The Olympic Athletics of 1908
- You planned to use your Time Machine to watch again the athletics at the 2008 Olympics. But you
mis-set the thing, and have arrived at the 1908 Olympics instead. Apart from the clothing and architecture
(although the White City Stadium, London was as widely admired in its day as was the Birds Nest Stadium
at Beijing), what are some of the differences you might notice?
- The Track. London's was cinder, of course, but was bigger: three laps to a mile. Inside it was
the water tank used for the swimming events, and outside of it the track for the cycling. Now why
couldn't the organisers of London 2012 have done something like that to keep the costs down?
- The 100 metres. No lane markings on the track: the lanes were marked off by strings pegged a few
inches off the ground. There's no record of any athlete getting tangled up in these.
- The 400 metres. This was not run in lanes, leading to one of the major controversies of the Games.
The final comprised just four athletes: one Briton (Wyndham Halswelle) and three Americans. The
first running of the final was declared null and void, as one of the Americans was ruled to have
blocked the Briton. The remaining Americans refused to take part in the re-run, so Halswelle ran it
on his own.
- The Discus. There was no Women's Discus (or women athletes at all) in the 1908 Games, but there were
two events for men: the Classical event (throwing from a small sloping platform) and the freestyle
event (more or less the present event). In either case there was no throwing cage to obscure your
view. But the same athlete won both events, and the authorities would hold a single event from 1912
onwards.
Hurdles. As you can see from the
picture of 110m Hurdles winner Forrest Smithson, the hurdles would
not topple as easily as present-day ones. It was not compulsory to carry a Bible while hurdling:
in what is almost certainly a staged picture rather than race action, Mr. Smithson, a Theology
graduate, was trying to make a point about athletic competition on the Sabbath.
- Pole Vault. Landing Bed? What Landing Bed? We'll dig the sandpit for you, though. If you want a
fibreglass pole, you'll need to invent it first.
- Qualifying Conditions: Each nation could enter up to 12 competitors in each event. In the shorter
races, there were two rounds and a final: only the winner of each race would progress. A certain
lack of common sense showed up in the 400 metre Hurdles in particular, in which twelve Round One
heats were arranged: seven were walk-overs and for an eighth, no-one turned up.
- One thing would have been all too familiar to present-day athletes: dismal weather (except on the day of the
Marathon, when it was hot and humid).