The Rest Is History - 80. Modern Olympics - Part 1

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

In 1896 the Olympic Games were reborn in Athens. Here we look at the forgotten tales and little known facts from the start of the modern Olympics through to the outbreak of the Second World War. Tom tells us about the greatest race of all time, whilst Dominic reveals he is somewhat of an Olympics sceptic. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jon Gill Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Nothing seems more calculated to put a smile on the face of a nation than a tremendous haul of Olympic medals. As we are recording this episode of The Rest Is History on the modern Olympics, Britain is rejoicing at the news that we have podiumed in a range of sports, swimming, diving, cross-country mountain biking. And perhaps by the time you listen to this, there will be even more.

And of course, this, for anyone who lived through it, cannot help but remind us of nine years ago and the wonderful two weeks at London 2012, when the enthusiasm of journalists and columnists went off the scale and it's mentioned in a wonderful book I've been reading The Games a Global History of the Olympics by David Goldblatt and he's looking at the press coverage and he cites a columnist who was writing in the Daily Mail who stands proxy, David Goldblatt writes, albeit at the more florid end of the past two weeks have been a patriotic extravaganza with few parallels in our recent history. And I think that regular listeners to the rest of history will know who David Goldblatt is talking about here, who this columnist for the Daily Mail

might be, Dominic Sandbrook. So I thought that was going to be embarrassing, but then you used the word podiumed, and I realised that actually I've come out of that much better than I thought. I'm obsessed by verbing. I think it was 2012, wasn't it, that it all kicked off and people talked about meddling and meddling. I cannot stop doing it. Anyway, so I'm guessing from that, you know,

you're at the more florid end of the enthusiasm for Olympic mania, that you're a big fan. No, that was a good example. About a week before the Olympics began, I'd written a column saying I hated the Olympics and it was all going to be a disaster. And in traditional columnist fashion, you know, 10 days later I was miraculously converted to the choice of the Olympics.

Actually, I'm quite an Olympic sceptic. I genuinely wouldn't be bothered if the Olympics were abandoned. And of course, I celebrate British medals as much as anybody. But I think as we will discover the history of the olympics i mean we did the history of the ancient olympics last time and that was a pretty gory business the history of the modern olympics is is also a pretty gory business i think though in a different way brilliant but but but from the historian's point of view they're brilliant aren't they because they're a kind of four yearly temperature check absolutely yeah state of culture global politics whatever yeah which just makes

them fantastic I mean and until I read David Goldblatt's book which I didn't really know much about the uh the olympics the modern olympics but it's such a fascinating topic and actually I kind of fell down any number of rabbit holes looking at the beginnings of the olympics yeah and actually if you go through it they are they are so interesting they are the stories around them so peculiar but but dominic you you um when we talk about the you know the absolute beginnings of the modern olympics yes i mean this is very much your patch isn't it because basically um it's it's a kind of cotswold shropshire story it is it is so the very first well this we'll get to shropshire in a minute because because I think Shropshire is where the Olympics really began, the modern Olympics. But there's an antecedent, which is, of course, the Cotswold Olympics, which I'm sure you know about, set up by a man called Robert Dover in 1612 in Chipping Camden.

And basically the most, you know, the Hollywood sort of quintessence of Englishness, isn't it? Chipping Camden, sort of arts and crafts, movement, bucolic, pastoral idyll. And he set it up. It's unclear why he set it up. Some people think it's to do with the defence of the realm and manly virtues. And others say it's about something at a time of great uncertainty and sort of political unrest.

Isn't it kind of also, he's Catholic? I think something like that, yes. Very Anglo-Catholic. So isn't it also about kind of Maypoles and Mary England? I think there is a lot of that, yes. A lot of kind of frolicking. Well, the sports. As the Puritans are gearing up to ban it.

Exactly. The sports are very Mary England. Sledgehammer throwing, fighting with cudgels, shin kicking, which they still do and my favorite sport are you are you are you an aficionado of dweil flunking tom uh we talk a little else in the holland household so just of course i'm a great fan but just remind me what it is do you want me to remind you the rules i'll remind you the So a dull-witted person is chosen as the referee, or job-an-owl.

The two teams decide who will flunk first by tossing a sugar beet. What is flunking? Well, I'm going to explain. The game begins when the job-an-owl shouts, here you go together. The non-flunking team join hands and dance in a circle around a member of the flonking team, a practice known as girting.

