It took the time you have
spent reading these words, and probably the rest of this sentence as well for
my favourite ever Olympic moment to happen. Actually, probably these as well… I
need enough to cover 9.63 seconds.
That was the blink of an eye
Usain Bolt needed to win the men’s 100m gold on a warm, raucous July evening in
London in 2012. I was sitting up in the media seats, just above the finish
line. I’ve watched and written about sport for 25 years, all around the world,
but this was the night of nights because I love the Olympic Games.
I’m fortunate enough to have
been to three, the first in Sydney in 2000. But having it in London was special
– I could walk to the stadium from my house. Imagine walking from your house to
see the fastest man the world has ever seen win the greatest event of the
Olympic Games! When I was growing-up I loved watching the Olympics, and no
event more than the one to determine the fastest person on the planet. In the
moments before the starting gun fired, the hairs on the back of my neck would
stand up when the commentator said sotto voce, as they always did, “the final
of the men’s 100m…”
There’s no Usain Bolt anymore
– I’d have him as the greatest sports person I’ve ever seen – but there are, of
course, still the Olympics and there is plenty to look forward to in Paris from
26 July. The opening ceremony will see each country float down the Seine on a
flotilla of boats from Albania to Zimbabwe, the A to Z of the world (although
thankfully there will be no R for Russia).
Every Games has a story of
its own. There will be heroes and villains – every good story needs a good
villain – there will be (sporting) tragedies and improbable triumphs all played
out to the backdrop of one of the world’s great cities.
The countdown proper has
begun to Paris 2024 with the arrival of the Olympic torch in France this week. This
will be the third time Paris has hosted the Olympics yet it’s still 100 years
since the world’s best athletes last gathered in the French capital. In 1924,
only 135 of them were women out of more than 3,000. This summer there will be
around 10,500 athletes in all, half of them women – the first 50/50 split in
Olympic history.
Modern Olympic history begins
in 1896 with the first Games in Athens, held there because the ancient games
had been born in Greece. The very first is believed to have taken place in
776BC.
Paris’s first Games came in
1900 when events such as underwater swimming – take a deep breath and off you
go! – cricket and pigeon shooting… with live (soon to be dead) pigeons.
The 1924 Olympics in Paris
became famous in Britain as the ‘Chariots of Fire’ Games, Eric Liddell and
Harold Abrahams winning gold medals. There was also gold in the pool for the
American Gertrude Ederle who a year later was to become the first woman to swim
the Channel. The 1924 US Olympics team were given a ticker-tape parade in New
York for topping the medal table; Ederle received one all of her own for
swimming the Channel for which an estimated two million people turned out.
Olympic heroes last through
the ages, and often mean something beyond their sport… Jesse Owens winning four
golds in Berlin in 1936, Fanny Blankers Coen winning four of her own in London
in 1948, 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci producing the perfect 10 in Montreal in
1976.
There has too always been a
dark side to the sport; from doping to corruption to protest, such as Tommie
Smith and John Carlos with their Black Power salute in 1968. And there’s been
real tragedy, the murder of Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German
policeman by terrorists in 1972.
There are, thankfully, so
many uplifting stories to find in 128 years of modern Olympic history, so many
well-I-never tales. Here’s one from the last time the Games were in Paris.
Johnny Weissmuller was born in what is now Romania and arrived on Ellis Island
in his mother’s arms before he turned one. After catching polio as a child his
doctor advised his parents to take him swimming to aid his recovery. He was a
natural – by the time he arrived in Paris he was already a world record holder.
He won three gold medals, and a bronze in water polo, and added two more in
Amsterdam four years later. After he hung up his trunks, Weissmuller switched
to acting and was cast as Tarzan – he was to star in a dozen Tarzan movies (in
between five marriages) and become one of the best-known actors in the world.
He’s remembered today as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and features on
the album cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Who will be the stories of
this Paris Games? Let me give you a couple of names to look out for, one
British – Sky Brown, who turns 16 just before the Games. She’s a world champion
skateboarder and could turn her bronze in Tokyo into gold in Paris. And my
other one to watch is Summer McIntosh. She’s from Canada, she’s 17 and she
could win as many golds as Tarzan himself.
Robin Scott-Elliot has been a sports journalist for 25 years with the BBC, ITV, the Sunday Times, the Independent and the ‘i’, covering every sport you can think of and a few you probably can’t. He threw that all away to move home to Scotland and chase his dream of writing books instead of football reports. Once there his daughters persuaded him to write a story for them and that is how his career as a children's author began. Finding Treasure Island is his latest book and is published by Cranachan.
