Olympic Games 100 years ago: the broth of Antwerp

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The US freestyle relay also had to swim in brackish water back then

It was the Olympic Games that were also marked by a pandemic. It was the Olympic Games after a terrible world war, it was the Olympic Games that were still so different from what we know today about the Olympics and that took place under sometimes absurd conditions. And yet some say: Without the Summer Olympic Games in Antwerp, which were opened 100 years ago by the Belgian King Albert I, the Olympics might not even exist anymore.

The world war had ended less than two years before the Games, with almost ten million soldiers dead, the gas war in the trenches of northern France, not far from Antwerp. The subsequent Spanish flu hit the world, the estimated death toll is between 20 and 50 million. When the young US water diver Aileen Riggin used the time between competitions during the Summer Games to visit the battlefields of Normandy, she wanted to take a shoe she found there as a souvenir. Then she let it be, there was still a foot in the shoe.

Support from the Pentagon

The world is on the ground, who thinks of the Olympic Games? Actually, Baron De Coubertin's Olympic values ​​died with the world war. Antwerp is ready to host the major event anyway. Also because the influential American sports functionary Gustavus T. Kirby was responsible for the reconstruction of Belgium in the Pentagon at that time. Kirby, IOC member since 1896, politician, art collector, fencer and inventor of the light barrier with which the finish line can be precisely photographed, is committed to the survival of the Olympic movement and proposes Belgium as the host. However, without the defeated Central Powers Germany and Austria and their allies Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey. You were not even invited by the Belgian authorities.

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The Olympic Stadium in Antwerp, still the home of the K Beerschot VA football club today

The King will open the Games on August 14th - actually it is already the second opening ceremony. The games started in April in order to offer the figure skaters and ice hockey players still reasonably cool temperatures. At that time, both sports were still part of the Olympic summer program; they did not change season until 1924 with the introduction of the Winter Games.

The water was too cold

The longer it has been, the more the stories proliferate. And some are too good to be true. For example the story of the Italian water polo captain Amilcare Beretta. The story, which also appears repeatedly on the Internet, tells that the Italians refused to play against Sweden because the water was too cold for them. Only their captain accepted the competition and gave up exhausted when the score was 0: 7.

After all, the story has a true core, even if Italy didn't play against Sweden at the tournament. The Italians actually boycotted the second half against the Spaniards when the score was 1: 1 because of the low water temperatures, but according to Italian sources, not just one, but three players should have continued. The game was canceled anyway and scored for Spain.

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The last Olympic tug of war took place in 1920. It's a shame actually

But even without this, the Antwerp Games are a single source of stories and anecdotes. The Italian national anthem could not be found at an award ceremony, so the Olympic makers played "O Sole mio" instead. The Italian walker Ugo Frigerio distributed sheet music to the stadium orchestra before the competition so that he could go to the gold medal with the right music. Which also worked.

First silver, then the Nobel Prize

The Briton Philip Noel-Baker won silver over 1500 meters, 39 years later the Labor politician was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This makes him the only Nobel Prize winner to have an Olympic medal. The American John B. Kelly won the rowing. His daughter Grace later became world famous as a Hollywood actress and then Princess of Monaco. Father Kelly had previously been unloaded at a regatta in England. The reason: As a trained bricklayer, he is physically too much at an advantage over British academic athletes.

The swimmers competed in one of the city's canals, the water was a stinking dark broth, and rats competed with the athletes. Today journalists would probably have made some analogy with the relationship between athletes and the IOC, back then it was just dirty water. When US swimmer Ethelda Bleibtrey picked up one of her three gold medals from the king, she complained: "We were swimming in the mud, not in the water." Bleibtrey was one of the outstanding participants in the games, she competed five times, two prelims, three finals, and five times she swam a world record.

Her US colleague Duke Kahanamoku, a swimming star of the time, who was born and raised in Hawaii, shone with the men. US director Quentin Tarantino memorialized his nickname Big Kahuna many decades later when he featured a burger restaurant called "Big Kahuna" in "Pulp Fiction".

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Suzanne Lenglen, "the Divine". She was only 39 years old

Bleibtrey and Kahanamoku were successful, the superstar of the games was another. Suzanne Lenglen, known as "the divine", dominated the tennis competition. She danced tennis more than she played, a diva, five-time Wimbledon winner, her appearance in Antwerp deserved full ranks. Instead, Lenglen also had to play on an almost deserted tennis facility. The tickets for the games were too expensive for many people, and people had other worries than watching athletes. Because of this, Antwerp turned into a financial disaster for the organizers. The Belgian NOK was then bankrupt and was taken over by the football association.

Scandal in the football final

Only the soccer competition was a big hit. 60,000 spectators flocked to the final between Belgium and Czechoslovakia. When the referee obviously meant it too well with the hosts and awarded Belgium a controversial penalty, the opponents left the field in protest after 40 minutes. It was then stormed by the audience, Belgium was unceremoniously declared an Olympic champion.

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Joseph Guillemot, the Nurmi conqueror over 5000 meters

Paavo Nurmi did not need such questionable methods. The star of the legendary Finnish long distance racer rose in Antwerp, he won gold three times, but the great silent man had to admit defeat over the 5000 meters. The Frenchman Joseph Guiilemot sprinted over him on the home stretch. This was also a sensation because Guillemot had contracted mustard gas poisoning during the World War, which made it difficult for him to breathe. Also, due to a medical abnormality, his heart was on the right, not the left, of his chest.

Three-hour speech by the king

After winning gold, Guillemot kept the Belgian king waiting to announce that he would have to take his time to comb his hair. King Albert retaliated against the long distance athletes in his own way before the start of the 10,000 meters a few days later, in which he gave a three-hour speech in the stadium and the run had to be postponed several times.

The Antwerp Games, they were also the first to show the Olympic oath and the Olympic flag with the five rings. And of course that cannot go without an anecdote. The US diver Hal Haig Prieste allowed the original flag to go with him when he returned to the USA. 80 years later, Prieste was now 103 years old and remorseful, he handed the flag back to the IOC at the Sydney Games. When the then IOC boss Juan Antonio Samaranch wanted to give the already hard-of-hearing Prieste a box with an Olympic medal as a thank you, Prieste, who obviously hadn't quite understood it, asked: "What's in there? Kleenex?"