The flonker dips his dweil-tipped driveler into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dweil at them. If the dweil misses completely, it is known as a swodge. Well, naturally. What else would it be called? When this happens, the flunker must drink the contents...

of an ale... Sorry. Sorry. Control yourself. The fronker must drink the contents of an ale... of an ale-filled gazunder before the wet dweil has passed from hand to hand along the lines of now non-girting girders chanting the ceremonial mantra of pot pot pot so that's dweil flunking and i believe it was invented actually

in east anglia and has since moved to the cotswold olympics and the cotswold olympics um so why is that not on sky sport well this is the thing why don't they do that at the olympics i mean they do football and that's a complete joke at the o. They do basketball, which is also a joke. I like the idea that the ref has to be a village idiot. Yes, a dull-witted, jobber now, I think. Anyway. That would be great, wouldn't it? So they do these kind of...

I mean, obviously, the Cotswold Olympics, which still continues, has now become a bit of a sort of... It's become a self-conscious kind of joke. But obviously, the interesting thing to me about this is that that's 1612. They didn't do the Dwarf Flunky in 1612, by the way. That's a more recent innovation. But obviously, there was a buried memory, wasn't there,

of the ancient Olympics. It gets recaptured with the Renaissance. Yeah, Hellenified. So Shakespeare starts to talk about kind of Olympian contests and so on. And Milton talks about Satan as being like an Olympian runner. Does he? Yeah, which of course

Milton is writing very much from the Puritan end of things, and so it's not surprising that with the Civil War and the Protectorate, that that gets banned, right? Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of distrust of sport because I suppose organised sport is seen as...

It's exactly what we were talking about before, isn't it? They are much closer to that sense of sport as religious, as part of a religious festival. But clearly they have absolutely no idea at all about what the ancient olympics actually involved and i guess that as you go through the 18th into the 9th century people do start to have a better sense of that so 1794 apparently there was a chariot race at newmarket between nanny hodges and lady lads for 500 guineas and the time said that it was something like a revival of the olympic games

right that's interesting and didn't the french revolutionaries yeah danton yeah was a big fan big fan of them it was they used metric measures first time metric measures were used in sports shameful moment um so yes and then of course you've got g Greece. So when Greece becomes independent from the Ottomans. Yeah, 1821. There are kind of calls from poets and nationalists and so on to reinstate the Olympic Games. And they do have. They have, in 1859, they hold what are called Olympic Games for over three Sundays in Athens.

And they have running, they have horse and chariot races, they have discus, javelin, and they have the climbing of a greasy pole. So Benjamin Disraeli could participate in that and would do very well. I mean, he'd have been there, perfect timing for him.

So those games, they have prize money donated from a small town in the midlands of england called much when lock and the ones in greece yes the people of much when lock send money to those games in greece now why well this brings us to the true birthplace of the olympic movement which is the shropshire market town of much whenlock where my parents lived for the best part of 15 years i must be so proud i'm very proud and it's a very big deal in much so one of the london 2012 mascots was called whenlock there were two whenlock and manderville manderville stone manderville being the birthplace of the paralympics

much whenlock the birthplace of the sort ofmpics, Much Wenlock the birthplace of the summer games, and they have a little museum in Much Wenlock, and you can walk around, there's an Olympic trail, all these sort of things. So genuinely, this is not just Shropshire chauvinism on my part, there's a genuine historical reality here. And basically the guy who started it is a man called, a fascinating man called William Pennybrooks,

who's a classic Victorian kind of do-gooding reformer. So he sets up things like an agricultural reading society. And he has this series of what he calls classes to do different things in the town. And in 1850, he sets up the Olympian class. I mean, this is pure... I think Goldblatt talks about this in his book. And it absolutely gives you a sense of the Victorian mindset

of the art of the Olympic movement, because the rubric of the Olympian class says, it's set up for the promotion of the moral, physical, and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Much Wenlock, and especially of the working classes, by the encouragement of outdoor recreation and the award of prizes, annulate annual meetings for skill in athletic exercise

and proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainment. So there you have pure kind of Victorian improvement. And they hold it at a local race course. They have some brilliant events at the first Wenlock Games. So they have football, cricket, they have quoits, running, cycling on penny farthings. Probably fun, wouldn't it? A blindfolded wheelbarrow race. And my favourite event, one that stands comparison, I think, with Dwyle flunking,

