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1948 Summer Olympics

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Games of the XIV Olympiad
Games of the XIV Olympiad

Host city London, England
Nations participating 59
Athletes participating 4,104
(3,714 men, 390 women)
Events 136 in 17 sports
Opening ceremony July 29
Closing ceremony August 14
Officially opened by King George VI
Athlete's Oath Donald Finlay
Olympic Torch John Mark
Stadium Wembley Stadium

The 1948 Summer Olympics, the Games of the XIV Olympiad, were held in London, England. After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, these were the first Summer Olympics since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The 1940 Games had been scheduled for Tokyo, and later Helsinki as WWII started; the 1944 Games had been provisionally planned for London.

Contents

Background

London was so short of money for the first post-war Olympics that the Olympic flame that burned above Wembley stadium was turned down at night to save gas. Word spread that it had gone out. From that moment the organisers were forced to shrug off the expense and leave the flame on full power right through the night. There is more to that than symbolism. The London Games were an austerity Games, not just for the organisers and competitors but for the country itself. And the cost and possible misuse of fuel was high in the nation's awareness. The 1947 winter had been the coldest in memory. The newly nationalised mines struggled against the temperature and what coal they produced couldn't be shifted because the railways were frozen. Offices worked to candlelight as electricity failed repeatedly, traffic lights went out beside the roads, newspapers were reduced to four pages and nobody was allowed to use an electric stove from 9am to noon or between 2 and 4pm. Snow lay everywhere and towns were cut off. [1] Financially, Britain was dependent on American aid negotiated by the economist John Maynard Keynes. External debts at the end of the war came to $14,000 million. To help pay it, America insisted the pound became convertible against other currencies by the middle of 1947; in other words that Britain had to recover from wartime bankruptcy within two years. And that could be done only by denying the population the output of car and electrical factories. Britain had to earn foreign currency to repay its debts and washing machines and refrigerators went abroad instead. Half the nation's food was still rationed by 1945 and bread rationing ended only on the day the Games began. [2] Bomb damage was everywhere and deserters were still on the run - no fewer than 19,477 in 1950 according to Emanuel Shinwell, the minister of defence. On 24 June 1948, Russia blockaded Berlin and involved Britain in an airlift that lasted until the following May. And in the middle of all this, the Olympics were coming to London. But why? How was it that a nation in which so many were homeless that they had to be allocated misery points before they could be rented houses prefabricated in factories and delivered by lorry, a nation in which towns were scarred by bomb damage and where squatters were allowed to stay in the army camps they had occupied because there was nowhere else… how could a nation like Britain in 1948 even think of running the Olympics?

How London got the Games

In June 1939, the IOC gave the 1944 Games to London, ahead of Budapest, Lausanne, Helsinki and Athens. War stopped the plans and London again stood for 1948. The official report of the London Olympics that makes it plain that there was no case of London being pressed to run the Games against its will [3]. It says:

The Games of 1944 had been allocated to London and so it was that in October, 1945, the chairman of the British Olympic Council, Lord Burghley, went to Stockholm and saw the president of the International Olympic Committee to discuss the question of London being chosen for this great event. As a result, an investigating committee was set up by the British Olympic Council to work out in some detail the possibility of holding the Games. After several meetings they recommended to the council that the Lord Mayor of London should be invited to apply for the allocation of the Games in 1948.

In early March 1946 the IOC, through a postal vote, gave the summer Games to London and the winter competition to St Moritz. The 1948 Olympics would be run by the man who had gone to Sweden to ask for them.

The government has doubts

The Olympic committee invites not countries to host the Games but individual cities. It is part of the Olympic wish to avoid nationalism. It is inevitable that governments will be involved, however, not least in a country still in ruin after a war. In April 1946 the British government worried about the dates. A Cabinet memo by the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, said:

6. The Games will last for about six weeks, and the International Olympic Association are likely to propose that they should be held in July and August. This is the peak of the holiday season; and, as a result of the introduction of holidays with pay, the pressure on hotel accommodation in the holiday season is likely to be much greater in 1946 and subsequent years than it was in the years before the war. It would be preferable, therefore, that the Games should be held earlier, e.g. in June. I propose, subject to the views of my colleagues, to make this suggestion to the Olympic Association.[4]

The Government made that suggestion to the IOC and was turned down. Exactly a year later, the British government considered abandoning the Games altogether. Cabinet minutes report:

