The First London Olympics - 1908
In the 21st century mounting the Olympic Games in London takes an Act of Parliament, a London 2012 Organising Committee, and an Olympic Delivery Authority "working with key stakeholders from national and city government and sport," six years and over 9 billion pounds sterling.
One hundred years ago London hosted its first Olympic Games by chance. Rome, the chosen host city, pulled out at short notice in spring 1906, because - it was said - of the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The crisis threatened to halt Baron de Coubertin's cherished revival of the Olympic Games.
A group of gentlemanly English sporting enthusiasts, led by William Grenfell, Lord Desborough, agreed to step in. They had two years, no budget and no suitable venue and if they failed there was a chance that Baron de Coubertin's Olympic movement would end in 1908.
Sporting Gents
Willie Grenfell was the Edwardian Ideal of the gentleman sportsman. One contemporary wrote of him that "with the skill of a D'Artagnan" (he was a good swordsman) he united "the strength of Porthos, the heart of an Athos, and the body of an Englishman."
He was created Lord Desborough in 1905.
Lord Desborough made an alliance with Imre Kiralfy, the flamboyant Hungarian entrepreneur in charge of the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908. Kiralfy built a state of the art stadium for the games at the White City he constructed to house the Exhibition.
Four years in advance of the third London Games, the projected cost of the 80,000-seater stadium to be built for the 2012 games is already in excess of £630,000. Imre Kiralfy built his 68,000-seater stadium in 10 months for £85,000 - which translates in the region of £600,000 in today's values.
"England has led the way in manly sports. The games which her sons first played, or reduced to order by rules or regulations, have been adopted by many nations"
Evening Standard 24 November 1906
The White City Stadium
With state-of-the-art facilities, the stadium was intended to represent the British Empire as the leader and rule-maker of international sport. One thousand feet long and 593 feet wide, the White City stadium was as broad as the Circus Maximus of ancient Rome and longer than the Colosseum. It had a cinder track, a turf track and around the outer edge of the arena, immediately below the seats, a concrete cycle track of 2 3/4 laps per mile with contours banked up at the curves to a height of 10 feet. They called the cycle track the 'mile a minute track' for on it, the designers boasted, '60 miles an hour could be attained with perfect safety'. And in front of the Royal Stand on the west side of the stadium lay the swimming pool. Fourteen feet deep at its centre to accommodate diving displays, it had the novel feature of a 55 foot diving tower that could be lowered into the water when not in use.
Imre Kiralfy and the White City
When Lord Desborough returned to London from Athens in spring 1906 having promised to mount the Olympic Games in London, he had no budget and no venue. There were no subsidies on offer from the British government. The funds to mount the Games had to be raised from private sponsors. The Fourth Olympiad might have melted into the routine mass of summer sporting fixtures but for the Franco-British Exhibition - the gleaming "White City" built on industrial scrubland in Shepherd's Bush.
The 1908 Games were the first Olympics in which national teams competed in an organised form. They were also the first Games to attract substantial media attention. They were the first Olympics to be filmed and the first to generate widely published photographic images.
Some of the Pathé brothers' footage still survives and can be seen at the Pathé website.
Competitors shelter from the rain
The First London Games had to contend with a typically sodden British summer in the first week and antagonism between a US team dominated by New York Irish Americans and the British establishment that led to a succession of "Scandals": the Tug-of-War event where the cream of the American team found themselves bested by a group of Liverpool policemen, the 400 metre final where the American finalists were withdrawn by their managers on an accusation of a foul, leaving the sole Englishman to run for gold on his own; and the Marathon where Italian confectioner baker Dorando Pietri's heroic efforts at the limits of exhaustion so entranced on-lookers that track officials helped him across the finish line. Pietri was later disqualified for the help he received and the gold medal was given to American Johnny Hayes who entered the stadium second and finished unaided. Queen Alexandra presented Dorando Pietri with a special silver cup for his courage and newspaper coverage made the disqualified Italian a popular hero across Europe and America.
The American Team
The 1908 London Olympics formed a stage for a clash of empires. In the White City stadium the Edwardian English sporting gentelmen met the vigor of the "scientifically trained" Americans - and lost.
Read more about the American team at the 1908 Olympics
Much of the drama of the 1908 Olympics was driven by the American papers picking up complaints from the US team about biased British judges (the judges were all British at the 1908 Games). They assaulted British "fair play" to the point where it was rumoured that King Edward VII was sufficiently offended to withdraw from attending the closing ceremonies in the Shepherd's Bush stadium.