By Steffanie Agnew
The year
2014 marks the 90th anniversary of the first
Winter Olympic games, which took place in Chamonix, France. The games
opened Jan. 25, 1924, and ended Feb. 5, 1924. The games consisted of 16 events,
with 17 countries competing. Of the 258 athletes who competed, 247 were men and
11 were women.
Photo courtesy AP Images for educational use
Jan. 25, 1924, Chamonix, France
A man carries the U.S. flag during the 1924 Winter
Olympic Games opening ceremony.
The Opening
Ceremony
According
to the official
Olympic website, the first Olympic Winter Games was originally known as
Winter Sports Week. It started out just as an experiment of a sports
competition between nations, but it was hugely successful. It wouldn’t be until
1926, when the International Olympic Committee met in Lisbon, that the Chamonix
Games were recognized officially as the first Olympic Winter Games.
An article from the Times of London in 1924
said that the opening ceremony took up most of the first day of the Olympics,
which was Jan. 25.
Another
1924 article, this one from the Washington Post said, “The teams of all the
nations represented, bearing their national flags and emblems, then paraded
from the city hall to the skating rink where the actual competition will begin tomorrow.”
According
to the official Olympic website, athletes were required to march in full gear
during the opening ceremony parade. They had to carry their equipment on their
shoulders, such as skis and hockey sticks.
Once
athletes arrived at the rink from the opening ceremony march, Gaston Vidal, the
French Under Secretary of State for Physical Education, declared the official
opening of the games.
There
wasn’t a flame lighting at the first Olympics, but a symbolic fire was lit
years later, in 1936, at the games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
The First Event
Many
newspaper articles reported that the first event was a 500-meter speed skating
competition, with 27 competitors representing 10 different countries. American Charles
Jewtraw won the first Olympic event. The U.S. went on to lose the next
competition, the 5,000 meter race. Finland took the most points at the end of
the first day.
Photo courtesy AP Images for educational use
Jan. 1924, Chamonix, France
Olympians Sonja Henie, 11, and Gilles Grafstrom shown
on skates at the Winter Olympic Games in 1924.
The Olympic Games
One of
the most popular events at the games was the hockey match between the U.S. and
Canada. The Chicago Daily Tribune mentioned the event as being highly
anticipated in an article in 1924. Canada ended up beating the U.S. in the
hockey final.
Canada
was amazing in the hockey competition. The Canadian team scored 85 times
without being scored on, and ended up winning the tournament with 122 goals.
They only had three goals scored against them.
The top
performer at the games was Finland’s Clas Thunberg, who took five medals, three
of them being gold, in the five speed skating events.
The Results
The
Scandinavian countries largely dominated the first Olympics, and continued to
do so for many years. Norway won the games with a score of 134.5 points. The U.S.
lost to Great Britain for third place by one point, and got fourth place.
According
to a 1924 article in the Los Angeles Times, on the closing day of the games,
Feb. 5, prizes were distributed by Baron Pierre de Coubontin, president of the
International Olympic Committee. Winners received gold medals, second place received
silver medals and third place received bronze. All athletes who participated
were given Olympic diplomas.
The
games were largely successful. According to the Olympic website, the event
attracted 10,004 paying spectators. A New York Times article however stated
that officials were disappointed with the amount of revenue generated.
Officials had been hoping for 500,000 francs from ticket sales, but the events only
generated 251,000 francs. They attributed low ticket sales to the excessive
number of complimentary tickets given to Olympic athletes’ relatives.
Olympic
Controversy
The
games were not without controversy.
For
example, there was controversy surrounding the score of American
Anders Haugen. Due to a marking error, Haugen was declared fourth place
instead of third even though he had been leading in the ski jumping event.
A Feb.
4, 1924, article in the Washington Post said, “General disapproval of the
decision was voiced by a large section of the sporting fraternity assembled
here and Mayor Leach, of Minneapolis, has declared his intention of filing a
protest.”
Haugen
would finally be awarded a bronze medal for the jump in 1974 at age 83.
Scoring
in general was another controversial topic. All nations except for Sweden were
in favor to change the scoring so that hockey would be awarded more points than
other winter sports.
A Step Back Into
Time: News Coverage of the Olympics
Newspaper
coverage of the games differed greatly depending on the paper. The New York
Times by far had the most coverage. It was one of the few publications, along
with the Chicago Daily Tribune, to post front page coverage. Many other
publications, such as the Times of London, buried its Olympic coverage on the
sports page. Smaller local newspapers, such as the Austin American Statesman
carried stories. However, coverage was mostly small blurbs about results no
more than 200 or so words long, buried deep within the paper and lost among
longer articles.
In
general, most articles reported results. There were some articles, though, that
really stood out.
I would
recommend including the article from Feb. 4, 1924, from the Washington Post
about the controversy surrounding Anders Haugen. The Washington Post has
another really great article from Jan. 26, 1924 about the opening games. The
language of the article really captured the spirit of the first opening
ceremony.
The article
says, “On the arrival at the rink Under Secretary Vidal declared the official
opening of the sports. His voice, caught up by enormous amplifiers on top of
the grandstands, was sent reverberating up the sides of the high mountains
which gave the Chamonix Valley its magnificent setting. At the word, 150
athletes clapped on their skates, jumped out onto the immense sheet of ice
before them and the eight Olympic games, in their modern revival, were on.”
The New
York Times by far had the most coverage, so it would be the best publication
that I can recommend for looking at coverage of the first games.
Sources:
New York Times, Feb. 5, 1924, page 18
New York Times, Feb. 6, 1924, page 13
New York Times, Jan. 27, 1924, front page
New York Times, Jan. 27, 1924, sports section, page 1
New York Times, Jan. 28, 1924, sports section, page 1
Los Angeles Times, Feb. 5, 1924, page B3
Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 3, 1924, page A1
Austin American Statesman, Jan. 28, 1924, sports section,
page 1
Austin American Statesman, Jan. 29, 1924, sports section,
page 1
Dallas Morning News, Jan. 27, 1974, sports section, page
1
Times of London, Jan. 28, 1924, sports section, page 1
Washington Post, Jan. 26, 1924, page S1
Washington Post, Feb. 5, 1924, page S1
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