. We thus seek recovery from our labours but hope that the annals of Olympic history record our achievement in providing a reader with what we believe is a unique contribution to sporting literature. There is no shortage of books addressing the Olympic Games. That said we are unaware of one that examines the lives and times of Olympic medallists from one city over a period of more than 100 years. We expect others will follow. We meanwhile claim a first for the fine city of Sheffield. Our claim has to be put in context; like any athletes who complete the task asked of them the victory is down to more than the individuals taking the applause. We have a lot of people to thank.

Our achievement would not have happened without a superb back-up team. In no particular order the authors wish to thank Iain Bell for his editing and suggestions and Luke Ramon-Hodges for his impressive research. Chris Maddocks and Dave Shields supplied expert advice on the history and psychology of athletics and Iain Lindsay provided extensive knowledge of various Olympic Games and the politics attached to each. Help with genealogy came from Chris Hobbs, Andy Holland and Robert Hukin. The history of Hallamshire Harriers Athletic Club was generously shared by Mike Theobald. Recollections of a famous past pupil came from Frank Hudson, former teacher at Drax Grammar School, and Roger Peden and David Grant, former students of the same establishment. Invaluable insights into people and pastimes were provided by Steve James, a former student at Firth Park Grammar School, and local historian Denis Clarebrough respectively. The staff of the Local Studies Library, Sheffield, were typically wonderful, as was Norma Reaney of the Stannington Local History Group. The administrative support provided by Karen Kinnaird, Gary Dear and Julie Bradshaw was priceless and much appreciated. Special thanks are due also to Glenn Piper and Lois Holmes for their permission to use various photographic images. Specific information on the Olympics was generously given by Howard Stupp and Cristina at the International Olympic Committee and by Michael Salmon at the Los Angeles 1984 Foundation. A special thank you goes out to Andy Daykin, who in a 2012 telephone conversation with one of the authors suggested the route that the text should take. Final thanks must go to James Lumsden-Cook at Bennion Kearny for having confidence in us and not being put off by the scale of this book.

Where did the idea for the book come from? The short answer is two questions; one asked of one author, the other asked by the other author. The first – asked of Matthew Bell (MB) by his brother – was what did he know of the Sheffield runner who won silver in the 1936 Berlin Games, running the final eight miles of the marathon with a shoe full of blood on account of a badly blistered foot? Such questions were a red rag to a bull to a man whose archive searches are meticulous. The second question was asked by Gary Armstrong (GA) some 16 years ago when nosing round the living room of a house in the south east of Sheffield. Asking about the origins of a rather splendid cut-glass decanter in a trophy cabinet, the response from its septuagenarian owner of: ‘It was awarded to my father after he won a medal at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics’ was jaw dropping. The authors – long-time mates – discussed the issue of just how many people from Sheffield had won Olympic medals and why were their achievements not known and recognised. They decided to do something about it. The outcome is what follows and is a collaboration drawing on our respective strengths in forensic historical detail and the socio-political contexts in which sport is both played and delivered. Just for the record, the research was not funded and is best considered as a product of hard graft as opposed to the possession of brilliant genetic dispositions.

We stand in awe at the achievements of the athletes who are the subject of this book. Their lives were characterised by self-discipline, pain, endurance and desire. They were driven to achieve beyond our comprehension. Much as we would like to, we cannot put ourselves in their shoes. And, just for the record, both authors were at the age of 14 second-best in their school year in cross-country. The emerging athletic career of MB was cruelly cut short by a bout of bronchitis. The running career of GA continued for another decade or so and saw him represent the University of London at cross-country but he was never to know what a top 20 finish felt like.

The authors’ knowledge of the athletes in the book is somewhat fleeting but noteworthy nonetheless. In the case of MB his 2008 approach to the then Jessica Ennis in a Sheffield city centre bar was well intentioned as he commiserated with her missing the Beijing Olympic Games and assured her she would win the following year’s World Championships. The politeness of the future star of track and field probably disguised her desire to escape her inquisitor. The long-time claim of GA that he has actually raced against a man once known simply as Seb Coe and stayed on his shoulder for 12 minutes is true if contextual. The 1981 Osterley Park Relay was a route shared by athletes from various universities, including London and Loughborough; the latter (Seb’s) won the event. The post-race pie, chips and beans served at the Borough Road canteen saw GA immediately behind Seb Coe in a rather slow queue of some 100 competitors. The wait was 12 minutes. And just for the record, when the matter was the consumption of carbohydrates GA left Seb Coe for dead.

