History of the modern Summer Games

Athens, Greece, 1896

The inaugural Games of the modern Olympics were attended by as many as 280 athletes, all male, coming from 12 countries. The athletes competed in 43 events covering athletics (track and field), cycling, swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, wrestling, fencing, shooting, and tennis. A festive atmosphere prevailed as foreign athletes were greeted with parades and banquets. A crowd estimated at more than 60,000 attended the opening day of competition. Members of the royal family of Greece played an important role in the organization and management of the Games and were regular spectators over the 10 days of the Olympics. Hungary sent the only national team; most of the foreign athletes were well-to-do college students or members of athletic clubs attracted by the novelty of the Olympics.

The track-and-field events were held at the Panathenaic Stadium. The stadium, originally built in 330 bce, had been excavated but not rebuilt for the 1870 Greek Olympics and lay in disrepair before the 1896 Olympics, but through the direction and financial aid of Georgios Averoff, a wealthy Egyptian Greek, it was restored with white marble. The ancient track had an unusually elongated shape with such sharp turns that runners were forced to slow down considerably in order to stay in their lanes. The track-and-field competition was dominated by athletes from the United States, who won 9 of the 12 events. The swimming events were held in the cold currents of the Bay of Zea. Two of the four swimming races were won by Alfréd Hajós of Hungary. Paul Masson of France won three of the six cycling events.

The 1896 Olympics featured the first marathon. The race, conceived by Frenchman Michel Bréal, followed the legendary route of Pheidippides, a trained runner who was believed to have been sent from the plain of Marathon to Athens to announce the defeat of an invading Persian army in 490 bce. The race became the highlight of the Games and was won by Spyridon Louis, a Greek whose victory earned him the lasting admiration of his nation.

Paris, France, 1900

The second modern Olympic competition was relegated to a sideshow of the World Exhibition, which was being held in Paris in the summer of 1900. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics and president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), lost control of his hometown Games to the French government. The Games suffered from poor organization and marketing, with events conducted over a period of five months in venues that often were inadequate. The track-and-field events were held on a grass field that was uneven and often wet. Broken telephone poles were used to make hurdles, and hammer throwers occasionally found their efforts stuck in a tree. The swimming events were contested in the Seine River, whose strong current carried athletes to unrealistically fast times. There was such confusion about schedules that few spectators or journalists were present at the events. Officials and athletes often were unaware that they were participating in the Olympics. See Sidebar: Margaret Abbott: A Study Break.

Nevertheless, the Games were attended by nearly 1,000 athletes representing 24 countries. There was an infusion of new events, some of which were not officially part of the Olympic program or were later discontinued (e.g., golf, rugby, cricket, and croquet). Archery, football (soccer), rowing, and equestrian events were among those introduced at the 1900 Games. Women, competing in sailing, lawn tennis, and golf, participated in the Olympics for the first time even though women’s events were not officially approved by the IOC. The confusion surrounding the events led to similar confusion over who was the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal; Swiss yachtswoman Hélène de Pourtalés, tennis player Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain, and golfer Margaret Abbott of the United States could all lay claim to that honor.

Despite the problems of the Paris Games, the quality of athletic performance improved. Athletes from the United States, led by jumper Ray Ewry and sprinter Alvin Kraenzlein, again dominated the track-and-field competition. American athletes won 17 of the 23 track-and-field events, while French athletes earned more than 100 medals, by far the most for any nation at the 1900 Games.

St. Louis, Missouri, U.S., 1904

Like the 1900 Olympics in Paris, the 1904 Games took a secondary role. The Games originally were scheduled for Chicago, but the location was changed to St. Louis when Olympic organizing committee officials decided to combine the Olympics with the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, a large fair celebrating the 100th anniversary of the U.S. acquisition of the Louisiana Territory. As a result, the Games suffered. Several events became part of an “anthropological” exhibition in which American Indians, Pygmies, and other “tribal” peoples competed in events such as mud fighting and pole climbing. The Games were poorly attended by both spectators and athletes. The remoteness of St. Louis and growing tension in Europe over the Russo-Japanese War kept away many of the world’s best athletes. Of the approximately 650 competitors representing 12 countries, fewer than 100 were from outside the United States, and about half of those were from Canada. Even the Olympic founder, Coubertin, stayed away in 1904.

The overall results were predictably lopsided, with Americans earning more than three-fourths of the 95 gold medals and more than 230 medals in all. The track-and-field events, held on the campus of Washington University, featured Ray Ewry, who repeated his Paris performance by winning gold medals in all three standing-jump events. American athletes Archie Hahn, Jim Lightbody, and Harry Hillman each won three gold medals as well. Thomas Kiely of Ireland, who paid his own fare to the Games rather than compete under the British flag, won the gold medal in an early version of the decathlon. Kiely and his competitors performed the 100-yard sprint, shot put, high jump, 880-yard walk, hammer throw, pole vault, 120-yard hurdles, 56-pound weight throw, long jump, and mile run, all in a single day. The swimming events took place in an artificial lake on the fairgrounds. Zoltán Halmay of Hungary and Charles Daniels of the United States each won two gold medals in individual swimming, while Emil Rausch of Germany won three. Boxing made its Olympic debut in 1904.

Athens, Greece, 1906

When Athens served as host of its second International Olympic Games, in 1906, more events were held and more countries participated than in the first three modern Games. With better athletes and more of them, the competition was fierce and entertaining, resulting in the most satisfying Olympics to date. As in the previous Games, Americans dominated the athletic competition, led once again by standing jumper Ray Ewry and thrower Martin Sheridan. Both had won in St. Louis and would repeat their victories in London. William Sherring of Canada won an emotionally charged marathon.

The 1906 Games, often referred to as the Intercalated Olympic Games, introduced some important permanent Olympic customs, including the parade of the nations’ teams in ranks around the track, now the first major event at all opening ceremonies. Olympic scholars agree that, after the fiascoes of 1900 and 1904, the well-organized and highly successful 1906 Athens Olympics probably saved the entire Olympic movement from an early demise.

These Games, however, are not included in the official IOC lists. The rest of the IOC, over Coubertin’s objection, had agreed that Athens would hold Olympics every two years in between the other Olympiads. Coubertin feared more Olympics in Greece would bolster the popular proposal that Athens become the permanent Olympic site. He later “vetoed” the results of the 1906 Games and retroactively withdrew IOC status from them, even though he himself had listed them as official IOC Games in his 1906 Olympic Review. In 1948 the IOC executive board, at Avery Brundage’s urging and without discussion, rejected a scholarly petition from another IOC member who sought to reinstate the 1906 Games. In 2003 the IOC executive board once more rejected a carefully argued and well-documented petition from the International Society of Olympic Historians asking that the 1906 Games again be recognized as official. As in 1948, the matter was not even submitted to a vote.