(a) Was it wise that the Olympic Games should be held in this country at a time when we should not have recovered from our economic difficulties? Was it reasonable that we should be preparing for an Olympic Meeting at a time we had thought it necessary to restrict our own mid-week sport in order to avoid loss of industrial production? Could we justify the use of scarce materials for this purpose when we had refused facilities for e.g. the Highland and Agricultural Society's Show?
It was pointed out in reply that the invitation to hold the Olympic Games in this country in 1948 had been given, and accepted, many months ago; and it would be most inexpedient to withdraw now from the commitment into which we had entered. Moreover, the holding of the Games in this country would help us to overcome some of our economic difficulties; for it would attract many thousands of tourists, who might contribute as much as £1,000,000 towards restoring our balance of payments.[5]

The organiser

Lord (David George Brownlow Cecil) Burghley was the sixth Marquess of Exeter. He preferred the spelling Marquess, rather than Marquis, confusing many who thought a marquess was a marquis's wife. (It's a marchioness.) Portraits of him in his youth suggest a lean, fine-nosed man, the sort you'd call artistic or highly-strung, a man who'd know which profile suited the photographer or artist better. And feel able to tell him. In 1927, in his last year at Cambridge, he caused a local sensation by running the 367m lap of Great Court at Trinity College in the 47 seconds it took the clock to chime midday. That may seem a student lark compared to the gold medal for the 400m hurdles that he won in the Olympics of 1928. But Burghley was furious when he found out in 1981 that the film Chariots of Fire had credited the run to Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) and that his own character had been turned into an imaginary Lord Lindsay. By then Burghley was 76 and touchier than ever, perhaps one good reason for omitting him from the story. Another was that the filmmakers had been refused access to the proper courtyard and had used Eton College instead. Having been given the news, Burghley refused to see the film [6] even though he featured in it both heavily and, after the opening scenes, more accurately. He refused to cooperate because he feared inaccuracies.[7] Burghley had been Olympic captain in 1932 and 1936 and after the war he became president of the [[Amateur Athletics Association[[ and of the IAAF, its international equivalent. Not a man of the people but the sort used to giving orders and seeing no reason they shouldn't be obeyed. If the British Olympic Association had another candidate his name has been lost. Burghley was named chairman of the organising and executive committees.

The organisers

Alongside Lord Burghley as Britain's other representatives to the International Olympic Committee were the Rt Hon The Lord Aberdare and Sir Noel Curtis-Bennett KCVO. The organising committee included a viscount, a knight, a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, several Right Honourables and an alderman. The official report lists them as: Patron: His Majesty the King President: The Rt Hon The Viscount Portal DSO MVO Chairman, organising committee: The Rt Hon the Lord Burghley KCMG Organising committee: The Rt Hon The Lord Aberdare, Sir Noel Curtis-Bennett KCVO, Mr Jack Beresford, Mr C.B. Cowley, Mr J. Eaton Griffith OBE, Alderman H.E. Fern OBE JP, Mr E.J.H. Holt OBE, Colonel Evan A. Hunter OBE, Mr J. Emrys Lloyd OBE, Mr C.J. Patteson, Mr Arthur Porritt, Mr S.F. Rous, Mr R.B. Studdert. Executive chairman: The Rt Hon the Lord Burghley KCMG Executive committee: Mr C.B. Cowley, Mr J. Eaton Griffith OBE, Alderman H.E. Fern OBE JP, Colonel Evan A. Hunter OBE, Mr S.F. Rous, Mr R.B. Studdert Director of organisation: Mr E.J.H. Holt OBE General organising secretary: Lt-Col T.P.M Bevan MC Who were all these 18 people, of whom only five had neither a title nor letters after their name? The King and Lord Burghley are clear. Charles Portal was commander-in-chief of Bomber Command, the proposer of blanket bombing of Germany, and president of the British Olympic Association and Colonel Evan A. Hunter its secretary; Lord Aberdare and Sir Noel Curtis-Bennett were British representatives to the IOC; Jack Beresford was an Olympic rowing champion; C.B. Cowley worked for London Press and Advertising; J. Eaton Griffith was nominated by the prime minister to represent the government; J. Emrys Lloyd was a lawyer from Farrar and Co; Arthur Porritt was a New Zealand member of the IOC living in London; Sir Arthur Elvin was managing director of Wembley Stadium, the Games' main venue; Stanley Rous was secretary of the Football Association; Harold Fern was secretary of the Amateur Swimming Association; R.B. Studdert was managing director of Army and Navy Stores, which provided office space; John Holt was secretary of the International Amateur Athletics Federation; and John Coleridge Patteson was a Canadian member of the International Olympic Committee living in London.