Enjoy what follows. We certainly did. At the risk of sounding pious what we achieved we did with the minimum of performance enhancing supplements. The ones we used are not on the Olympic proscribed list anyway and draw on the letters IPA not EPO. Marvel at the lives of the people the book profiles. They are all ‘Sheffielders’ if one works by the criteria laid down by the Olympics for representing a nation state. There are no passports of convenience. Most were born and raised in the city and thus present no issue of inclusion. Some arrived in the city in childhood years but their subsequent longevity of residence qualifies them as ‘ours’. One mar

ried a Sheffielder, which would qualify him to carry a Sheffield passport. All – we believe – could pass the ‘Sheffield Citizenship’ test. What’s that you ask? Simple: provide brief but unequivocal answers to the following four questions: What is the correct pronunciation of the Sheffield district of Beauchief? When is a bread roll a breadcake? What behaviour constitutes a Mardy Bum? What is the difference between a fishcake and a rissole?

Thanks for reading thus far. We hope to provide knowledge and enjoyment through the words that follow.

Matthew Bell and Gary Armstrong, October 2014

About the Authors

Matthew Bell is a mechanical engineer by trade but spends his every spare moment writing, with a keen interest in sport and local history. He has edited the Sheffield United FC fanzine Flashing Blade since 1989 and has written a weekly column in the Green ‘Un and Sheffield Star newspapers since 1993. His latest works, Shocking Sheffield: Forgotten Tales of Murder, Mishap and Gruesome Misdemeanour, Parts 1 and 2, and Long Shadows Over Sheffield, written in collaboration with historian Chris Hobbs, were published in April 2012, November 2012 and April 2014 respectively. In 2010, along with Dr Gary Armstrong, he co-authored Fit and Proper? Conflicts and Conscience in an English Football Club, the definitive account of the recent history of Sheffield United FC, and in 2011 Red, White and Khaki: The Story of the Only Wartime FA Cup Final was published, which studied the impact on the country – and on Sheffield in particular – of the continuation of professional football during the first year of the Great War. In 2012 he wrote Viva Sabella! From Buenos Aries to Bramall Lane and Back, a biography of the former Sheffield United player and Argentina national team manager. He was co-editor of Blades Tales in 2000 and Blades Tales 2 in 2004. He has written articles for FourFourTwo magazine, the 2003 Sheffield United v Arsenal FA Cup semi-final programme and Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

Dr Gary Armstrong is a Reader in the College of Business, Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University. He previously lectured in Criminology at the University of Westminster and the University of Reading. Amongst the many criminology projects he has been involved in, two of the best known publications are Images of Control: The Rise of the Maximum Surveillance Society (co-authored with Clive Norris) and Surveillance, CCTV and Social Control (co-edited with Clive Norris and Jade Moran). His research into sports-related matters has produced the following publications: Football Hooligans: Knowing the Score; Blade Runners: Lives in Football and Sheffield United FC: The Biography. He has also co-edited, alongside Richard Giulianotti, Entering the Field: New Perspectives in World Football; Football Cultures and Identities; Fear and Loathing in World Football and Football in Africa: Conflict, Conciliation and Community. From 1998 to present he has researched the possibilities that football can offer to various demographics in the reconstruction of post-conflict Liberia. Recent research in Bosnia-Herzegovina has addressed the same question. Other long-term research has examined the role football has played in the politics of Malta, the study of which produced a 2009 book co-authored with Jon Mitchell titled Local and Global Football. The year 2010 saw the publication of a book co-authored with Alberto Testa titled Football, Fascism and Fandom: The UltraS of Italian Football. Another book, published in February 2011 and co-authored with Pete Fussey, Jon Coaffee and Dick Hobbs, titled Securing and Sustaining the 2012 Olympic City, examines the policing and security implications that surrounded London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Chapter 1: The Olympic Games: Principles, Peoples and Places

The Modern Olympic Games are a festival of sport inspired by the Games of Ancient Greece, which, since their 1896 origins, have developed into the world’s most compelling sporting and cultural phenomenon. Both in their Ancient origin and their Modern re-creation the Games had aspirations beyond the athletic. The Pan-Hellenic Ancient Olympic events were held every fourth year and whilst obviously focused around sporting endeavours also celebrated music and literature. It can be argued that the high-minded principles that both the Ancient and Modern Games proclaim suggest they epitomise the struggle between the ideals sought therein and the realities within which they are delivered and played out. They are thus in many ways a metaphor for Humanity.

Established by the Greeks around 776 BC and lasting until at least AD 261 [1], a variety of myths surround the founding of the Olympic Games. One states that Pelops beat King Oenomaus of Pisa in a chariot race for the King’s daughter’s hand in marriage. Pelops apparently sabotaged Oenomaus’s chariot to win; the loser was executed. This act of treachery provoked the remorseful Pelops to create the Olympic Games in an attempt to atone for his wrong-doings. The second myth is based on the ‘Twelve Labours of Hercules’. This argues that Hercules completed twelve labours set for him by King Eurystheus. However, the promised portion of the Kingdom of King Augeas of Elis that was denied to Hercules provoked the latter to create the Olympic Games to commemorate his moral victory. Another myth tells of the warring Greek city-states provoking King Iphitos of Elis to seek advice from the Delphic Oracle. He was told to replace war with athletic competitions every four years. Intrigued by the idea, former combatants apparently agreed to the athletic meeting to be held on the Plains of Olympia and furthermore agreed to the notion of ‘Ekecheiria’ (Truce). All participants had to agree to the Truce before attending; conflict had to cease for the Games’ duration. Sport was meant to replace war even if posterity tells us that the Sanctuary at Olympus was full of weapons and armour dedicated to the Greek god Zeus in pursuit of his favour in the subsequent athletics.

