Power Games. Jules BoykoffЧитать онлайн книгу.
roster, even though a number of them hadn’t even attended the Paris congress. Coubertin envisioned the original IOC as “three concentric circles.” One comprised “a small nucleus of active and convinced members.” The second circle was “a nursery of members of good will who were capable of being educated.” Lastly, there was “a façade of more or less useful men whose presence satisfied national pretensions while giving some prestige to the group.”85 To charges that the group was elitist and non-democratic, Coubertin replied: “We are not elected. We are self-recruiting, and our terms of office are unlimited. Is there anything else that could irritate the public more?” Was he troubled by such allegations? “We are not in the least concerned about it,” he assured a gathering in London in 1908.86
Coubertin’s goal was to arrange for the inaugural Olympic Games to take place in 1900 in Paris. But the delegates at the Sorbonne decided unanimously to hold the first modern Olympics in Athens only two years after the congress, in 1896.87 With the Greeks slated to host, Demetrios Vikelas was chosen as IOC president, while Coubertin assumed the post of general secretary.
Vikelas was a University of London–trained author who married a wealthy Greek heiress and enjoyed connections in high places. With only two years to prepare for the first modern Olympics, he led a mad scramble to raise funds to stage the event. But his zeal was tempered by Greek prime minister Charilaos Tricoupis, who didn’t believe in anteing up the government’s scarce funds for the effort (Coubertin later claimed that Tricoupis “did not believe in the success of the Games”).88 In stark contrast to the Olympics of today, the 1896 Games would have to be financed outside the fiscal system of the national government. Fortunately for the organizers, King George and Crown Prince Constantine of Greece showed considerable enthusiasm for rallying private donors. While the Baron stayed behind in Paris, occupying himself with tasks such as securing sculptor Jules Chaplain to design the Olympic medals, Vikelas scurried around Athens making arrangements, brokering deals, and promising an influx of tourists. He reached out to the foreign press through a stream of telegrams hyping the Games.89
To quell the panic over the dearth of funds, Coubertin publicly lowballed the cost of the Olympics, inaugurating a trend that still thrives today. He assured everyone that the Games could be staged for a mere 200,000 drachmas—a figure that the Olympic historian David Young dubbed “ridiculously low,” given that the stadium refurbishment alone cost three times that much.90 Were it not for George Averoff, a wealthy Greek businessman who agreed to finance the stadium building in Athens, the Games might not have happened. (For his munificence Averoff was rewarded with a sizable statue in his likeness that graced the stadium entrance.) The 1896 Olympics also enjoyed the generous support of trade unions and working people across Athens—which was ironic since they would be ineligible to participate in the Games, thanks to the “mechanics clause.”91 Because of the groundswell of local support, the Games were on.
The opening ceremony of 1896 Olympics was said to be the largest assemblage of people for peaceful purposes since antiquity, with 50,000 packed into the stadium and another 20,000 lounging on the hillside above. Young describes the Games as “the grandest sporting event to that point in the history of earth.”92 These first modern Olympics featured forty-three events in nine sports, with thirteen countries sending 311 participants. Nearly three of every four competitors hailed from Greece.93 The United States sent the largest contingent of foreign athletes, most of them college students from the Eastern seaboard. They fared brilliantly, scooping up a hefty satchel of medals, and punctuated their efforts with rah-rah college-boy cheers that left the assembled Greeks gobsmacked. Blending ignorance with toxic stereotyping, one Athens newspaper explained the Americans’ success by claiming they “joined the inherited athletic training of the Anglo-Saxon to the wild impetuosity of the redskin.”94 After competing, Olympic athletes mingled with everyday citizens, making them accessible in ways unthinkable today.95
Looking back on the 1896 Olympics, scholars have come to diverse conclusions, from deeming them “a huge success”96 to the assessment that the Games “are best remembered for the fact that they took place.”97 The Olympics earned mixed reviews in the US press, despite the fact that American athletes shined. One observer deemed the opening of the Games in Athens to be “a delight to the eye and an impressive appeal to the imagination.” Pointing to the intrinsic values of the revived sporting competition, the person wrote that the sport festival “has become a good thing of itself, and with all other worthy influences is making for a balanced culture and perfected manhood.”98 Another commentator complained that the event was hardly international, contending that the IOC “failed to attract foreign competitors [and] also failed to attract foreign spectators.” Despite Vikelas’s rosy predictions, the New York Times reported that thanks to a “preposterous” hike in hotel room costs, many tourists who had planned on visiting Athens “abstained from going … intentionally delaying their visit to Athens till after the termination of the games.”99
But the Greeks were thrilled with the outcome. At the conclusion of the Games, they were keen to host all future Olympics. At a royal banquet for the athletes and distinguished foreign guests, King George offered a bold toast:
Greece, who has been the mother and nurse of the Olympic Games in ancient times and who had undertaken to celebrate them once more today, can now hope, as their success has gone beyond all expectations, that the foreigners, who have honoured her with their presence, will remember Athens as the peaceful meeting place of all nations, as the tranquil and permanent seat of the Olympic Games.100
According to the Games’ official report, the king’s suggestion elicited “an outburst of hurrahs. The enthusiasm was indiscribable [sic].” The idea was ratified by members of the US Olympic team, who wrote an open letter to Crown Prince Constantine stating that “these games should never be removed from their native soil.”101
Although tactfully taciturn at the time, Coubertin chafed at King George’s power move and the Americans’ enthusiasm for it. He unsheathed his pen to reassert his vision for the sports festival—to have it circumnavigate the globe to spread the Olympic gospel. Harking back to promises made at the 1894 Paris congress, he firmly insisted, “It was there agreed that every country should celebrate the Olympic games in turn.”102 And the Baron pulled a power move of his own, informing the Greeks that they were welcome to hold their own athletic festivals as long as they didn’t use the phrase “Olympic Games.” That Greek term densely embedded in Greek history apparently belonged to him.103
In the wake of the 1896 Games, Vikelas stepped down as the head of the IOC, and Coubertin ascended from general secretary to president. He held this position until 1925, when at the age of 62 he retired. His extended tenure set the tone for future presidents to remain at the helm of the IOC for long periods of time. To date, the IOC has had just nine presidents in its 120-year history.
Unfairness at the Fair
At the turn of the century the Olympics did not yet enjoy the cachet they have today, so the 1900 Games in Paris and the 1904 Games in St. Louis had to affix themselves to the enormous cosmopolitan institutions of the day—World’s Fairs. The early modern Olympics were mere sideshows to the World’s Fairs, not the main event on the world stage that we see today.
Early on it was clear that Paris would present challenges to the IOC. Coubertin’s French compatriots were anything but eager to host the Games. The Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques resisted Coubertin’s proposal even though the Baron was the general secretary of the group. After considerable finagling, Coubertin was forced to fasten his beloved Games onto the Exposition Universelle in order to get them staged at all. Fair organizers dreaded including the Olympics, partly because French politicians and the professoriat deemed sports a lowbrow pursuit. The Baron responded by calling the Exposition “a vulgar glorified fair: exactly the opposite of what we wanted the Olympic Games to be.”104 When French sport officials performed a volte-face and decided to manage the Games themselves, Coubertin and the IOC found themselves on the outside looking in. As at Athens, local organizers marginalized Coubertin, sometimes even snubbing him. This left a bitter taste in the Baron’s mouth.105