Settling in

One of the first things the staff discovered was that nobody knew the whereabouts of the ceremonial Olympic flag, which Belgium had handed to Germany at the end of the 1932 Games in Antwerp. It had reached Berlin and been used in the 1936 Games but it had then vanished in the confusion of the Red Army's advance. It would have been forgivable to have made another one but as it happened the British Army found not only the flag amid the rubble but also the guest book for the Berlin Games of 1936. The book was displayed at the Victoria and Albert museum in Kensington during the Games before being sent to the IOC's museum in Lausanne. Berlin had introduced the relay with the Olympic torch and London decided "after careful consideration" that it would happen again in London regardless of the "considerable expense." And then there was the matter of the Games symbol, or logo as it would be known now. The choice was Big Ben with the hands set at 4 o'clock, the time at which the Games would start. Such was the guesswork of the budget and the tightness of money that the organisers hesitated about buying anything they couldn't later sell. Office furniture was rented from the government and typewriters were hired. In the few instances when typewriters had to be bought, it was with the hope that there'd be a market for them when the Games were over. There was no choice with duplicating machines, which had to be bought rather than hired, but the outlay was restricted by insisting that those who wanted documents to be copied had to go to one of the few buildings that had copiers.

Problems of diplomacy

So soon after the war, it was inevitable that old enemies, and the diplomats of those enemies, risked meeting at what was supposed to be a non-political occasion. The issue of Germany was easy; it didn't apply to take part. Italy did apply and was accepted, having changed to the Allied side after the deposing of Mussolini. But that left the Japanese. Japan showed no inclination to compete. And whether it was invited to depended not on the British government but on the International Olympic Committee. Japan said nothing. Until 18 June 1948. Then the Japan department of the British Foreign Office wrote[8]:

Lord Burghley telephoned to me this morning to say that he had heard from Mr Edelstrom, president of the International Olympic Committee, that the Japanese had suddenly announced their intention of sending a team to the Olympic Games. Mr Edelstrom had asked for Lord Burghley's views on this. Lord Burghley pointed out that neither the Germans nor the Japanese had been thrown out of the International Olympic Committee because hitherto they had lain doggo and it was not thought desirable to raise the question which might cause unnecessary bother.
Lord Burghley wished to know what reply he should send. He himself thought it was quite impossible for the Japanese to come, and would wish to reply that visas could not be issued to them and that he was not disposed to press the Foreign Office to reconsider the matter. He pointed out that it would be a quite impossible position in the Japanese came, for instance, they could not attend any official functions and could certainly never be present at any function where The King was present.

The memo went on: "There might be a certain amount of publicity for our refusal to allow the Japanese to come and it might therefore be better for the reply to be carefully phrased." The diplomatic problem wasn't simply that Japan was a former enemy. It was that, a peace treaty not yet having been signed, Britain and Japan were still formally at war. A memo the following day, considering the first, agreed that:

The presence of the Japanese at the Olympic Games would almost certainly cause serious public resentment in the UK. It would also precipitate a first-class row with Australia and New Zealand in particular who have set their faces, as a matter of Government policy, against allowing any Japanese to leave Japan for any purpose whatever this side of a peace treaty. I think therefore we must agree with Lord Burghley that they must be stopped. From the publicity point of view, I think the visa pretext is not the best because (a) it puts the onus for the refusal squarely on us, whereas it is really entirely an international matter; (b) refusal of visas is a means of, rather than a reason for, stopping them.

A hand-written note at the bottom of the memo says: "It now appears, from Lord Burghley's letter to Mr Edelstrom of June 18, that Japan proposed sending their Olympic officials and not a team. This proposal is a degree less outrageous. But our objections would be the same." On 5 August, the British embassy in Moscow sent a telegram to the Foreign Office in London to say that the USSR wanted after all to take part. The feeling was one of "muscling in", not least because the country wasn't affiliated to the IOC and therefore not entitled to compete. The reply - "Immediate Restricted" - was sent at 10.50pm the same day:

British Organising Committee state that in accordance with Charter of the International Olympic Committee invitations to participate in Games were issued only to those countries having National Olympic Committees, of which the Soviet Union is not (repeat not) one...