The quintessentially human fascination with individual ordeal, that was the basis of and which remains ever-evident in the Olympics, can still reduce witnesses to a state of enchantment. That said, the Games were never innocent; competitors in Ancient times faced attacks from spectators. There were accusations of crooked judges. There were boycotts, bribes, curses and political interventions. The Greek author Philostratus, in his treatise on gymnastics, noted how the rewards on offer to the victors led to the buying and selling of victories. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey tell of athletes competing in front of huge crowds for prizes in the shape of bronze cauldrons, cattle and women. Prestige and wealth were at stake; victory could bring personal fortunes. The first recorded Olympic champion was actually a baker by the name of Coroebus. Fines were levied on those that sought short cuts to victory, the income funded the building of the bronze statues dedicated to Zeus, the god of gods, reminding them and others that cheating did not only pay, it also angered the gods.

The Restoration Principles

Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, the French nobleman founder of the Modern Olympics, suggested in his 1931 book Mémoires Olympiques that the Olympic Games bore a resemblance to organised religion. They undoubtedly contain a plethora of ritual and dogma and, indeed, a structure with parallels to the Church, but the message preached is defiantly humanist, affirming as it does equality, dignity and the search for peace through shared endeavour between participating nations and athletes. De Coubertin’s inspiration for reviving the Olympics can be traced to the Ancient Games and his belief in the ancient Athenian supposition that mind, body and spirit were mutually dependent. He sought what he termed ‘quadrennial festivals of universal youth’ to blend sport with culture and education in what was, to de Coubertin, a manifestation of enlightened civilisation. Such a pursuit was in part to counteract what he considered the increasing intellectualism in French schools and in part to create, in France, a generation of men with more character, courage and self-determination than was evidenced by the French defeat in the 1870s Franco-Prussian War. He saw a role for sport in this; fit men make for better soldiers. The Olympics were thus built around a militaristic sub-text. The International Athletic Congress held in Paris in 1894 voted unanimously for the restoration of the Games. Most of the speakers at the Congress were hand-picked by de Coubertin, who almost without debate gained initial approval for the fundamental principles for the revival of the Ancient Games. This gathering was to become the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The revived Olympic Games would not offer money prizes. It became de Coubertin’s crusade to ensure that the ethos of amateurism was uppermost in the minds of all those who became involved.

The Modern Games came with proclamations of principles. It has not proven easy to keep those principles. The Modern Olympics exist within a set of ‘Ideals’ known as ‘Olympism’. This is defined by the highest authority of the Olympics (the IOC) as ‘a philosophy of and a state of mind based on equality of sports’. Such a claim distinguishes the Games from all other sporting events. The ‘Ideals’ are contained in the Olympic Charter Rules and By-Laws, which speak of ‘improving the quality of life, preserving human dignity and promoting equality for all in sport’. As the Charter states: ‘The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’

Men of the clergy contributed to the Olympic strap-lines. In 1908 an address was given by Ethelbert Talbot – a Pennsylvanian bishop – at a service in St Paul’s Cathedral as the first London Olympics got underway. Drawing on the words of St Paul he preached that in pursuit of Holiness many were willing but only a few would be chosen for the Kingdom of God. Moving the issue to the Olympics he famously stated:

We have just been contemplating the great Olympic Games. What does it mean? It means that young men of robust physical life have come from all parts of the world. It does mean, I think, as someone has said, that this era of internationalism as seen in the Stadium has an element of danger. Of course, it is very true, as he says, that each athlete strives not only for the sake of sport, but for the sake of his country. Thus a new rivalry is invented. If England be beaten on the river, or America outdistanced on the racing path, or that American has lost the strength which she once possessed. Well, what of it? The only safety after all lies in the lesson of the real Olympia – that the Games themselves are better than the race and the prize. St Paul tells us how insignificant is the prize. Our prize is not corruptible, but incorruptible, and though only one may wear the laurel wreath, all may share the equal joy of the contest. All encouragement, therefore, be given to the exhilarating – I might also say soul-saving – interest that comes in active and fair and clean athletic sports.

A few days later de Coubertin paraphrased Talbot when he stated: ‘The importance of these Olympiads is not so much to win as to take part, for the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.’ These words, often misquoted, came to distil the Olympic ideals into one concise sentence.