an old women's race with the prize being a pound of tea. Again, something I'd like to see at the modern olympics i think there's so much scope for for innovation there isn't there well they're still doing shame that they've all kind of fallen away no but i mean from the from the proper olympics and talking the proper olympics is so dull isn't it well the proper olympics because the way that this influences what comes to be what we now think of as olympics is because baron de coubertin comes and he's he's tremendously impressed so he goes in 1890 he goes to shropshire now this is fascinating coubertin i mean i'm sure you've got lots of stuff about coubertin i think

he's a fascinating guy he's the son of a royalist isn't he a french royalist painter and basically i think what's absolutely central to this is the Franco-Prussian War so he's grown up in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War France has been humiliated and all the talk is of you know manliness unity France is so divided of course in the last years of the 19th century

and he becomes obsessed with Tom Brown's school days yes he loved it didn't he because that's the fascinating thing that the inspiration for the Olympics is only very dimly kind of the Hellenic games the original games I mean it is important to Cooper I mean he does have a sense of that kind of the the spiritual dimension that the games had for the Greeks yeah really the influence on him as you say I mean it's the kind of victorian manliness and it absolutely he believes and and the fascinating thing is actually he's got it wrong he thinks thomas arnold the headmaster of rugby was all about sport and muscular christianity and he puts a huge emphasis on this but actually dr arnold wasn't that interested in sport but it's

tom brown school days he's confused tom brown school days. He's confused Tom Brown's school days with reality. So Coubertin has read this Tom Brown's school days. He believes that at rugby, men were taught to be men and all this sort of stuff. And so he comes up to Shropshire on this pilgrimage because he thinks this is... And he sees all the old women and wheelbarrows and stuff. And he says, brilliant, this is how we'll beat the prussians

next time you know because we've been doing quoits we will be prepared um and so he then so i think it's only six years he does it very quickly i mean it's it's not just about kind of preparing for war with the prussians though is it because he's actually very into the the ideal of internationalism yes he is because because when he gives his famous speech in 1892 calling for the olympics to be revived he i mean he let us export rowers runners and fences there is the free trade of the future on the day it is introduced within the walls of old europe the cause of peace will have received a new and mighty stay yeah yeah that's fair i'm being hard on him so that actually i mean that it's kind of internationalist talk of peace yes i guess provides to the modern olympics what the much straight to us the much stranger

kind of spirit that involves sacrificing 100 oxen to zeus supplied to the to the ancients but isn't it weird though tom you're absolutely right and i think that that spirit that spirit it's very kind of 19th late 19th century globalization isn't it that that and and sort of a descendants of the liberal free trade free ideas all that sort of stuff that was so popular in the mid-19th century um but it has so little in common with the ancient olympics yeah yeah very little i mean basically they take the name they take the torch and they take some of the iconography but the iconography grows up over over a long time yes it does exactly there immediately and and i mean i there are kind of it's structured around patent fantasies.

So there's the idea that it will always be above politics, that it has nothing to do with politics. And right from the beginning, that's mad. It is mad. And actually, I'm sure you noticed this, swatting up for this podcast as I did, that this is an incredibly political story from the beginning. And there's never a of and there's never

a moment there's never a moment ever there's never been a moment where the olympics has been separate from politics but also that this kind of ideal of the amateur which he is picking up from tom brown school days and you know british public schools and stiff upper lips and things that that this is a that this is a practical way of organizing sport in an increasingly industrialized mass entertainment era i mean and that that lasts kind of pretty i mean it lasts for decades doesn't it i mean it does it takes a long time to the sort of mid to late 20th century exactly yeah so you're right because of course professional sport already exists so you know yes um particularly which is why the british are not particularly interested in the olympics yeah because it's backward it's sort of pointless

it's sort of like you know when we already have so many professional sports when we're living in a world of wg grace and you know the the football league and and rugby league and all these things the idea of the olympics just seems ridiculously old-fashioned even in the 1890s i think and it's a bit french isn't it it is a bit french but it's so interesting that with all these sporting things it's the british that kind of have the original idea but it takes the french to codify them this is true of football as well fifa and and, you know, it often takes continental Europeans. I think because the British were there first, they generally are just happy to...

