Wiki Wormhole returns with a look at the second-ever Olympics

We explore some of Wikipedia’s 6,864,156 oddities in our newly monthly series, Wiki Wormhole.

This month’s entry: 1900 Summer Olympics

What it’s about: The first Paris Olympic Games. The 1896 Olympiad—the first in nearly 1500 years—took place in Athens, home of the original Olympic games. 1900 introduced the idea of the Games moving around the world (although “the world” meant the U.S. and Europe until Tokyo hosted in 1964, after a planned 1940 Olympics in Sapporo was canceled due to WWII.) It also expanded the list of events from nine to nineteen, and the number of nations competing from 14 to 26. 

Biggest controversy: To try and drum up interest, the second Olympiad was folded into the Exposition Universelle, France’s World’s Fair. As a result, there were athletes who were unaware they had just competed in the Olympics until they were given medals afterwards. Most controversially at the time, women were allowed to compete for the first time, and athletes were expected to compete on Sunday, which some of the more devout Christians on Team USA objected to. In fact, American long-jumper Myer Prinstein, who held the world record at the time, punched gold medalist (and fellow American) Alvin Kraenzlein in the face, as he was furious his rival won when Kraenzlein hadn’t competed. No word on whether Prinstein turned the other cheek. (Kraenzlein was able to dry his tears with four individual gold medals for sprint events, a feat that has still never been replicated.)

Strangest fact: Because of the overlap with the Games and the Exposition, it wasn’t clear which competitions were actually bona fide Olympic events, and the Olympic Committee didn’t officially sort out the matter until 2021. (Golfer Margaret Ives Abbott died in 1955 never realizing she had been America’s first female Olympic champion.) Events that made the cut included tug of war, Basque pelota, and croquet (although France was the only country to compete in the latter.) Events that didn’t make the cut included baseball, motor racing, angling (fishing), hot air ballooning, kite flying, water motorsports (motorboat racing), lifesaving (swimming events in which competitors must rescue a mannequin, swim under obstacles, and throw a line to a teammate), cannon shooting, and firefighting (in two categories for volunteer and professional firefighters — Kansas City’s Hook and Ladder Company No. 1 took home the gold in the latter; Portugal won the volunteer competition). Further confusing matters, some winners were awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals (which were rectangular, for the only time in Olympic history), but others were given cups, trophies, or in the case of one swimming event, a 50-pound bronze statue of a horse.

Thing we were happiest to learn: The Olympics eventually got more organized. But in the meantime, 1900 featured track events held in an uneven field with trees runners had to move around. The French cricket team was made up entirely of British expats, and records of the match only exist because one of the players kept his own scorecard. Italian equestrian rider Gian Giorgio Trissino nearly won two medals in the high jump, finishing first and fourth on two different horses. Fencers were given style points, so some competitors were knocked out of the tournament without losing a match and some lost but still went onto the next round. Officials changed the rowing qualifications so many times several teams boycotted, and then rowed in a separate race afterwards. Several rowing teams also recruited local children to be their coxswains in the interest of lightening their boat’s load.

And the marathon track was so poorly marked, some runners got lost, and even ones who didn’t had to contend with cars, bikes, pedestrians, and animals along the route. American runner Richard Grant was run down by a cyclist just as he was catching up to the leaders. And Michel Théato won the gold for France, although it was later revealed he was a lifelong citizen of Luxembourg. (the marathon would get worse before it got better.)

Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Pierre de Coubertin’s grand plans for the Olympics were never realized. Baron de Coubertin was a French aristocrat, who believed in the ennobling powers of sport and led the push to introduce athletics into French schools, and to revive the Olympic Games. He hoped the combination Exposition and Olympics would raise enough awareness and funds to rebuild the ancient site of Olympia, Greece, and build a permanent home for the Olympics with statues and temples as well as athletic facilities. The director of the Exposition, Alfred Picard, considered the Olympics an “absurd anachronism” and quietly shelved de Coubertin’s plans. 

Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: The aforementioned Baron de Coubertin was an all-around fascinating figure. It should come as no surprise that the Frenchman’s interest in promoting sport was at least partially motivated by spite towards the English—he believed Britain’s programs of physical education gave them an advantage in warfare, and that France—which had lost the Franco-Prussian War when de Coubertin was a child—needed to step up their game.  The Father of the Olympics was also himself an Olympic medalist, winning the gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Games (which also featured medals for architecture, music, painting and sculpture, all obviously not winter sports). Art competitions persisted at the Games until 1948, but are now not considered official events. That same year, the Games introduced the pentathlon, which de Coubertin invented. He based it on an earlier sport he invented, les débrouillards (“the resourceful men”), which combined several track and field events with swimming, fencing, boxing, shooting and horseback riding.

Further down the Wormhole: A few of the 1900 Olympic events have fallen by the wayside, as has one of the Games’ competitors. Bohemia, which sent just six men and one woman to the Games and took home a silver in men’s discus, and bronze in women’s singles tennis and mixed doubles, was a kingdom established in 1198, and survived being conquered by Prussia in 1740, and folded into the Austrian Empire in 1806, until its successor, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved after WWI, and Bohemia became a region in the Czechoslovak Republic. That, in turn, was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, although a government-in-exile continued to exist in London. While Britain suffered a decade of rations and rebuilding after the war, the 1960s saw London become home to a thriving music scene, which spawned groups like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, and Fleetwood Mac, possibly the only band with a more tumultuous history than Bohemia. We’ll delve into the drama next month.