It went on to explain that even if it had had a national Olympic committee, the six weeks' deadline for entry had passed. The first events of the Games had already started. "It is therefore impracticable for members of team to engage in contests even if the international rules had been complied with."[9]

The competitors arrive

The first to arrive were those who'd had the longest journey: the seven New Zealanders. They came by converted freighter, the last New Zealanders to travel to the Olympics by ship. The journey took 32 days, during which they had to keep fit. The boxer Bobby Goslin had to spar with non-boxers. Dutch Holland built hurdles and ran the length of the deck leaping them. The swimmer Ngaire Lane had a pool no larger than in many gardens. The cyclist Nick Carter had been allowed rollers but balancing proved difficult on the rolling freighter. "I was able to use them only eight times," he said. "The sea was too choppy and I was forever falling off."[10] The team arrived to a London summer so miserable that many caught colds, which cold showers in their makeshift accommodation did little to make tolerable. It was with their arrival that the Games passed from theory to reality, not least because they arrived earlier than expected. Transport arrangements began on July 8 and New Zealand, with other teams, had been told not to turn up before then. But since they had, they would have to pay for their own transport to London. Erratic timekeeping wasn't restricted to those who travelled furthest. The 59 nations had told London when and where they planned to send their 6,000 competitors and officials but plans were "varied and often contradictory", the official report noted. Dealing with foreign capitals was difficult. The few phone lines leaving Britain were overcrowded. A call had to be booked hours ahead. The organisers turned to Thomas Cook, the travel agency. Thomas Cook arranged for its agents to liaise with Olympic committees and organise discounted train bookings. The official report glowed in praise:

To make complete the service offered, the travel company placed their own interpreters at the service of the larger parties reaching England from European ports without charge, and assisted in some cases as guides and interpreters from the south of France to London.