Although, Dominic, I mean, a reassuring note from a cricketing point of view is that someone who has joined the IOC, so the initial committee, was actually the captain of the New Zealand cricket team. So steady hand on the tiller there. Has cricket ever been played at the Olympics? Yes, it's played in the second Olympiad, 1900, held in Paris, where there was one match and it was England against France. England was, well, it was Britain, I suppose.

Britain was represented by a team of strolling players from Devon and Somerset. And France was represented by British expats in Paris. Right. And I'm proud to say that Britain won. But France got the silver medal. So France is a silver medalist. It's the current silver medalist in cricket,

which is a wonderful detail. Our listeners in Dijon will be delighted by that, won't they? I hope so. I know we're very popular in France. Dominic, of course, Paris is the second one, but the first one is held where else? In Athens. It's kind of interesting.

They never think to hold it actually in Olympia. I think Olympia is a bit of a disappointment there's not actually it takes a long time to excavate so there isn't very much there um whereas athens i guess is kind of more suitable but also athens is the capital isn't it of the newly independent or relatively newly independent greece so it's tied up with ideas of national, you know, must have been tied up with enormous ideas about Greek national pride and so on. I think, I may not have this entirely, but I think the games open

on Greek Independence Day. Right. And of course, the great innovative race is the marathon. Yeah. Which they run from the grave of the Persians on the plane of marathon where the Athenians had defeated Persia.

And then the news, the story goes that the news is brought to Athens by Pheidippides, who then collapses as he delivers it. And so they restage this race running from the tomb of the Persians all the way into Athens. And it's won by a Greek. This is not an event that they did at the Olympics, right? No, so it's a complete innovation, but it's a tremendous success. And I think that because it's won by Greek, Greece becomes terribly enthusiastic about it as a result, and they're very keen to stage it permanently in athens um but but i think i mean i think it has a kind of um a kind of you know it genuinely is gloriously amateur so there's there's a there's a guy who's there on holiday who enters the tennis and kind of wins the gold

and there's a brilliant thing about the swimming that um you know they don't have a pool so they hold it in pereas harbor and it's unseasonably cold right so people jump in to do the swimming event and it's so cold that lots of them get back out again and this and actually problems with with swimming events is a theme of the early olympics so in paris in in 1900 they hold it in the same and the currents are so strong there that your medal chances depend on whether you can catch the right current or not. That's great. And at St. Louis in 1904,

two of the gold medal winning US water polo team die six months after the event because they've contracted typhoid from the lagoon in which the water polo had been played so it's you pay a high price for elite sporting achievement you really you really do um but i i think that that the sense of kind of shambolic amateurism that is a kind of you know it's a quality of the first games in athens is it's it's the one in paris that absolutely exemplifies it yeah the reason for that is that it's it's the one in Paris that absolutely exemplifies it yeah the

reason for that is that it's piggybacking onto the world exhibition that is being held in Paris isn't that the case with a lot of these early olympics they're basically all arranged around St Louis yes and actually you know so that goes back to Crystal Palace and the great exhibition yeah this idea that you have a great gathering of people from across the world and you showcase your your city and your country with it well remember that uh william penny brooks's thing at watch wenlock see bringing it back to shropshire was that um prizes would also be awarded for proficiency in intellectual and industrial attainments so that's very i mean this is a year before the great exhibition so it's very much that victorian sort of spirit that, as you say,

the trade fairs, therefore, are not an illegitimate, you know, they're part of the essence from the beginning. And that's something that we now... Absolutely. Well, I think, yes, I think, I mean, I think they structure the whole idea of the Olympics as we understand it now. I mean, that's a crucial part of it. And part of the problem for Coubertin and the Olympic movement is that people are going to Paris for the trade

fair and they have no idea that the Olympics are going on and so there's this kind of wonderful probably my favorite Olympian of all time is an American woman called Margaret Abbott who is in Paris studying with Degas, with Rodin. She's an artist. And she gets told, yeah, there's this golf contest going on. Would you like to enter it? Yeah, okay, great. So she enters the golf. She wins.

