The men’s 4 × 400 meter relay event at the 1920 Olympics was won by the United States team (Cecil Griffiths, Robert Lindsay, John Ainsworth-Davies, Guy Butler, our photo)
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Series During the first Olympic Games following the end of the First World War, place was given to the winners of the conflict: the defeated nations were not even invited. For humiliated Germany, sport will become a place where the spirit of revenge flourishes.
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He climbed onto a small white wooden platform in the middle of the stadium, raised his right arm high, then, in the name of all the athletes, recited the text that he had carefully learned by heart:
“We swear that we present ourselves to the Olympic Games as loyal competitors, respectful of the regulations which govern them and eager to participate in a chivalrous spirit, for the honor of our countries and for the glory of sport. »
On August 14, 1920, during the opening ceremony of the Antwerp Olympic Games, Belgian Victor Boin was the first athlete to take the Olympic oath – a moment that is now unmissable every four years.
It was to an athlete as extraordinary as a jack-of-all-trades, already an Olympic medalist in water polo, swimming and fencing in 1908 and 1912, that was entrusted with the task of swearing loyalty to the rules and spirit of the Games. It is also a symbol, less than two years after the armistice of November 11, 1918. Because Victor Bouin enlisted during the war in his country’s army, first in an auto-cannon unit. -machine guns, then in the air force. A symbol, yes, because Victor Bouin is also the representative of a country, Belgium, invaded from the start of the conflict despite its neutrality, which emerged devastated and chosen as organizer by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for “pay tribute to the suffering inflicted on the Belgian people during the war”.
Games in a city still destroyed
“In 1920, Antwerp was still a totally devastated city, residents lived in wooden barracks, people had great difficulty getting around, the stands at the Games often remained emptyexplains Sandrine Lemaire, one of the curators of the exhibition “Olympism, a history of the world”, at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris, dedicated to the relationship between the Olympic Games and politics. The concern is to erase the scars of the conflict and to build peace, so that this war is the “last of the last”. » Just before Victor Boin speaks in the Antwerp stadium during the opening ceremony, soldiers release doves in the colors of the participating countries: never again! A release of birds which will be repeated at each Olympiad until that of Seoul in 1988, where birds will end up burned by the Olympic flame and where the tradition will therefore be buried.
The Olympics tell the story
A few weeks before the Paris Olympic Games, “le Nouvel Obs” looks back every day on the 30 previous editions through 30 historic events. Stories compiled for the exhibition “Olympism, a history of the world”, at the Palais de la Porte Dorée (Paris-12e), until September 8. The exhibition catalogue, richly illustrated and written by around sixty historians and specialists, is available from Editions de la Martinière (576 pages, 65 euros).
Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Games, made it his new mantra: Olympism must be an alternative to armed conflict, like peaceful competition. In the stadium, the Olympic flag also flies for the first time, these five colored rings intertwined on a white background: created in 1913, it originally represented all the colors of the flags of the nations participating in the competition, not at all the five continents united by sport as even the IOC says today… A banner that has become the symbol of universalism and peace, defended in Antwerp in 1920.
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Series Berlin, 1916, the Games that did not take place: Olympism and the mirage of peace
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But there is no question for the organizers of the Antwerp Games of inviting the defeated countries: peace seems to be celebrated only between victors… Fourteen months after the humiliating Treaty of Versailles of June 1919, which imposed immense financial reparations and attributes all responsibility for the conflict to Berlin, Germany is refused the participation of its athletes in the Olympics. Same thing for Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, who were also part of the defeated camp…
Revenge through sport
The very young Weimar Republic, in power in Germany after the defeat, nevertheless made sport one of the central axes of its policy: as the Treaty of Versailles imposed the demilitarization of the country and drastically limited the number of soldiers, sport and physical education were seen as an alternative to military service. Almost everywhere in the country, a large number of sports infrastructures are being built, clubs are being structured, the number of participants is exploding. Also, when German athletes will make their return in 1928, at the Amsterdam Games, they will carry out a raid and will not will only be beaten by the United States.
What the winners of 1914-1918 had not anticipated was that the feeling of humiliation within German public opinion and its corollary need for revenge would also flourish through sport. Certain German sports clubs and organizations will thus transform themselves into a crucible of militarist and nationalist forces, which make them the training ground for the next conflict which is sure to occur. The great German sports theorist of the time Carl Diem – who was one of the chief organizers of the Berlin Games in 1936 – published a book in 1923 with an evocative name: “Sport ist Kampf” – literally “sport is a fight”. We are not very far from “Mein Kampf” (“My fight”) that a certain Adolf Hitler was preparing to publish two years later: a book in which the Nazi insists, in chapters II, III and IV, on the “training of the body” to get the best out of the Aryan race…
Paavo Nurmi, the superstar who will break amateurism
Triple gold medal in Antwerp in 1920, five-time Olympic champion in Paris in 1924, and again gold medal in 1928: the Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi is, with the American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, the great sports star of the years 1920. To the point of being paid to appear at the start of certain races. Enough to provoke the ire of the IOC, which has celebrated a disinterested practice of sport since its creation and then made amateurism one of its cardinal rules. In 1932, Paavo Nurmi was refused participation in the Los Angeles Olympic Games due to “professionalism”. He would only have his revenge twenty years later, during the Olympic Games organized in his country, in Helsinki: it was to him that the honor of being the last bearer of the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony would fall.
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