The famous Olympic ‘five ring symbol’, its ideologies and the people who constitute the various committees of the IOC are known collectively as the ‘Olympic Movement’. At the top of the pyramid of power sits the IOC, which organises the Games, having earlier decided which city will host them. The IOC furthermore decides which sports and which international federations are admitted to the Olympic Programme. This is a self-electing and self-regulating entity not accountable to athletes, sports federations or National Olympic Committees (NOCs), who exist in their respective countries to uphold the ideals of the IOC. The IOC does not have to accept advice or instruction from the host city’s national Government. Meeting under the auspices of ‘The Session’, which consists currently of some 123 IOC members, this inner circle determines the future strategy of the Movement. The Session elects the Executive by secret ballot. IOC members are not representatives of their nations, but consider themselves ambassadors to, and for, the Games. The aim of the IOC is to remain independent of all extrinsic forces. Having no intrinsic political values, the Games can be utilised for any ideology or value system. They can, when they choose, exclude those whose presence they consider embarrassing and inappropriate.

Faster, Higher, Stronger – For Men?

The Ancient Games were performed by naked men and watched exclusively by men. The absence of clothing was significant; the removal of adornments of privilege illustrated that the victors did so by athletic ability alone. It took around 200 years before women competed. This came in the shape an event known as the ‘Heraean Games’.[2] The women competed clothed, racing in an event reduced by one-sixth from the male equivalent. Women were similarly excluded from the Modern Olympics. In origin the IOC consisted of five European nobles, two military Generals and wealthy middle-class men. Between 1894 and 1900 de Coubertin added ten Princes, Barons and Counts and between 1900 and 1914 more men with aristocratic titles. In 1912 de Coubertin defined the Olympic Games as:

The solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism, with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, art for its setting, and female applause as reward.

This statement is illustrative of his thoughts on the extent of female participation; he saw them as spectators not competitors. He banned women from participating in the inaugural Games of 1896. Of the 997 athletes at the 1900 Games just 22 were women, participating in the ‘approved’ events of golf, croquet, sailing, equestrianism and tennis. But, at the dawn of the 20th century, sport was a vehicle to pursue political change. In England the Suffragettes threatened to disrupt the 1908 Games if women were denied the chance to participate. A threat to dig up golf courses via the slogan ‘No Votes, No Golf’ was also articulated. The London Games saw 37 women participating in archery and tennis and, later in the year, figure skating.

For many in the IOC other events were too ‘masculine’ and therefore dangerous to the female frame. At the 1908 Games, winners received diplomas for their efforts; the men also received medals. Before the 1920s the few women who participated did so in events that required little physical exertion and usually did so wearing hats and long, voluminous dresses. Even after women had taken part, de Coubertin lobbied to exclude them from the 1924 Games, claiming strangely that female participation was ‘illegal’. According to de Coubertin, women’s sport was against the laws of nature and the most unaesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate. His successor as IOC President, Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, suggested in 1930 that women could participate but only in what he termed ‘aesthetical’ events. The official admittance of women into the Games came in 1928, coincidentally a year after the retirement of de Coubertin. In 1949 Avery Brundage, who was to become IOC President between 1952 and 1972, publicly expressed his disgust at the sight of a muscular female shot-putter. The pursuit of the more idealised female body may explain the inclusion in the 1984 Olympics of the two exclusively female sports – rhythmic gymnastics and synchronised swimming.

Meanwhile women played their own games. In response to the IOC’s ban on female participation, French woman Alice Milliat, a lobbyist for women’s sports, formed La Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale (FSFI) in 1921 and then held the first athletics championships exclusively for women in the shape of the 1922 Paris Women’s World Olympic Games (WWG), attracting 300 female competitors from five nations. The second such event in Gothenburg four years later was forced by the IOC and the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) to drop the word ‘Olympic’ from the title. This failed to dampen the success of the occasion and - realising this was a fight they could not win - the IOC voted in 1924 to include women in the 1928 Amsterdam Games. The IOC offered them just five athletics events as a compromise to the 11 offered at the WWG. This was not enough for many women agitating to take part and many, thus, boycotted the Olympics. Things were to change, though. By the 1940s organised sport for women was growing rapidly in Europe and North America; 391 women competed at the 1948 London Games. That such practices occurred was down to the fluidity of the IOC’s structure, which, in allowing host cities to decide on a programme of events, gave the hosts considerable latitude to include what and whomever they wished.