European athletes arrived with some predictability. But trouble lay elsewhere. The transport department was "a man and two women secretaries [who] were installed in two rooms, the larger of which was equipped with a number of telephones, and three walls covered with specially prepared blackboards." The boards represented today, tomorrow and the following day and the sporting world's progress towards north London was chalked on the boards and then transferred first to pink paper and finally, just before each team's arrival, to red paper before being brushed off the board altogether. Many countries saw little advantage in sending their team in one group or even on the same day or to the same port. The organisers had to send teams of three to wait for ships, to note the numbers arriving, their countries and the number and weight of suitcases, and to phone the figures to London. Teams could then be put on the train to be met at London by students on holiday. Four more students worked in reception headquarters with a schoolmaster equally on holiday and tried to arrange coaches and buses - some judged too rickety to be in normal service - to get competitors to their accommodation. Nobody had foreseen how varied, not to mention heavy, the luggage would be. Not only did athletes bring vaulting poles, bicycles or whatever else but many arrived with hampers of food. Britain was rationed. Competitors were classed as heavy industrial workers and their rations allotted accordingly. There was no extra allowance. Among other things, they were limited to eight ounces of chocolates and sweets - which they would have to pay for themselves - a week. Some countries brought food not only for themselves but for others as well. Denmark sent 160,000 eggs and Iceland sent meat. Ireland sent 5,000 eggs, Czechoslovakia 20,000 bottles of mineral water. The buses from railway stations were mainly red double-deckers. They had one cubby-hole under the stairs to accommodate four suitcases and there was no way they could carry all the teams had brought. The organisers arranged several dozen estate cars from the Ministry of Supply. But they too were quickly overladen. Before long the transport department, already short of money, had to hire commercial trucks - smaller then than now - to carry the rest. Chaos loomed but the only problem was a single suitcase which went to Richmond Park instead of Uxbridge but returned the same day. There was at least good warning of ships. Aircraft were a bigger problem. Stewards were sent to airports, especially Heathrow (formally opened to international traffic in May that year) and to neighbouring Northolt, and they were useful because competitors began turning up not only in small groups - no aircraft held more than a few dozen passengers - but individually. There were 81 groups at Heathrow alone, containing 1,913 people. Many came without anyone knowing they were due. Even when groups said which aircraft they would be on, it wasn't unusual to be delayed, so that buses were tied up for hours. The organisers persuaded the biggest airlines - BOAC, BEA, KLM and Sabena among them - to divert their coaches to hosting centres in the suburbs. Other airlines had to be met separately and before long the Games refused to wait for any aircraft not operated by a British company, specifically BOAC. The British could be depended on to know who was on board and when they would arrive, but foreigners were less organised, the organisers claimed, and so anyone on a foreign plane was expected to phone to say he was there. He could then wait while a bus made its way from West Drayton or Uxbridge to collect him. One afternoon came a call that a group of Hungarians were in the air approaching Northolt. A bus waited two hours. Then at 7pm Northolt said the plane had been sent to Blackbush, on the other side of London and five times as far away. The Northolt bus was called back, officials searched their maps and the Aldershot and District Traction Company was asked to send a bus. Another three hours passed. Finally, at 10pm - five hours after the original expected landing at Northolt - an official at Manston in Kent, 80 miles from Blackbush, put through a call to say he had a load of Hungarians in his office and what was he supposed do with them? (Answer: "Transport Department at once telephoned the East Kent Road Car Company's garage at Herne Bay, and by 12.30am in the morning the coach and company were at their housing centre at Hendon School.") Transporting the world's athletes had taken a long time to arrange. The first problem was that petrol would stay rationed until June 1950. The ration was tightened before the Games to exclude all non-essential driving. Exports in 1945 had to rise to 175 per cent of the pre-war figure just to let Britain pay her way. [11] 'Export or die' was the slogan and it explained why Britain could produce so many things without their finding their way into British homes. Among that production were cars. The Games hoped the car industry could help, only to be told the Olympics counted as a domestic customer and couldn't be supplied. It could take months to get a car and so few were expected to drive to Wembley that parking was left to the company that owned the car park. But officials of the Games and sports federations had to drive to meetings. They had to use their own car, if they owned one, and that meant permission from the Ministry of Fuelto use petrol. As for spectators, the organisers arranged half-price fares on trains. Competitors were less easy. The problem was that 6,000 was a large number to carry in a capital only just able to transport its own residents. The organisers went to private companies and asked the cost of 250 coaches a day, a figure considered the bare minimum. Coaches of the period rarely had more than 30 seats. The organisers found 250 coaches would cost £3,000 for an eight-hour day. It would take two eight-hour shifts. The companies wanted mileage restrictions, pushing the total to £7,000 a day. Once more a public operation came to the rescue. London Transport offered double-decker buses provided they weren't driven outside London. That ruled out Bisley (shooting), Henley (rowing), Torquay (yachting) and so on but London was the biggest centre and the problem was effectively solved. The deal, the organisers reflected, was "a most reasonable hire-charge based on wages and miles", although London Transport pointed out that it wasn't made happily because post-war shortages meant it was already renting 400 single-decker buses to keep its own services going. The final deal was for 20 double-decker buses holding 56 passengers each, a dozen single-decker coaches for 30, and "reluctantly" 20 obsolete 20-seaters which London Transport considered too poor to keep in service. The buses ran permanently to and from the accommodation centres, the training grounds and the stadiums, although never was there a seat for everyone. The police wouldn't allow drivers to go where they chose. They made them follow set routes. That concentrated traffic into corridors, making jams more likely. There was also the problem that London Transport drivers hastily recruited could hardly be expected to have instant knowledge of the drive from Victoria to Hendon or Wembley. It took the Automobile Association, the Royal Automobile Club and many hundreds of arrows to solve the problem.

The opening ceremony

The Games opened on 29 July, a brilliantly sunny day. Army bands began playing at 2pm for the 85,000 spectators in Wembley Stadium. The international and national organisers arrived at 2.35pm and the King and Queen, with Queen Mary and other members of the Royal Family, at 2.45pm. Fifteen minutes later the competitors entered the stadium in a procession that took 50 minutes. The least team was that of the United Kingdom. When it had passed the saluting base, Lord Burghley began his welcome:

Your Majesty: The hour has struck. A visionary dream has today become a glorious reality. At the end of the worldwide struggle in 1945, many institutions and associations were found to have withered and only the strongest had survived. How, many wondered, had the great Olympic Movement prospered?