She has no idea that she's won gold in the golf contest, that she is America's first gold medal, female gold medal winner. And she dies in 1955. And people still don't know. So she dies never knowing that she's been an Olympic gold medalist. And I think it's only kind of in the 70s or 80s when historians of the Olympics go through and work this out,

that she gets enshrined in this role, which, you know, kind of brilliantly shows how symbolic the whole affair is um there's and the other kind of very haunting story from the the paris olympics is that um the dutch rowing team uh they don't have a cox i think the cox falls ill or something and so they scoop a french boy back who's about 10 you know one of the canals or something and he coxes them and i think again i think they win they get the gold medal but nobody knows who this boy is so he's he's the only gold medal winning olympian who is anonymous so that's great stuff isn't it did he know he'd won did he even know himself what he was doing just some blokes had put him on their boats and said not sure i don't know um wow so all good

stuff um but the greatest race of all time is the marathon that was raced in st louis in 1904 and i think we should have a break shouldn't we absolutely we should have a break because i'm gonna come back can i tell you about that because i think it's tell me at great length because i know you love this story brilliant and then and then basically my knowledge of the Olympics is exhausted. I'll hand the baton over to you. I do not believe that's true. All right, we'll take a break and we'll come back for the greatest marathon of all time. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early

access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom Holland has made great claims for his marathon story. I am so looking forward to hearing it. Tom, please do it justice. Well, they made Chariots of Fire, but honestly, if you're making a film, this is the race that you'd want to do. I think it's the greatest race in Olympics history.

Raced it in 1984 at St. Louis, which is very hot, very sticky, very dusty. And the organisers, they make the marathon along a route where there is, I think, a single water cooler 12 miles into the race, but otherwise there is no source of water and is it 26 miles at this point because they're yeah and there are scientists want to measure the effects of dehydration on elite athletes so that that's the context so that's part of the fun so so i will describe some of the contestants who the positions where they run.

So the guy who comes in first is a guy called Fred Lortz, who is a bricklayer and a notorious practical joker. He is awarded the gold medal. And it then turns out that he's hitched nine mile lift on the back of a truck. So he gets stripped of his medal and he says i'll just have a laugh just have a laugh so the next person who comes in who then is in line for winning the medal is a guy called thomas hicks who is a professional you know he's he's a seasoned marathon runner um he has a coach who can see that that hicks isging, so gives him an elite sports drink. So kind of, you know, the equivalent of an ice cream.

Lucasade. Lucasade. But do you know what it consists of? It consists of egg whites, brandy, and strychnine. Oh, my God. I didn't expect the strychnine. No. So he's staggering towards the final post.

He gets this great glug of strychnine, and he starts to go delirious and starts kind of wandering off all the wrong way so he has to be guided towards the finish line and people have to literally you know his helpers have to literally lift his feet up because by this point he's absolutely out of it so he wins he he is the medal winner um coming in number four is a cuban postman called felix carvajal right who who's in cuba he runs up and down cuba that's what he does for fun and he he hitches a lift on a boat from cuba to america um he loses all his money gambling so he turns up at St Louis he doesn't have any any cash to buy running gear so he comes to the start of the race in his brogues in his kind of thick heavy trousers he's got a beret on

he's got a baggy white shirt I mean he couldn't be less well equipped to run it one of the other contenders takes pity on him and chops off the bottoms of his trousers so that he's kind of wearing running shorts by this point he he sets off he stops at various points to he he nicks I think some um apricots from a from from a tree is that an artificial stimulant surely not he he eats some some apples that are raw so he gets upset he's stopping the whole way to kind of chat with people but he comes in fourth yeah so that's a that's a great creditable achievement but the the the in a way the most creditable achievement of all is um a guy called len tau len tau who comes len, he comes from South Africa, or to be specific, from a tribe in South Africa. And he is there as part of probably the most sinister aspect of these international affairs. Oh, I know what you're going to say.

So they had this in Paris and they have it in St. Louis. The Department of Anthropology have set this up. Yeah, it's human zoos. So they have this in Paris and they have it in st louis they they bring people over from various parts of the colonial empire and in america they bring native americans over as well they kind of put them up in villages and what they do in st louis is um they have this um idea that they want to they want to measure the athletic capacity of people they see as inferior so it's i think that the kind of the press in america call them the savage olympics

and they get all these guys from out of the human zoos and they you know that these people have never done weightlifting or you know anything and and and they're made to compete and they don't do very well and so this is taken as proof that that white people are more proficient at athletics than than everyone else um but lent out enters the uh enters the marathon and he he races barefoot um comes in ninth but that is all the more creditable because while he's running the marathon he gets attacked by a dog and has to run an extra mile to escape it wow so i think i think he he is my moral victor isn't he he's the absolute moral victor well it's a great that is a great team we're talking moral victors you know

the marathon in the next olympics 1908 there's a great story there about a man called, do you know about this Durando Pietri, Tom? No. So he's a, he's very short. He's five foot two. He's a shop boy, a confectionery shop boy from Italy. And where is this one being held? So this is 1908, which is. Is it Antwerp? No, it's London. Oh, London.