The post-war Games produced astonishing female performances. In London the 30-year-old Dutch mother, Fanny Blankers-Koen, became the only woman to ever win four gold medals at one Games. The 1952 Helsinki Olympics proved a milestone for female athletes. The re-entry of Russia to the Games (more accurately, the first entry of the Soviet Union) saw their female athletes walk away with medals in 25 of the 26 sports. Their success – and visibility – resulted in the global expansion of women in sports. The Tokyo Games of 1964 saw female athletes from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Iran, Malaysia and Thailand make their first appearance. The Eastern Bloc made women a central part of its sporting system and in the 1976 Montreal Olympics women from Communist countries won 76 per cent of the medals. By the time of the 1992 Barcelona Games just 35 of the participating nations arrived without female athletes; 18 of these were Muslim nations. In response, women from France and Belgium formed the ‘Atlanta+’ group to reinforce the Olympic Charter and lobby the IOC to donate one cent from each Olympic ticket sale to developing nations to help fund female athletes. The first woman to be elected to the Executive Board of the IOC was Venezuelan Flor Isava-Fonseca in 1990, some nine years after the inclusion on the IOC of its first two female members.

The Price of Olympic Glory

In origin the Olympic Games were a grand socio-political project with a modest economic profile. Intensification of interest saw the Games become integral to international political dynamics from the mid-1930s to the 1980s. Broadcast live, dramatic, symbolic and producing heroic athletic feats, the Olympic brand segues well into the aims of global commerce. The internationalisation of capital throughout the 20th century via multi-national corporations and international cartels saw commercial interests become integral to the Games. The Olympic spectacle is now a partner for global brands and is capable of re-imaging host cities. The staging of the world’s biggest sporting mega-event comes at a cost; it always did. In Ancient Greece prominent citizens gave financial support to the organisation of the Games. This sponsorship was continued when the Modern Olympics were revived. A leading sponsor initially was Georgios Averof, renowned for his charitable works all over Greece. A statue dedicated to him can be seen outside the Panathinaikos Stadium in Athens.

Commercialism of the Games adopted novel methods: the 1912 Stockholm Games organisers sold the rights to sell souvenirs and take photographs to ten Swedish companies; in the 1920 Antwerp Games the first printed programme was published, with timetable and competitor information bordered by advertising for both local and national companies; the 1924 Paris Olympics was the only time that advertising hoardings were allowed in an Olympic stadium; the 1936 Berlin Olympics saw television cameras inside the stadium for the first time; at the 1948 London Olympics television rights were first assigned; the ‘Olympia’ cigarette brand designed to generate funds for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo made over $1 million in revenues.

Global broadcasting of the Olympics changed everything. The five years leading up to the 1972 Munich Games saw the Organising Committee involve itself in extensive economic and financial activity. The Games were seen as a major source of income for the city. The sale of television transmission rights brought in $8 million but the event cost the hosts some $850 million. Confidence that hosting the event was financially viable memorably led the Mayor of Montreal to state in 1976 that the forthcoming Olympics could no more lose money than a man could have a baby. The Montreal Games generated a $6 billion debt that took the citizens of the city some 25 years to pay off. Nobody is quite sure of the cost attributable to the 1980 Moscow Games under the Communist regime; some put it as high as $9 billion. What was certain was that for a liberal democracy the conventional methods of paying for the Games via the sale of public bonds, direct state funding and donations from local businesses could no longer provide the sums required to adequately cover the costs.

Some host cities were bankrupt when the Games they had hosted left town. Those tasked with staging and delivering the Games had thus to think innovatively. Because of the financial disaster of the 1976 Montreal Games just one city – Los Angeles – tabled a serious bid for the 1984 Games (Tehran was involved at the initial stages). The 1984 Games had the most profound effect on the contemporary Olympic Movement. The Los Angeles Olympic Organising Committee (LAOOC) used every strategy it could to raise funds for its Olympics. In doing so the Games became the first since 1896 to be largely privately financed. Stages of the torch relay were sold to individuals for $3,000 per kilometre; this generated $10 million alone. American enterprises spent $900 million on Olympic-time television advertising and sponsorship. Corporate sponsors were willing to pay a minimum of $4 million for the exclusive rights to market their products under the Olympic logo. Official sponsors – the only ones allowed to use the Olympic five-ring symbol – contributed over $100 million in cash revenue to the Games in return for exclusive rights. This trend for official sponsors and suppliers became the norm after the Los Angeles Games, which made a profit of $227 million.

The IOC recognised the changing commercial face of the Olympics and responded. In 1985 the IOC signed an exclusive contract with the Swiss-based agency International Sport and Leisure Marketing (ISL).[3] The outcome was nine sponsors paying $95 million for exclusive Olympic rights. The number of sponsors rose to ten for the 1996 Atlanta Games and the revenue such exclusivity brought rose to $300 million. From this time forward Olympic Organising Committees were compelled to start marketing the Games as a commodity. Global corporations today have their logos adorning the Olympics. The 1988 Seoul Games produced sponsorship of over $125 million and an estimated profit of $350 million. From humble beginnings the monies offered by the broadcasting corporations were astronomical. The 1960 Rome Olympics sold the rights to the US based CBS for $444,000. The figure paid by the US-based ABC for broadcasting rights to the 1968 Mexico City Games was $4 million. Television companies paid $287 million for the Los Angeles Games and $433 million four years later. For the 2008 Beijing Games US broadcaster NBC paid $895 million for broadcasting rights, $100 million more than they paid for the same deal at the 2004 Athens Games. With such monies around one might ask as to why the athletes competed to the point of exhaustion for the benefit of global TV audiences and yet never received a penny of such wealth. Was there more to their pursuit of Olympic glory than the organisers were wishing to reveal?

