The 1908 Olympics

"I didn’t know much about 1908 before I read it and what it showed me was just how much confrontation and political anger there was running through these Games. All of it was coming from the athletes – there were boycotts, there were falling outs, just all sorts of confrontation. When we think of the politicisation of the Olympics, we tend to think of terrorists and government interventions – we don’t think of the athletes involved. The athletes are unlikely to politicise London 2012 – if it happens it will come from the outside. In 1908 it was the athletes that fell out, notably the British and the American teams, over politics. Yes, and they also fell out over the Irish question. The American team was predominantly Irish American and hated the way that Irish athletes were made to run under the British flag. They made gestures of protest right through the Games. It’s really hard to think of modern athletes falling out in that way. You also had athletes pulling out of events because they thought the other side was cheating. There was also a lot of fighting over the question of who were or were not amateurs. The British thought the Americans had essentially sent over a professional team. From the British perspective, American sport was contaminated by professionalism. The British thought sport at its highest level should be an amateur enterprise. It was almost as if the American way of life – the fact that Americans were thought to be professionalising everything – was a threat to a British understanding of not only sport, but of the way you did things generally. This is the image the 1908 Games are famous for – this little Italian guy being helped over the finishing line. People remember it because it’s an example of heroism – that anyone from anywhere can be an Olympic hero. But at the time, the key thing for the British newspapers and the public was that he wasn’t American. The British hated the idea that these Americans who had done all this training were going to win the marathon. So when the first person who entered the stadium wasn’t the American favourite but this little Italian guy, they were desperate for him to win. When he was disqualified, it was because the Americans complained that he had been helped. If the Americans were going to complain and get the gold medal that way, the British were determined to make Pietri a hero and he was given a special gilded silver cup. But this was more than Anglo-American sporting rivalry. The 1908 Games have this innocence to them, like almost everything in that pre-World War I period. But one of the interesting things that people forget is that Britain and America were not on friendly terms at that time. People in Britain were wondering which country the next big war would be against – was it going to be Germany or America? This stuff wasn’t just a jokey falling out between friends – it was really political. The 1908 Games were small and pretty chaotic – it really wasn’t well organised. What people forget is that although the athletics took place over a short period, all the other events were dragged out over months all over the country. London 2012 has this extraordinarily concentrated feel to it. For the days that it runs, it will be the life of the nation and there will be no getting away from it. In 1908, a lot of people weren’t sure if it was on or not."