OLYMPIC GAMES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 175, 9 July 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

OLYMPIC GAMES

MEMORIES OF OLD CONTESTS BRITISH HOPES FOE LOS ANGELES. BEST ATHLETES NEEDED. When the first revived Olympic Games were held in Athens in the spring of 1896, the track was made by an English groundsman, and, among many British successes, the Pindaric odes was won by Mr. Robertson, an English hammer-thrower (stated Sir William Beach Thomas in an appeal made for funds in connection with the British Olympic team). In it ho extolled the Games, the spirit they evoked, and the revival of the best form of international competition. Even then the Americans proved that they had studied and practised the technique of training—for throwing the discus as well as sprint racing—with a thoroughness never before approached and never since rivalled, except, perhaps, in the practice of field events, so called, in Sweden, where gymnastics have long been the greatest of national games.

Now, when in due course, the Games came to be held in Sweden, in Stockholm, the freshest and cleanest of all capitals, it was felt and openly said that betw'een 1896 and 1912, Britain had become decadent. When the performance of individual athletes was analysed, it was seen that we had won many successes in the finest possible style. The impression of British, especially English, inferiority was due largely, I think, to the initial parade. It was difficult for any sort of patriot not to feel really ashamed at the spectacle of that rather small and desperately slovenly group, which took a leading part in the international procession. They looked what they were, an unorganised medley; and the want of organisation was due almost wholly to want of money.

Our national representatives were sent over without any national backing. There was no adequate fund of any sort, and the results were lamentable. Some of the better men did not go at all. Some who were going had been given little opportunity to train. There was not enough money to prepare what the Americans called a “get together,’’ either spiritual or material. The team had little chance of developing the team spirit—which is as proper an English quality as the esprit de corps in France—and the individuals were handicapped in a great number of details by being left to their own unaided efforts. We cheered ourselves the hoarser over Mr. Jackson’s mile —perhaps the greatest feat of the meeting—from our feeling that the team as such was not worthy of the nation. In short, it was “a bad show,’’ and might have been a very good one.

This year’s Olympic Games are to bo held in Los Angeles, and will be of exceptional quality in most respects. A very hospitable people and the greatest athletic nation in the world will see to that. A good host demands a good guest, and it would seem an unfriendly act, and would be a great national mistake, to send over to Los Angeles a team anything like as ill-supplied with the sinews of competition as the team we'sent to Stockholm twenty years ago. It is a wonderful thing that this country has won the speed records for most machines: on the air, water and land. Are we to omit the men and the money, too, of the old Jingo song in this new peaceful reference?