After welcoming the athletes to two weeks of "keen but friendly rivalry", he said London represented a "warm flame of hope for a better understanding in the world which has burned so low." [12] At 4pm, the time shown on Big Ben on the London Games symbol, the King declared the Games open, 2,500 pigeons were set free and the Olympic Flag raised to its 35ft flagpole at the end of the stadium. The Royal Horse Artillery sounded a 21-gun salute and the last runner in the Torch Relay ran a lap of the track - created with cinders from the domestic coal fires of Leicester - and climbed the steps to the Olympic Bowl. After saluting the crowd, he turned and lit the flame. After more speeches, Donald Finlay of the British team (given his RAF rank of wing-commander) took the Olympic Oath on behalf of all competitors. The National Anthem was sung and the massed athletes turned and marched out of the stadium, led by Greece, tailed by Britain. The 580-page official report concluded:

Thus were launched the Olympic Games of London, under the most happy auspices. The smooth-running Ceremony, which profoundly moved not only all who saw it but also the millions who were listening-in on the radio throughout the world, and the glorious weather in which it took place, combined to give birth to a spirit which was to permeate the whole of the following two weeks of thrilling and intensive sport.

The Flying Housewife

The star of London was the Dutch runner, Fanny Blankers-Koen who, at 30, was criticised at home for not staying to look after her children and, in Britain, dismissed by the British athletics manager, Jack Crump, as "too old to make the grade."[13] She qualified easily in the 100m semi-final, in which she set the fastest time. The final (2 August) was on a muddy track and in rain. Blankers-Koen finished in 11.9, easily beating Dorothy Manley and Shirley Strickland. She became the first Dutch athlete to win an Olympic athletics title She then run the 80m hurdles and finished almost simultaneously with Maureen Gardner, also coached by Blankers-Koen's husband [14] The British national anthem played and Blankers-Koen thought she had been beaten. In fact the anthem was for the Royal Family, which had entered the stadium, and the finish photo showed Blankers-Koen had won, although both in the 11.2sec. Blankers-Koen nearly failed to start the semi-final of the 200m. She broke down with home-sickness [15] After a talk with her husband, she qualified for the final with ease. The final, on 6 August, was again held in rain, but Blankers-Koen completed the inaugural Olympic 200m for women in 24.4, seven tenths of a second ahead of Audrey Williamson The 4 × 100m final was on the final day. The Dutch team, Xenia Stad-de Jong, Netty Witziers-Timmer, Gerda van der Kade-Koudijs and Blankers-Koen qualified for the final, but Blankers-Koen had gone out for a rain coat and she arrived only in time for the race. As last runner, she took the baton in third place, five metres behind Australia and Canada. She caught the leaders, crossing the line a tenth before the Australia. Fanny Blankers-Koen won four of the nine women's events, competing in 11 heats and finals in eight days. She was the first woman to win four Olympic golds, and the first athlete to do so in a single Olympics. [16] She was nicknamed the Flying Housewife and Amazing Fanny by the press and was welcomed home in Amsterdam by an immense crowd. She was taken through city, pulled by four white horses, and from the city of Amsterdam received a new bicycle: "to go through life at a slower pace" and "so she need not run so much". Queen Juliana made her a knight of the Order of Orange Nassau.

The rest in brief

It was at London that Emil Zátopek made his Olympic debut. He came with a reputation, having run within two second of the world 10km record. The Olympics was his second chance, pitched against the record holder, Viljo Heino of Finland. Zátopek went into the lead at eight laps, Heino dropped out and Zátopek won in 10 seconds better than the Olympic record. Only a couple of strides stopped Zátopek then winning the 5km, coming from 30 yards back and only the sound of the crowd alerting Gaston Reiff of Belgium to his challenge. The Belgian won by two yards in another Olympic record. The sprint looked predictable, with the USA having three finalists in the 100m. The shock was that victory went to Harrison Dillard, world record holder for the 120m hurdles but who, having failed to make the American team for that, had scraped into the 100m squad instead. The dropping of Dillard from the hurdles did nothing to lessen America's domination. William Porter won in an Olympic record of 13.9sec despite hitting three hurdles. Two more Americans, Clyde Scott and Craig Dixon, followed him in. Then another American, Roy Cochran, won the 400m after setting an Olympic record in the semi-final. The most striking American performance was from Robert Mathias, 17, taking part in just his third decathlon. He went into the lead with three events left, threw the discus further than anyone else and then staggered round the 1,500m to finish third but last but with enough points to secure a gold medal. Nearly half a century had passed since Hungary won a men's athletics event, in 1900, and Imre Németh ended the spell by nearing the record in the hammer. The marathon was tragically dramatic. Étienne Gailly, a 21-year-old Belgian soldier, had only five seconds to make up on Delfo Cabrera with a mile to go. Dreadfully exhausted, he passed him and staggered into the stadium barely able to continue. Far from winning, he was passed by Cabrera and then by the British runner, Tom Richards. There were Olympic records in eight of the swimming events and an equal record in a ninth. Americans won all six of the men's races, swamping the finals with 15 of the 18 places. They also won all four diving titles, for the fifth time in succession. Reg Harris, the domestic hope for the cycling, came only second in the sprint and the 2km tandem sprint, an event that the official report says barely anyone saw because racing had run so far behind schedule that the light had failed and there were no floodlights. There was upset, too, in the team dressage. Sweden left Britain with the gold medals but were disqualified a year later when the IOC discovered that one of its team, Gehnäll Persson, wasn't an officer. The international equine federation at that time allowed only army officers to take part. The gymnastics intended for Wembley Stadium moved across London to the Empress Hall, Earls Court, to avoid the rain. Harold Abrahams wrote:

