Sport: Xth Olympiad

“The important thing in the Olympic Games is not the winning but taking part —the essential thing is not conquering but fighting well.”

If Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who expressed these sentiments when he revived the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, had been in Los Angeles last week he would have seen them inscribed in huge letters on the inner wall of the main gateway of Los Angeles Olympic Stadium. He would have seen also a crowd of 105,000 flowing in orderly fashion into a stadium which contained 30 miles of seats and cost $1,700,000. A lover of the grandiloquent, the ceremonious. Baron de Coubertin would have been charmed by the gay, prodigious pageant of band-music, homing-pigeons, hymns, flags, oaths, Vice President Curtis and 2,000 athletes in bright uniforms with which the Xth Olympiad last week began.

First noise in the ceremony was the thump of a drum outside the stadium. This was the signal for Vice President Curtis to walk across the field, sit down with the members of the Olympic Committee. After a choir of 1,000, dressed in white, had sung the ”Star-Spangled Banner,” came the parade of athletes. First in the parade were the Greeks; then in alphabetical order, came the Argentines, in green coats and white trousers, the Australians, in white suits and sun helmets, the Canadians, in bright red coats, and a single Egyptian, wearing a red fez and carrying a flag. The Germans paused beside the “tribune of honor” where Vice President Curtis was sitting, to shout “Hoch!” French athletes politely removed their straw hats. The U. S. team of 350, last in line, was big enough to make a complete circle around the infield. When all the athletes had marched past the tribune of honor and grouped themselves in the infield, Vice President Curtis stood up to deliver 27 momentous words: “In the name of the President of the United States, I proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles, celebrating the Tenth Olympiad of the Modern Era.”

Six trumpeters on a turret above the stadium blew a loud salute. Outside the stadium, a field gun went off ten times. From an urn over the main gate of the stadium there was a burst of flame, pale in the bright afternoon, from the Olympic torch that will burn for 16 days.

The Olympic flag (white, with five colored rings, began to rise slowly on a tall pole at the end of the field. At precisely the moment when it reached the top, 2,000 pigeons were released from an upholstered coop at the centre of the arena.

California is a country which resembles Greece in its brilliant skies, its hot bright landscape with blue waves curling at the edges. Its inhabitants have a Spartan pride in physical perfection, an Athenian confidence in their own Golden Age. The steady splendor of the ceremony that opened California’s first Olympic Games last week was the expression of a feeling which oldtime Greeks would have understood. It ended in the quiet ritual of the Olympic oath, to “take part in the Olympic Games in loyal competition, respecting the regulations which govern them and desirous of participating in them in the true spirit of sportsmanship for the honor of our country and the glory of sport.” Handsome Lieut. George C. Calnan of the U. S. Navy, selected because he has been on four U. S. Olympic fencing teams, recited the oath for the entire host of contestants, his right hand solemnly and correctly raised, his left one on a corner of the U. S. flag.

After the opening ceremony began a series of contests that would last for 16 days. First flag to rise on the highest of three flagpoles above the Olympic peristyle was that of France, to signify that Rene Duverger had won the first event of the Olympics, lightweight weight-lifting (715 lb.). In the high jump finals, George Spitz, world’s record holder, failed surprisingly at 6 ft. 3 in. Duncan McNaughton, a Canadian who goes to the University of Southern California, won the jump-off at 6 ft. 5 5/8 in. Another world’s record holder, Emil Hirschfield of Germany, failed to place in the finals of the shot-put, won by huge Leo Sexton of the New York Athletic Club with an Olympic record put of 52 ft. 6 3-16 in. Barrel-chested Janusz Kusocinski of Poland won the 10,000-metre race by four paces, with Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland second and another Finn, Lauri Virtanen third. Wild-haired, rangy Mildred (“Babe”) Didrick-son of Texas, who won the women’s javelin throw with 143 ft. 4 in. (world’s record) reiterated her intention of winning at least three more events before the Games were over. Next day, two famed Negro sprinters ran first and second in the 100-metre final. Stubby little Eddie Tolan, who used to run for Michigan and who beat Percy Williams of Canada, 1928 Olympic champion in the semi-final heat, won, in world’s record time (10.3 sec.). Tall Ralph Metcalfe of Marquette was second with Arthur Jonath of Germany third. Dr. Patrick O’Callaghan of Ireland retained his 1928 Olympic Championship in the hammer throw with a huge heave of 176 ft. 11 1/8 in. His countryman Robert Tisdall ran the 400-metre hurdles in record breaking time against a crack field in which Lord David Burghley, 1928 champion, finished fourth.

“Wrong to Finland.” Designed to further international amity, the Olympic Games are usually marred by acrimonious dissensions. First serious squabble of the Xth Olympiad occurred last week about pallid Paavo Nurmi, famed Finnish marathoner. Nurmi was last April suspended by the International Amateur Athletic Federation for professionalism. Last week, he was in Los Angeles hoping that the I. A. A. F. would reinstate him in time for him to compete in the 10,000 metre run and the marathon, which he had set his slightly oversized heart on winning with a new record. Instead, the seven members of the I. A. A. F.’s executive council, after considering his case for a whole day, voted to uphold the suspension.

The Secretary of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Finnish Amateur Athletic Association was indignant. He, one L. J. Miettinen, cried: “Our first impulse was to withdraw the entire Finnish team … to atone for this great wrong to Finland. . . .” Pallid Paavo Nurmi, who used to practice distance running in the dark so no one would laugh at him, was less perturbed. Said he: “If that’s the way they feel, there’s nothing I can do. . . .”