The1924 Summer Olympics (French:Jeux olympiques d'été de 1924), officially theGames of the VIII Olympiad (French:Jeux de la VIIIe olympiade) and officially branded asParis 1924, were an internationalmulti-sport event held inParis, France. The opening ceremony was held on 5 July, but some competitions had already started on 4 May. The Games were the second to be hosted by Paris (after1900), making it the first city to host the Olympics twice.
The selection process for the 1924 Summer Olympics consisted of six bids, and Paris was selected ahead ofAmsterdam,Barcelona,Los Angeles,Prague, andRome. The selection was made at the 20th IOC Session inLausanne in 1921.[2] The cost of these Games was estimated to be 10,000,000 F (equivalent to€10.1 million in 2022[3]). With total receipts at 5,496,610 F (equivalent to€5.53 million in 2022), the Olympics resulted in a hefty loss despite daily crowds of up to 60,000.[4] The United States won the most gold and overall medals, having 229 athletes competing compared to France's 401.
The opening ceremony and several sporting events took place in theOlympic Stadium ofColombes, which had a capacity of 45,000 in 1924.
This VIII Olympiad was the last one organized under the presidency ofPierre de Coubertin.
The "Flying Finns" dominated the long-distance running, while the British and Americans dominated the shorter events.Paavo Nurmi won the 1500 m and 5,000 m (which were held with only an hour between them) and the cross-country run.Ville Ritola won the 10,000 m and the 3,000 msteeplechase while finishing second to Nurmi in the 5,000 m and cross country.Albin Stenroos won themarathon, while theFinnish team (with Nurmi and Ritola) was victorious in the 3,000 m and cross-country team events.
The British runnersHarold Abrahams andEric Liddell won the 100 m and the 400 m events, respectively. Liddell refused to compete in the 100-metre sprint because it was held on a Sunday, and he was an observant Christian. Their stories were depicted in the 1981 filmChariots of Fire. In addition,Douglas Lowe won the 800-metre competition.
DeHart Hubbard became the first African-American to win an individual gold medal in theLong jump.
Themarathon distance was fixed at 42.195 km (26.219 mi), from the distance run at the1908 Summer Olympics in London.
The 1924 Olympics were the first to use the standard 50 m pool with marked lanes.
Harold Osborn won gold medals and set Olympic records in the high jump and the 1924 Olympic decathlon. His 6' 6" high jump remained the Olympic record for 12 years, while his decathlon score of 7,710.775 points also set a world record and resulted in worldwide press coverage recognizing him as the "world's greatest athlete."
In gymnastics, 24 men scored a perfect 10. Twenty-three scored it in the now-discontinuedrope climbing event. Albert Seguin scored a ten here and a perfect ten on the side vault.
Ireland was given formal recognition as an independent nation in the Olympic Movement in Paris in 1924, and it was at these games that Ireland made its first appearance in the Olympic Games as an independent nation.
Originally calledSemaine des Sports d'Hiver ("Week of Winter Sports") and held in association with the 1924 Summer Olympics, the sports competitions held inChamonix between 25 January and 5 February 1924 were later designated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the I Olympic Winter Games. (1924 Winter Olympics)
Overall map of the Olympic venuesThe "Olympic Number" ofLife, 10 Jul 1924.
126 events in 23 disciplines, comprising 17 sports, were part of the Olympic program in 1924. The number of events in each discipline is noted in parentheses.
The Jeux de L’Enfance, a program of youth sports competitions and activities, were held by Olympic organizers alongside the Games in cooperation with theYMCA.[9][10] The following future Olympic sports were exhibited:
Seventeen sports venues were used in the 1924 Summer Olympics. Stade de Colombes served as the final venue for the1938 FIFA World Cup betweenItaly andHungary.
Participating Countries of the 1924 OlympiadNumber of athletes
A total of 44 nations were represented at the 1924 Games.Germany was still absent, having not been invited by the Organizing Committee.[28]China (although it did not compete),Ecuador,Ireland,Lithuania, andUruguay attended the Olympic Games for the first time, while thePhilippines competed for first time in an Olympic Games as a nation (though it first participated in the 1900 Summer Olympic Games).Latvia andPoland also attended the Summer Olympic Games for the first time (having both appeared earlier at the1924 Winter Olympics inChamonix).