Faking It? ‘Shamateurism’

To Ancient Greeks the word ‘amateur’ denoted athletes who competed for prizes. Such men were de facto professionals; they were trained by coaches and sought, via their sporting ability, the spoils of victory. The Modern Olympics were adamant that the Games would be pure and free of financial rewards. The first bulletin of the IOC and Rule 26 of the Olympic Charter defined an amateur athlete very concisely as:

Any person who has never participated in a competition open to all comers, or competed for a cash prize or sum of money from whatever source, in particular entry to the grounds – or with professionals – and who has never at any time in his life been a paid teacher or instructor of physical education.

In 1983 IOC President Avery Brundage even went as far as to state: ‘The Games must be amateur. They are not a commercial enterprise and no one – promoters, managers, coaches, participants, individuals or nations – is permitted to use them for profit.’ Things changed very quickly. The Olympics today sees predominantly professionally trained athletes remunerated for their efforts via sponsorships, endorsements, prize monies and Government support. One man was particularly instrumental in this.

The successor to Avery Brundage was Juan Antonio Samaranch, who held the IOC presidency from 1980 to 2001. A Spanish-born banker and industrialist, Samaranch was a champion roller skater and the one-time Spanish Ambassador to Moscow. Joining the IOC in 1966 Samaranch was, some two years later, appointed Chief of Protocol. In 1970 he was elected to the IOC Executive and occupied the office of Vice President between 1974 and 1978. He sought to move the Olympics in a new direction and to this end obtained recognition of the IOC in Swiss Law as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). He was to build the Olympic Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland, and at the same time set about re-structuring the IOC’s finances. He was undoubtedly a mover and fixer. He was also unencumbered by philosophy. His Spanish political career owed much to the patronage of the fascist General Franco. A photograph exists of Samaranch wearing a uniform of the Franco regime, his arm raised in what to some is the straight-arm salute synonymous with Spanish fascism.

Such details were overlooked when the Olympic coffers were full. In 1972 the then IOC President Lord Killanin found (when taking over from Avery Brundage) an Olympic kitty of just $2 million. By 1992 the IOC had reserves of some $150 million, even if one senior IOC official stated that the organisation lived day-to-day without any major financial resources. In this milieu, Samaranch sought out new friends and cultivated links with powerful politicians and businessmen. He awarded the Olympic Gold Order to, among others, Erich Honecker, General Secretary of the East German Socialist Unity Party, Nicolae Ceausescu, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party, and Roberto Goizueta, Chairman of Coca Cola. The most crucial figure for Samaranch was the German Horst Dassler, owner of the Adidas sport apparel empire. Dassler sought out impoverished sports federations and helped create new tournaments and events for them. He also proved instrumental to the IOC obtaining huge sponsorship revenue. Via his Adidas Sport Politics Group Dassler proved the supreme strategist.

Dassler became indispensable to Samaranch, encouraging him to make the IOC more receptive to sport and industry. Due to Dassler’s influence, selling the Olympics as a brand became crucial to Samaranch. A partnership between the IOC and the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu followed. The latter bought a 49 per cent share in the Lucerne-based ISL. Seeking all the while to make money for the IOC by any means possible, Samaranch saw the huge financial potential in selling Olympic broadcasting rights. As itemised (above) the sums paid by the various broadcasters brought billions of dollars to the coffers of the IOC. In return broadcasters had the power to tell the IOC to drop sports that did not translate well to television – or ignore such events. Broadcasters also negotiated to have the Games extended to a 17-day rather than a 15-day competition, so as to fit in two extra prime-time weekend days, which in turn would generate advertising revenues for them. It was a win-win situation – for everyone bar the Olympic winners.