The entry of 16 men's and 11 women's teams made it essential to have many events (both men's and women's) decided simultaneously, so the arena resembled several three-ringed circuses, making the spectators almost cross-eyed ad they tried to see as much as they could of everything happening at once. [17]

Finland won the men's combined exercises and the individual pomelled horse. Switzerland took the rings, parallel and horizontal bars, and Hungary the individual floor exercises. Czechoslovakia won the single competition for women, the combined exercises.

Political defection

London was the first Olympics to have a political defection. Marie Provaznikova won a gold medal with the Czechoslovakian gymnastics team and then refused to return home, citing "lack of freedom" there after the country's inclusion in the Soviet bloc.

After the show was over

The London Games ended at 6pm on Saturday 14 August. Sigfrid Edelstrom, president of the IOC, passed the Olympic Flag to the Mayor of London, the Olympic flame was put out and 1,200 singers performed a new anthem as Sir Malcolm Sargent conducted. Anything that could be sold was sold. Firefly dinghies, built at £150, went for £135, Olympic flags for £2 10s,[18] basketballs for £1.15s. Finland's gift of the wooden floor of the Empire Hall was sold to a local builder. Ticket sales at Wembley came to £450,000, costs of £760,000 were repaid and a profit of £30,420 made. The Inland Revenue demanded tax at nine shillings in the pound (45 per cent) and took £9,000. The balance went to the International Olympic Committee. Two weeks after the Olympics, Wembley Stadium - now demolished - went back to everyday business and held a greyhound meeting. The spirit lived on, though, through a character called Alf Tupper, "The Tough of the Track", whose stories of athletic success achieved on fish and chips ran in the Rover and Victor comics for 20 years.

Venues

Poster promoting the 1948 Olympics
Poster promoting the 1948 Olympics

Medals awarded

See the medal winners, ordered by sport:

Demonstration sports

Participating nations

participants
participants

A total of 59 nations sent athletes. Fourteen made their first official appearance: British Guiana (now Guyana), Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Korea, Lebanon, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

Medal count

Main article: 1948 Summer Olympics medal count

These are the ten nations that won most medals. The host nation was 12th, with three gold and 23 total medals.

 Rank  Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 United States United States 38271984
2 Sweden Sweden 16111744
3 France France 1061329
4 Hungary Hungary 1051227
5 Italy Italy 811827
6 Finland Finland 87520
7 Turkey Turkey 64212
8 Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia 62311
9 Switzerland Switzerland 510520
10 Denmark Denmark 57820

See also

External links

 •  • e
Olympic Games
Sports • Medal counts • NOCs
Medalists • Symbols
Summer Games1896  • 1900  • 1904  • 1906  • 1908  • 1912  • (1916)  • 1920  • 1924  • 1928  • 1932  • 1936  • (1940)  • (1944),  • 1948  • 1952  • 1956  • 1960  • 1964  • 1968  • 1972  • 1976  • 1980  • 1984  • 1988  • 1992  • 1996  • 2000  • 2004  • 2008  • 2012  • 2016  • 2020  • 2024  • 2028
Winter Games1924  • 1928  • 1932  • 1936  • (1940)  • (1944)  • 1948  • 1952  • 1956  • 1960  • 1964  • 1968  • 1972  • 1976  • 1980  • 1984  • 1988  • 1992  • 1994  • 1998  • 2002  • 2006  • 2010  • 2014  • 2018  • 2022
Summer Youth Games2010
Winter Youth Games2012
Athens 2004  • Turin 2006  • Beijing 2008  • Vancouver 2010  • London 2012  • Sochi 2014
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1948 Summer Olympics from Wíkipedia. ©2006 by Wíkipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. View a list of authors or edit this article.

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