Yes, of course. Yes, White City. They build White City. So. Yeah. is that antwerp no it's london oh london yes of course yes white city they build white city so yeah so he um has entered a a race in italy he saw a race in italy in 94 years earlier and he was still in he was dressed in his work clothes he was going to work or something and he saw the race going by and he thought he'd join in and he came and he did really well i think he won it actually so he started to run marathons and stuff and he he trains really hard for the um for the 1908 olympics he runs the

marathon and it's incredibly hot day it's an unseasonably hot day and he he overtakes the leader just before the end and then he get they come into the the stadium or whatever and there's a very famous photo you've probably seen it without knowing it yeah um he keeps collapsing and the crowd are cheering him on and he's collapsing and he's almost at the line there are 75 000 people there i think he falls four times and eventually right at the finish line the he collapses again and the umpires have to lift him up and and sort of drag him over the line and he's disqualified despite the fact that he's won so what then happens is um queen alexandra gives him a gilded silver cup as a as a reward you know to say you know well done you and sir arthur conan doyle writes an article about him about his heroism for the Daily Mail. It's a big article.

First with the big sports stories. All the best people have written about the Olympics in the Daily Mail, Tom. So Arthur Conador writes about him in the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail readers, with their characteristic generosity, start an appeal for him. They raise the equivalent of £30,000 for this man. And he goes back to italy and he uses it to open a bakery that's a wonderful everybody comes out of that well

um well except that isn't there isn't the context of that also a deep strain of of british anti-americanism because the it's it's an american i think who wins it is the race and there's there's a lot of kind of um american sneering at the the decadence of british yes so everyone comes out of this well except the americans i think maybe yes yes many people that yeah yeah but perhaps um but and so that's the context for the London Games. Yeah. And then you have Stockholm. Stockholm, the next one. I sort of lose my... Okay, but Stockholm is important

just because that's the first one to be held without reference to a trade fair. Right, 1912. So it kind of emancipates itself from that. And then, of course, you have the First World War. Loads of Olympians die in the war and then it's Antwerp

is that right? then it's Antwerp and then it's Paris so Paris is the Chariots of Fire games so tell us about that for those who haven't seen it the Chariots of Fire really focuses David Putnam discovered a book I think in 1977 the film producer

he was in Malibu, and he had a cold or something, so he was staying in a borrowed house, and he was really miserable. And he reached for a book off the shelves, and it was the story of the Olympics, I think. I think it was the history of the Olympics. And he became fixated on the story of the 1924 Games,

which has these two iconic British competitors, Harold Abrahams, who is Jewish, who is the son of a Jewish immigrant, who wins the 100 metres, but has raised hackles with the sort of, the patrician officials back in Britain because he employs a professional coach, an Italian, Sam Mussabini.

And the other great athlete who is, you know, we need no introduction, is Eric Liddle, the brilliant Scottish runner musabini and the other great athlete who is you know we need no introduction is eric little the brilliant scottish runner who refuses to run in 100 meters heats because they're on a sunday and he believes that's sacred so he runs um in the i think the 400 meters instead and wins gold and you know if anyone who i'm personally i i I'm one of, because I'm a sort of sentimental person, I find it hard to watch Chariots of Fire without getting kind of choked up, particularly the sort of, the sort of, the completely unironic and sort of sincere treatment of Liddell's religious faith

and how important it is to him and how he sees his athletic prowess as a gift from God. And this wonderful story that an American competitor before the race sort of leaves him a note that says, you know, whoever honors me, I will honor. And Lidl uses this as inspiration. And of course, Lidl then goes on after having won gold and having become a national hero, he goes on to leave athletics completely

and to become a missionary in China and ends his days in a Japanese internment camp where he dies just before the end of the war. So he is a genuinely... We do a lot of people with feet of clay in this podcast, but I'm not convinced he did have feet of clay, actually. I think he's a genuinely incredibly admirable um an impressive man so there you go uh well there is um also in the 1924 olympics i think is the first irish winner um not per se because the the guy who um who won the tennis in the 1896 say the athens games was was