At the time, Australia,New Zealand, Canada,South Africa andIreland were all dominions of the British Empire.India was also part of British Empire, but was not a dominion. For other sovereign states (i.e. United States, France, Brazil, Japan, etc) and the international community as a whole (i.e League of Nations) the termdominion, used internally in the British Empire, was very ambiguous, meaning "something between a colony and state". It was only years later with theStatute of Westminster 1931 that this ambiguity would be dispelled.
Alfréd Hajós at the1896 Summer Olympics, where he became the first Olympic champion in swimming before winning the silver medal at these Games
The 1924 Summer Olympics also includedart competitions across five disciplines: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture, for works inspired by sport-related themes, were medal-eligible events at the time.[31][32]Art competitions were held from the1912 Summer Olympics until the1948 Summer Olympics, but were discontinued over theamateurism controversy.[33] Medals in art competitions are no longer recognized by the IOC as part of the total medal count.[34][35]
In architecture, no gold medal was awarded while the silver was awarded to the pair ofAlfréd Hajós andDezső Lauber ofHungary. Hajós became one of only two Olympians ever to have won medals in both sport (two golds inswimming at the 1896 Summer Olympics) and art Olympic competitions.[36][37] The bronze was awarded toJulien Médecin ofMonaco, who became the first Monégasque competitor to win an Olympic medal.[b][38]
In literature, one gold, which was awarded toGéo-Charles of France, two silvers toJosef Petersen ofDenmark andMargaret Stuart of Great Britain, and two bronzes toCharles Gonnet of France andOliver Gogarty ofIreland, were awarded.[31] Two compositions, entitled "The Land Where the Rose is Grown" and "O Vigila (now let the games begin)", that were part of the literature competition, were also part of the music competitions. The compositions were made byGeorge Bamber of Great Britain, though no medals were awarded in the music competition as the jury could not reach a consensus to award medals for any of the competitors.[32]
The 1924 Summer Olympics was the second edition of the Summer Olympics to be held in Paris. 100 years later, the city has hosted the games once again with the2024 Summer Olympics, marking its third time, becoming the second city ever to host theSummer Olympics three times (afterLondon, which hosted the1908,1948, and2012 Games). Paris 2024 also marks thecentenary ofChamonix 1924, which in turn marks thecentenary of theWinter Olympics; making Paris 2024 the sixth Olympic Games hosted by France (three Summer Olympics and threeWinter Olympics), and the first French Olympics since the1992 Winter Games inAlbertville.
Notable debuts of participating countries for the Paris 1924 Olympics includeIreland,Latvia,Lithuania,Philippines,Poland,Romania, andUruguay; all of which celebrated their centenary participation at the 2024 Summer Olympics back in Paris.
One venue from the 1924 Games was used in the 2024 Games. The extensively renovated and downsized main stadium, known since 1928 asStade Olympique Yves-du-Manoir, hosted field hockey.
The last surviving competitor of the 1924 Summer Olympics wasCroatian swimmerIvo Pavelić, who died on 22 February 2011 at the age of 103; he competed for Yugoslavia, which Croatia was part of at the time.[45]
Continuation of Jeux de L’Enfance, games for youth sports and competition, from the Paris 1924 was embodied through the creation ofYouth Olympics Games inaugurating inSingapore with the2010 Summer Youth Olympics with 3,600 athletes aged 14–18 from 204 nations competing in 201 events in 26 sports.
^ The Official History of the Olympic Games and the IOC- Athens to Beijing, 1894–2008: David Miller (2008)
^"Opening Ceremony"(PDF). International Olympic Committee. 2002. p. 3.Archived(PDF) from the original on 11 December 2011. Retrieved23 August 2012.; "Sport athlétique", 14 mars 1891: "[...] dans une éloquente allocution il a souhaité que ce drapeau les conduise 'souvent à la victoire, à la lutte toujours'. Il a dit qu'il leur donnait pour devise ces trois mots qui sont le fondement et la raison d'être des sports athlétiques: citius, altius, fortius, 'plus vite, plus haut, plus fort'.", cited in Hoffmane, SimoneLa carrière du père Didon, Dominicain. 1840 - 1900, Doctoral thesis, Université de Paris IV - Sorbonne, 1985, p. 926; cf. Michaela Lochmann,Les fondements pédagogiques de la devise olympique „citius, altius, fortius"
^M. Avé (ed.).Les Jeux de la VIIIe Olympiade Paris 1924 – Rapport Officiel(PDF) (in French). Paris: Librairie de France. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 5 May 2011. Retrieved16 October 2012.39 seulement s'alignérent, ne représentant plus que 24 nations, la Chine, le Portugal et la Yougoslavie ayant déclaré forfait.
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