1920: Whose Olympiad?

 

Gold Medal for Antwerp Champions

By Bert Govaerts

The first Olympic Games after the tragedy of the Great War might have been a fine stage for global reconciliation. But the war was won by some and lost by others. These were to be the Games of the winners (and the neutrals). Just as Antwerp had been selected because it had suffered on the winning side during the war, a number of nations were excluded because they had fought on the wrong side. The Olympic ideal was supposed to be "above" all politics and the International Olympic Committee had purposely settled down in neutral Lausanne during the hostilities, but its president, Baron de Coubertin (who, as a Frenchman, had luckily enough found himself on the correct side), had enough common sense to understand that less than two years after the end of the war, German or Austrian athletes would not be welcomed with open arms in a country that they had helped ruin. The former Central Powers (or what was left of them) were not really excluded. They were simply not invited to participate in 1920. It would not be until the 1928 Olympics that Germany once again sent athletes to the Games.

Neither was Bolshevik Russia invited; not only was it considered a subversive state advocating the spread of world revolution, but it had also left the Allies in the lurch in 1918 by signing a separate peace treaty with Germany and Austria. Moreover, Bolshevik Russia was engaged in warfare with the newly independent Polish state, a state that was receiving military aid and assistance from France. Coubertin found an administrative trick that allowed this one-time "exclusion" of Bolshevik Russia and of the former Central Powers without mortgaging the future of his Games.

Of course, on the "winning" side there would be many absentees. Many sportsmen, including a number of Olympic champions, had died or been crippled at the front. After years of continued slaughter of Europe's youth, the competition between nations could hardly be fair. This had already been demonstrated during the so-called "Inter-Allied Games" of 1919, during which the United States, latecomers in the Great War, showed their athletic superiority. The neutral countries as well were in a favorable position.

Antwerp Olympic Stadium Entrance
Note the Soldier Is Throwing a Grenade Rather Than a Discus

Anyway, the Games had to be taken up again. Twenty-nine nations accepted the invitation to participate. Among them were the newly independent states of Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Finland, created in the aftermath of the Great War. Belgium, Canada, France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, and the USA had all been combatants during the war. Yugoslavia, Brazil, and Monaco participated for the first time, though at the time Yugoslavia was still known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. New Zealand participated independent of the Australians for the first time.

It had been a top-level decision to go ahead with the Games in Belgium. The "generals" had spoken, now the sportive "soldiers" had to march once again. The practical problems were forbidding. There was simply nothing available, except the will (of some) to push forward. Of course, money was the first major problem. It was not just that the organizing committee lacked funding. Belgium was then going through a period of galloping inflation, which made it very hard to calculate realistic budgets. And so much remained to be done. There was no Olympic Stadium, to mention just one obvious point. Some of Belgium's sportive infrastructure survived the war years, but the swimming pool, the tennis lawns, the boxing and fencing arenas, etc. would all have to be renovated and refurbished. Finding accommodations for the athletes was another tricky task in an impoverished country that was experiencing a post-hostilities housing crisis. All this was solved in one way or another, partly on borrowed money and with a lot of improvisation "à la Belge."

The stadium was finished in time, if only two months before the opening of the Summer Games. The most striking feature of the Olympic Stadium was the "imperial," neo-classical entrance gate (a temporary construction, made of cheap materials, but few people knew that at the time). In front, a statue by Albéric Collin was placed. Not of a classic discus thrower, but of a Belgian soldier throwing a hand grenade. The accommodation problem proved harder to solve. Some of the athletes would have to sleep in city schools, others in military barracks. The poor Dutch had to stay onboard a small vessel, the Hollandia, which was moored at an Antwerp dock. The 1920 Games were not exactly the most luxurious or comfortable in history.

Local publicity for the Games suffered immensely from a shortage of paper. A great poster campaign was planned, but it was never realized. The official poster for the summer games (one version shown above) was designed by local artist Martha Van Kuyck. It showed a classical discus thrower, more or less wrapped in national banners and posing in front of the Antwerp skyline, featuring the city's great pride, the gothic spire of Our Lady's Cathedral. The poster was not precisely a "state of the art" design. In fact, it was very old fashioned, still breathing the atmosphere of the Belle Époque, the period during which the leading sportsmen of Antwerp had started thinking of "their" Games. If anything, the occupation had not really revolutionized their taste. Anyway, local propaganda for the Games was so lacking that when several prelude athletic events were held, a Belgian newspaper wrote: "Friday evening (April 23rd), at nine o'clock, the Olympic games are supposed to begin. How many Antwerp citizens are aware of this?"

Opening Ceremony, 14 August 1920

The opening ceremony of the VII Olympiad took place on 14 August 1920. It began with a religious service in Antwerp's impressive gothic cathedral. The entire Olympic family gathered in a Catholic prayer house to listen to the admonishing words of a cardinal of the Church. Many military delegates from the Allied and neutral countries were present as well, and the memory of the Great War was omnipresent. The speaker, Cardinal Désiré Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, belonged in part to the national Belgian history of the war. During the occupation he had taken an attitude of staunch resistance toward the Germans, at times even embarrassing the "neutral" Pope himself. Yet, Mercier was not a universally popular hero in his own country. The French-speaking Mercier considered the Dutch language, spoken by the Flemish, Belgium's majority community, as an inferior tongue, fit only for everyday life but not for use in science, politics, or diplomacy. His "Olympic" speech (delivered after he had sung a de Profundis in memory of the athletes who died during the war) was entirely in French. That did not go unnoticed outside the cathedral. It rankled the atmosphere even before the Games began.

The speech itself clearly, be it obliquely, referred to the Great War once again and not simply in pacifying terms. Before 1914, the Games, the Cardinal told the athletes, had been a preparation for war. History proved the correctness of the provisions of their founder. Today the Games were preparation for peace but also...."against the terrible risks that have not entirely disappeared from our horizon." Mercier urged the athletes to be moderate, disciplined, and prepared to accept authority. All this in order to prevent sports becoming the "brutal, haughty translation of the Nietzschean conception of life." Germany wasn't mentioned by name, but everyone understood the message.

After the religious ceremony, the Olympic family moved to the stadium on the outskirts of the city. After gun salutes were fired, King Albert, wearing his military uniform, solemnly opened the 1920 Games. Just as nowadays, the delegations marched in and paraded in front of the grandstand. When everyone was in, the new five-ringed Olympic banner was raised for the first time in history. Belgian soldiers released white doves to celebrate the return of peace. Another novelty followed: a Belgian athlete, decorated wartime veteran, and prewar Olympic medalist Victor Boin stepped forward, carrying a Belgian flag and flanked by two Belgian officers. He was the first athlete ever to take the Olympic oath. He did it, of course, in French.

And that was it. The Games could finally begin. The press praised the quality of the ceremony but could not fail to notice that the stadium was hardly filled to capacity. In any case, the Antwerp Games had begun.