As the commercial and national exploitation of sport expanded through the 20th century, the Olympic insistence on amateurism was undermined by fake jobs and state-funded housing provided by the Soviet Bloc countries, whose athletes were full time in all but name. The West was not innocent and hid its own deceptions: university sports scholarship students may well have never attended a lecture as they trained full time and under-the-table payment for elite athletes was rife in many sports. The IOC meanwhile realised that television broadcasting would broaden the Games’ appeal, but also understood that the broadcasters wanted the world’s best performers, not just the best amateurs. Consequently eligibility rules for competing in the Games were gradually relaxed in 1973 and 1981 as the IAAF took the lead in seeking and making payments to athletes. Eventually a 1981 IOC conference took the decision to dissolve the ‘pure’ amateur code in what was considered an effort to blend the IOC, the National Olympic Committees, and all international sports federations into a ‘like-minded democracy’. This changed the Olympics forever, from an elite, assumedly amateur practice to a spectacle provided by professionals consumed by mass television audiences for mutual profits. The Olympic Charter was amended in 1986 to allow ‘all the world’s great male and female athletes to participate’. Curiously, of all the Olympic events just the sports of boxing and wrestling do not permit professionals. Boxing, one of the largest grossing of all global professional sports, is organised at an Olympic level by the International Boxing Association, an amateur body. Olympic wrestling is run by the similarly amateur International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles.

Ever-increasing prize money combined with a media profile sees athletes today benefit from their association with the Olympics, which in turn reflects upon their sponsors. This correlation has been identified as contributing in no small way to the increasing use of performance-enhancing drugs at the Games. But this does not tell the full story. Research tells us that drugs were used in the amateur days. We must ask, however, does not the possibility of making vast monies from endorsements and advertising push some elite athletes to do whatever it takes to win? In turn, one might consider that the obsession with amateurism was not a positive force required for the Games to retain a sense of morality and perspective but more a means to subtly justify an elitist system that sought to bar the lower social orders from competing. The English might have had some role in this.

The English and their Influence

The revival of the Olympic Games might best be considered as part of a continuum rather than a product of a dramatic late 19th century re-birth. A multi-sport event had existed in England for centuries. Known as ‘Robert Dover’s Cotswold Olimpicks’, this event had been practised as far back as 1612 in the Gloucestershire village of Chipping Campden. Dover was an attorney, author, wit and general man-about-town who rode around his event on horseback wearing fine livery, holding the rod of office and dispensing money from a bag slung over his shoulder. Played out at this annual event were performances of tumbling, wrestling, cudgel fighting, long jumping (down a slope), hare coursing (for dogs), horse racing, jousting and hammer throwing, as well as dancing, card games and chess. Such athletic merriment did not please everyone. Suppressed by the Puritans of Oliver Cromwell between 1643 and 1660, the Games were restored by Charles II, who sought to restore a sense of fun into the national psyche. Revived by Dover’s son in 1660 the ‘Olympicks’ lasted until 1882, taking place some 221 times over 239 years.

This and similar events made a great impression on the man who was to found the Modern Olympics. At the same time, very different places in England offered inspiration. Seeking a merger of mind and muscle de Coubertin had become fascinated by the way the English practised sport and made repeated visits to the country, during which he communicated with influential people. He visited the public schools of Rugby, Eton and Harrow in 1882. Four years later he visited more such schools as well as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He liked what he saw in terms of the provision of sport and the way it was played and, in 1889, communicated to the French Government that they should investigate the provision and delivery of physical education. The following year he organised a congress in Paris to debate the matter.

As well as visiting elite universities and private boys’ schools de Coubertin visited Dr William Penny Brookes, who in 1850 had created the ‘Much Wenlock Olympian Society’ in what was a village-style recreation, in Much Wenlock, Shropshire (population 3,000), of the Ancient Games. The Games were a microcosm of what Penny Brookes envisaged as ‘Olympic’ and combined Classical Greek models of sport with the long-time pastimes of rural England. The games played included cricket, 14-a-side village football, quoits and hopping races. The winners won monetary prizes donated by Penny Brookes. Archives reveal that in later decades events such as throwing the javelin, stone throwing, hurdling, blindfolded wheelbarrow pushing and chasing a pig were introduced. One event for women saw them race for the prize of a sack of tea. What may well have appealed to de Coubertin was the Games’ moral and political purpose.

In the words of Penny Brookes the Games existed to ‘maintain that good feeling between high and low, rich and poor, which happily for us, is the national characteristic of Old England.’ A medical doctor, Justice of the Peace, Commissioner for Roads and Sewers and Chairman of the local gas company instrumental in the installation of domestic lighting in the village, Penny Brookes also began the Agricultural Reading Society in Much Wenlock and built a reading room for locals. Whilst evidently a crusader for sport he also had a great interest in the recreation of the lower social classes, believing that as great producers of wealth – but rarely the recipients of its benefits – they deserved the patronage of those above them who did well out of their labours. The Games were also promoted as an antidote to the previous excesses of gambling and drunken brawling associated with similar annual events in neighbouring villages. Indeed, history tells us that in 1843 a temperance meeting was chased out of Much Wenlock.