irish irish nationalist uh the london games there was um an irish competitor who won gold the union jack went up and he replaced it with the uh the irish flag but the first person to win it as you know the free state was the uh the younger brother of the poet w.B. Yeats, who won silver for painting. So they were still doing... Yeah. They should still do painting, shouldn't they? And it's interesting because Yeats, Yeats's brother was,

he did lots of cartoons for Punch and he did a strip cartoon parodying Sherlock Holmes. So a kind of, you know of improbable Olympic victor. But he then, apparently he's a very highly rated artist. I think strip cartoonists, I think like Stan Lee should have entered the United States in the 60s or something. So that's all fun. And then you have Amsterdam.

And then you have, in the 30s, you have two games that essentially... Create the Olympics. Create the the Olympics as we know them so and and these are chiefly interesting for the fact that my great uncle competed in them is that are they chiefly interesting are you sure you've chosen your words yeah they're chiefly interesting for that reason chiefly interesting so my great great uncle uh charles holland amazing cyclist went to la came 15th then in the 1936 berlin olympics came fourth but he would have cut he would have come first except that the foreigners cheated by having gears oh that is cheating and great uncle charlie being british refused to use gears because he viewed it as so he's the moral victor isn't it I think so so I'm the great nephew basically of a great moral yeah a great Olympian

uh you're right obviously there are other aspects of the LA and the Berlin games but you know LA is the home of Hollywood so Hollywood in its pomp and the idea that it's show business and yeah absolutely but and then you have but but it's run on a shoestring because this is the great depression and there's there's so la creates the podium doesn't it la they they get basically with the hollywood razzmatazz they invent the podium they start playing national this has this surprised me because in chariots of fire the film the playing of the British National Anthem is a key moment because it's the moment that Sam Mussabini, Harold Abraham's coach,

because he's too nervous to watch the race, so he only knows his man has won when he hears the British National Anthem. But I now discover that in 1932, they introduced National Anthems for the first time, so this could not have happened. Also, the flame, the flame in the cauldron. I mean, that's a very Hollywood touch.

And that's Los Angeles. So they didn't do that in the ancient Olympics, Tom. They didn't have an Olympic flame then. Or did they have a torch or anything like that? No. That's all utter bilge. That's all, yeah. I mean, that's the most famous little-known fact about the Olympics, isn't it?

Yes, I suppose so. That people always bring up. Not famous to me, yeah. I mean, that's the most famous little-known fact about the Olympics, isn't it? Yes, I suppose so. That people always bring up. Not famous to me, clearly. But the person, you know, the guys who invent the idea of the torch relay from Olympia to the games is the Nazis. They're not good guys. And there's a case for saying that really the template for the modern games as we know them now you know it's it's the most enduring cultural expression of absolutely agree with you yeah that we have completely agree with you um i think it's an extraordinary thing isn't it that people talk about the 1936 games as though they

are an anomaly um as though they are the sort of great well i mean they are they are a blot on there they are a stain on the record of the olymp But I completely agree with you. They are the moment that the modern Olympics really began. Because the Nazis and Leni Riefenstahl and the way they are packaged, that creates the template for all subsequent Olympics. And indeed, that's sort of, in a way, that the fascism isn't an anomaly because there is a kind of commonality between the sort of the nazi aesthetic in the 1930s and the sort of victorian worship of manliness virility but also it's proper you know it's properly uh you know there is a kind of greek element an authentically greek element

with the assumption that that what is physically beautiful is morally beautiful and that's you know that's very much a kind of fascist idea absolutely yeah that the body beautiful so the kind you know the famous um image in the film of the uh the classical statue of the discus thrower yes becoming living flesh that's what the essence you know of of those 36 the 1936 games is and all the kind of hellenic flummery that they throw in so that the the the the torch race the significance of that is that the nazis are casting themselves as the kin of the aryan greeks who had set up the olympics and when the torch comes into, first enters the Reich, it does it at a village called Hellendorf. So Hellas, you know, is the Greek name for Greece. So it's all kind of absolutely pinpoint synchronization to convey to the world that Germany is the heir of classical Greece. Yeah. And they're not really very interested, obviously,

in the kind of universalist dreams and ideals that Coubertin had embodied. I mean, they kind of, they have to agree to let Jews compete. And actually, a number of Jews get goals. They do. And there's Jews, for example, there's a German fencer, Helen Meyer. They keep her on the team.

