OLYMPIC GAMES OF 1936

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 228, 28 September 1935, Page 4

OLYMPIC GAMES OF 1936

5000 COMPETITORS ARE EXPECTED

JAPANESE SENDING STRONG CONTINGENT

Forty-eight nations are now concentrating on the formation of teams to represent them at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. What a great gathering of sporting people the capital of Germany will hold during the greatest sports festival the world has ever seen. For that is what the Olympic Games will be this year—the greatest Games of their kind ever promoted. And, back of the sport itself, will lie that infinite good which must come from association among young people from all the nations of the world. Five thousand competitors are expected!

From all quarters of the globe they will come, these athletes, and the second biggest contingent promises to be the squad from Japan, numbering, it is estimated, about 309. The cost of the Japanese two trips (to Berlin for the main games and to GarmischPartenkircheu for the Winter Sports section) will be in the region of 1.240,000 yen, or 350,000 dollars. Of this sum *BOO,OO yen. it appears, will be provided by the Nippanese Government, and the balance will come through street collections and private donations. * Japan plans to be represented in every event, excepting the c impetitions for pony polo, canoeing, handball and bob-sleighing, and tho Wrongest section of the team will bo the swimmers, whose predecessors gave such a splendid account of themselves in the last Olympics at Los Aigeles in 1982. A notable absentee frun th'* track and field athletics section of the Japanese party will be Shuhei Nishtda, who distinguished himself b y taking second place to W. W. Miller, of U.S.A., in the pole vault at Los Angeles. Provisional Entries la the list of provisional entries received so far by the organisers, America tops the bill with an anticipated total of 327. Japan budgets for 300 or so. then comes Hungary with 245, Sweden with 225. Switzerland, 145; Poland, 103; Bulgaria, 74; Estonia, 56, and Peru, 49. The programme of the 1936 Olympic festival has already taken quite definite form. It will embrace 19 sports —five more than were staged at Los Angeles in 1932—and will furnish 6S individual competitions for men, 33 events for male teams, 12 individual contests for women and three for feminine teams. Altogether 267 victors, including those in team events, will receive silver-gilt medals. The maximum total of entries that any one nation can make, if it takes part in everything, is 319 men and 52 women. A really full side, with as manv reserves as are allowed under Olvmpie regain tior would number 518, and if all the competing nations could afford to send full sides —a most Utopian nation’.—the aggregate of Olvmpie contenders in the German capital next summer would reach the fantastic figure of 25,9990! A Test of Organisation

The actual tally of competitors will be 4000 or 5000 at the most, and that will be quite enough to test the organisers verv thoroughly. Some hint of

the sort of elaborate arrangements involved in gat sing a modern Olympic meet, with all its ramifications, is given by the little job of sending out advance booklets of the programmes to nations concerned. Twenty-one separate brochures have been prepared, each issued in five languages, and 80,000 copies must be printed, for dissemination among the Olympic committees of the competing nations. In connection with the games, too, there are to be an international youth rally and a congress of schools for physical education. 'Thirteen nations have expressed their intention of sending 30 participants each to the rally. The congress, by the way, will be directed by Prof. P. Jaeck, the founder and for many years director of the Institute of Physical Education at Marburg University. Au Electric Referee Quite one of the most intriguing innovations for the Berlin Olympic Games is the electric apparatus for registering hits in the epee leneing bouts, steel flashes so quickly in these tense encounters that even the most experienced judges may bo pardoned for occasional mistakes. And mistakes in Olympic fencing, as there is good cause to know, can mean protests, irritation —and even the threat of more serious sword-play to follow. In 1936. each of the epee fencers on the eight Olympic pistes will be connected up with flex to a low-voltage apparatus about the size of an ordinary wireless receiving set. A long double wire passes from this box of tricks to the fencing packet of each participant in a bout and thence it goes along the sleeve to the hilt of the fencer's weapon. At the Dutton end of the blade is a contact which rings a bell and flashes a light when the opponent’s body (though not the guard of the opposing sword) is touched. Tf the person hit makes a bit himself within one tenth of a second from the time the opponent’s fod made contact with his jacket, both touches are recorded; but if he makes a touch after one tenth of a second has elapsed, it is not registered. The electric connections are simple and it is possible to test the apparatus easily and speedily during the boun, to make sure that it is all in .working order. In the sabre and foils bouts there are technical considerations which make the use of this new device impracticable at present. But in tho light of one’s experience at previous Olympic Games, it certainly sounds like a step in the right direct ion.