The 1850 Games might not have been shorn of revelry but they were tranquil in comparison with what preceded them and what was evident elsewhere at the time. By the 1860s the Games saw banners displayed bearing Greek inscriptions alongside representations of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. There were medals and laurel crowns for winners. By the latter part of that decade the event attracted athletes of distinction from both the Midlands and London. In 1865 Penny Brookes established the National Olympic Association (NAO) – which can claim to be the predecessor of the British Olympic Association – and the following year staged the first ever ‘National Olympic Games’ held over three days at the Crystal Palace Stadium in South East London in what was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt to translate the ideas and spectacle of the Much Wenlock Games onto the national level. In the promotion of the event Penny Brooks stressed the role of athleticism in the educational process of young men, arguing:

Should the day unhappily arrive when the youth of this country shall be led to abandon the invigorating excesses of the gymnasium, and to exchange the manly games of the recreation ground and the healthy and animating field sports of their forefathers for the refined, the gentle, the delicate amusements of the drawing room and the croquet lawns, then I tell you what will assuredly and rapidly pass away – the freedom, the long-cherished freedom, and with it the power, the influence, the prosperity and the happiness of this great Empire.

There were, however, forces at work that frustrated the visions of Penny Brookes. The NAO was begun in a Liverpool gymnasium at a meeting attended by delegates from across England. At this meeting Brookes spoke of his desire to see the popular recreations of the ‘workers festivals’ become more athletic in purpose. Significantly there was no representation from the public schools or universities. In response to the founding of the NAO these latter institutions were to create the Amateur Athletic Club, which in 1880 became the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA), thereby becoming the first governing body of athletics in England. The NAO lasted until the late 1880s, the AAA went from strength to strength, albeit today the running of British elite athletics is in the hands of UK Athletics, founded in 1999.

In 1889 de Coubertin visited Much Wenlock. He was to write glowingly of what he saw. Two years later he was made an Honorary Member of the splendidly titled Much Wenlock Olympian Society. In 1892 de Coubertin spoke at the University of Paris to canvas for a revival of the Olympic Games, describing the event as a ‘new free trade’ for Europe. In 1894 the Much Wenlock Olympian Society suggested that any revival of the Games needed a motto. In response de Coubertin suggested ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ (‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’) after such words were gifted to him by Father Henri Didon, his Jesuit Priest mentor. Whilst de Coubertin wanted the Olympic Games to be the pinnacle of every sport, this was never realised. Football broke from the Olympic format over the issue of paid players. Omitted from the 1932 Games, the football authorities had organised their first World Cup tournament two years earlier.

English educational establishments and exceptional individuals had provided the inspiration that de Coubertin sought in his attempts to re-create the Olympics but the subtle messages of exclusion that permeated sport in England may have been lost on a man who was well-born. How the English – or more specifically the British – played and organised sport from the time of the first Modern Games to the present is fascinating. Sport in Britain has many aficionados, but also a very complex history of organisation and funding.

Sport and the British: Politics and Purpose

Sport has played many roles for a variety of British Governments, even if it has never had a coherent voice. That said, the frequent claim made for sport – namely that it is independent of political processes – has ensured it has value in political intrigue. The claims made for sport, that it builds and sustains usable resources – not least by the people who play it – and that it inspires and instils moral values, make it politically useful. Furthermore sport as played, be it at the individual or national level, has implications as to how a people are seen by others. British Governments have been traditionally reluctant to intervene in sport. Any intervention that took place was usually reactive and part of that particular Government’s political strategy. Sport has thus, at times, carried the burden of domestic and foreign policy and at the same time been steeped in notions of social class, exclusion, separation and control. Throughout much of the 20th century many sports in Britain – particularly those of the Olympic Games – might best be characterised as the pursuits of the middle-class amateur elitist.

The earliest forms of state intervention around sport in Britain saw medieval monarchs banning sporting pastimes that interfered with military training and caused too much of a drunken tumult. Later, the state intervened to prohibit sports that were cruel to animals. It was public health concerns that laid the foundation for the development of many sporting and recreational opportunities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Christian churches played their part and saw recreation as good for both body and soul. Sport in the UK in this period also had, at times, a very basic functional purpose. The delivery of the school physical education curriculum and the development of many sports generally can be traced to the training of the – male – body for military service. Things changed. Since the late 20th century the state has provided tens of millions of pounds to assist Olympic hopefuls. In addition, over the past 40 years successive British Governments have considered sport as integral to health campaigns, job creation, urban regeneration and international prestige.

Governments in the UK historically have been uncertain as to where sport should be located and thus left it alone. Interventions in sport by politicians therefore have been rather ad hoc and instrumental. Sport has sat in a variety of Governmental departments and funding streams and has found itself in a variety of public and private partnerships. As a consequence sport in Britain has been typified by amateurism, voluntarism and sometimes a somewhat chaotic administration. State-funded sport provision was very basic. The Council of Recreation and Physical Training (later re-named the Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR)) between 1945 and 1972 managed seven national sports centres with the intention of raising Britain’s sporting profile. The same organisation also funded the Wolfenden Report of 1960,[4] which was significant in recognising the role sport could play