She's Jewish. They keep her on the team and they use her as evidence that actually they're much kinder and cuddlier than their foreign critics allow. So they sort of say, oh, look, we're much more tolerant. And they do all these kinds of things.

So they ban the publication of their Stürmer, the Nazi newspapers kept off the streets of Berlin. They do all this kind of manicuring of the regime. Banned authors reappearing in bookshops. Exactly, all this sort of stuff. And actually, there's some really fascinating books being written about the 1936 Games, talking about all the american and british visitors

um who arrive and are completely taken in you know they they pitch up and they say the answers aren't as bad as they appear you know things are not the night life in the nightclubs is is great um you know even though just outside the city uh people are even then political political prisoners even then building the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and I think Germany has just re-militarised the Rhineland

so Hitler's intentions are kind of clear there's no doubt about the nature of the regime but people it's the template for people deluding themselves using the Olympic Games to template for people deluding themselves using the olympic games to almost willfully delude themselves about the nature of the the host nation so i mean they were amazing story there's this a woman who famously gives hitler a kiss um two american tourists they kind of event come to the games and they and they go in and this woman um she she's

quite close to him in the stadium. And she goes over sort of spontaneously. She sees a chance just when his security guards have their backs turned. And she goes and kisses him. And the image goes around the world. And she goes back to America. And she becomes a bit, it's California, I think. And she becomes a bit of a celebrity.

And I've always wondered what happened to her after the war or what point she yeah you wouldn't want that on your facebook page would you that is cancellation we're going to remove that cancellation worthy that that would be a problem um and i i get i mean so the famous the famous story is jesse owens yeah wins four four medals is it four medals four medal and obviously Four medals? Four medals. And obviously it's black. And that plays very... So south of the Mason-Dixon line, no photographs of him are printed in any newspaper. But north of it, equally, you get stories like that Hitler refused to take hands with him.

Which is not true, actually. Which is not true. It's weird to be correcting a story about Hitler in order to present him in a better light, but it's not true that Hitler... I mean, Hitler did express great disapproval of Jesse Owens, no doubt about that. But he's in the Riefenstahl film.

Yeah, he is. I mean, there's no attempt to censor him. No, no, no, that's right. But Hitler had been told by the organisers he would have to shake hands with... He could not pick and choose who he shook hands with. They said, basically, don't... It's not really good form for the head of state to shake hands with. So unless you're going to shake hands with literally everybody,

you shouldn't do it at all. So he didn't really do it at all. So it's not true that he sort of blacklisted Jesse Owens. But it's kind of interesting, because if you think back to um the role played by um yeah i mean the most blatant racism in the saint louis yeah um the games yeah that this is obviously still a part of american sporting culture that will then after the war you know continue to play out yeah of

course um so it's an american story as well as as a german story but i mean it it's the i think i mean i think the story that really sums up the role that the berlin olympics plays in this is that the um the the the the captain the officer who's in charge of the olympic village in berlin um is jewish and so three days after the end of the olympics he gets he loses his commission and he shoots himself yeah and nobody cares because by that point the eyes of the world are off are off the games um but the sense that it's been a tremendous success for germany that it's shown the reich in a kind of tremendous golden light that really does continue to to resonate out and so that's why japan puts in the bid for the games in 1940 yeah which of course never happened

and really you're starting to see what what becomes a theme after the war that um governments start to recognize that hosting the games can really redound to your credit and it's really it's it's the 1936 games that show that and and establishes the template of course the 1940 games you know they don't go ahead they get cancelled um second world war erupts no olympic games and i realize that um essentially we have gone on for far too long we've got that this is not a sprint that this is going to be a marathon we've actually proceeded at literally half the pace that we um that we should have done so we're not going to podium with this one so perhaps perhaps we should um well perhaps we should we should uh take a break like the cuban marathon runner did have a have a an apple or an apricot or something

and do another podcast where we will go from from the end of the second world war up to the present brilliant let's do that then so we shall see you in the next podcast for well moscow los angeles london mun, you name it. Yeah, lots to do. All right, see you then. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening,

and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.