Making the Team
Making the Team
Britain’s Role in Founding the Modern Olympic Games
Britain’s Role in Founding the Modern Olympic Games
From its Ancient Greek origins to modern international renown, the story of the Olympic Games has many chapters. The modern Olympics have been held for over a century now - uniting nations through competition through both world wars and beyond. Britain is a consistent character in them; but one that is more important than most people know. Through the lens provided by The Leeds Library’s collections, this exhibition will explore how Britain helped the modern Olympic Games grow. Delve in below!
Wenlock and Coubertain
Though sporting tournaments can be traced across Europe beforehand, France’s Baron Pierre de Coubertin is widely credited for founding the modern Olympics in the late 1800s. His inspiration is far less well-known, however, and lies in an unlikely place: Much Wenlock, a small rural town in the midst of the Shropshire hills.
In 1850, local physician Doctor William Penny Brookes founded his own Wenlock Olympian Games. His purpose was to “promote the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants”, and he wasn’t choosy about how. In addition to the original Ancient Greek sports, Brookes’s games had tavern visits, blindfolded wheelbarrow races, and even an “old women’s race for a pound of tea”.
A victor is crowned at the 1887 Wenlock Olympian Games
The success of the Games quickly spread across Shropshire and beyond throughout the next three decades. In 1865, Brookes made the jump and helped found the National Olympian Society. The next games were held in London, and attracted 10,000 competitors and spectators. In 1887, the now-national Games were given a silver urn by King George of Greece.
Pierre de Coubertin
It wasn’t until 1890 that Brookes met the then-23-year-old Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Coubertin had made integrating sports into education his life’s work, and Brookes’s popular games appealed to his curiosity.
By this time, an 80-year-old Brookes had been fighting for an international Olympic Games, held in Athens, for a decade. This idea, and the reality of the Wenlock Olympic Games , enchanted Coubertin. He took up their mantle, and six years later the first modern Olympics were held in Athens. Sadly, Dr. Brookes died just one year before his dream was realised.
If the Olympic Games that Modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives today, it is due, not to a Greek, but to Dr W. P. Brookes.
- Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in La Revue Athletique (December, 1890)
Illustrations from Athletics (1929)
London Calling
Despite the internation Olympic Games’s promising start, however, the subsequent two floundered. Both were subsumed by massive fairs, and attracted mostly natives of their host countries (France and the USA respectively). By 1906, Coubertin was struggling to find a host for the fourth Olympics. Rome had rejected him after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and he turned with just 19 months to go to London.
London had no plans, no stadium, and no Olympic Committee. Everything had to be built from scratch, and it would take a miracle for it to be ready on time. They didn’t get a miracle - but they did get Lord William Grenfell, first Baron Desborough, a dedicated sportsman and soon-to-be gold medalist in Olympic planning. He raised £220,000 to construct a 68,000-person strong stadium, and in July 1908 it was duly filled with 2,000 athletes from more than 20 countries.
1908 London Olympics: Quick Facts
1908 London Olympics: Quick Facts
- So the race could start at Windsor Castle, the London Games lengthened the marathon to its modern 26 miles and 385 yards.
- These were the first Games to award gold, silver, and bronze medals
- Lasting from April to October 1908, they’re still the longest running Games ever held
- They were the first ever to include Winter events (hence the long run time)
A Woman’s Game
The road to the Olympics was not as smooth for female participants. Though women were welcome to participate in some events at the Wenlock Olympic Games, Baron de Coubertin was very opposed to women competing in sports publically.
Despite his protests, however, women were invited to compete in the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. Even so, they were limited to five sports: sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf. Only 22 women took part - 2.2% of the 997 total competitors. Of these few, Swiss rower Hélène de Pourtalès became the first female Olympic champion, as a member of the winning team in the first 1 to 2 ton sailing event in May 1900.
A little female Olympiad [would be] impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and […] improper
A little female Olympiad [would be] impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and […] improper
- Pierre de Coubertin (1912)
It wasn’t until the 1908 London Olympics that a woman was awarded a medal in an individual sports competition. Charlotte Cooper won gold in Women’s Singles Tennis - quickly followed by Sybil ‘Queenie’ Newall, who won gold in Women’s Archery and is still the oldest woman to be awarded gold at 53. Both were British.
Charlotte Cooper
Today, the Olympic Games look very diferent to William Penny Brookes’s Victorian ones. The additions of the Winter Games and the Paralympics are a great leap that he never made.
Nevertheless, without the contributions of British men and women like him, it’s possible the modern Olympics would not exist in the way we know it today. They stand as a testament to the great uniting power of playing sport together - and will continue to do so!
With Thanks To:
Exhibition: Jane Riley and Niimi Day Gough
Digital: Niimi Day Gough
Bibliography:
Images:
Wenlock Olympian Society, ‘Wenlock Olympian Society’, Online: Wenlock Olympian Society (2008), The History Press, ‘London’s First Olympics, 1908', Online: The History Press (2017), A. Lowe & A. Porritt, Athletics (London: Longmans & Co., 1929), Ian Buchanan, British Olympians : a hundred years of gold medalists (Enfield, Guinness, 1991).
Information:
Frank Deford, ‘The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start‘, Online: Smithsonian Magazine (2012), in Bios: Vol. 37, No. 2 (1966), ‘Pierre de Coubertin’, Online: International Olympic Committee (2024), ‘Much Wenlock & the Olympian Connection’, Online: Wenlock Olympian Society (2008), The Olympic Museum, ‘The Modern Olympic Games’ - 2nd Ed., Online: The Olympic Museum (2007), The History Press, ‘London’s First Olympics, 1908', Online: The History Press (2017), ‘Gender Equality Through Time’, Online: International Olympic Committee (2021), ‘Sybil Newall’, Online: Olympedia (2015), Natalia Camps Y Wilant & George Hirthler, ‘The rationale behind Coubertin's opposition to women competing in the Olympic Games’, Online: International Olympic Committee (2021).
