It was always obvious that the 1908 London Olympics were going to loom large in the British media’s coverage of Beijing, on the simple grounds that everyone loves a centenary. I was expecting to see most of this in the coverage of the marathon, as the distance is based on the Windsor to White City route of 1908: and, sure enough, three minutes into the men’s race we heard about Pietri being helped over the line. What I wasn’t expecting was the British team’s performance to be so good, and to hear 1908 being cited not just as a historical curiosity, but as the benchmark for the British medal tally. As everyone now knows, with the numbers ’19-13-15’ becoming a mantra, Beijing was Britain’s best performance since London 1908.

This benchmark needs bit of deconstruction. First off, medal tables are not the objective statements of achievement that they can seem to be at first. There are plenty of different ways of counting medals. Without wishing to restart the Battle of Shepherd’s Bush, it’s clear that the USA’s way of counting all medals puts them at the top of the Beijing table with 110 to China’s 100, while the British method of giving points for golds, silvers, and bronzes puts the USA in second place, behind China. Second, it’s important to remember that medals weren’t awarded at the Olympic Games until St Louis in 1904, so any historical accounts that claim anyone won gold, silver, or bronze in 1896 and 1900 is being anachronistic (and don’t get me started on that again). Third, there was no meaningful notion of standardised national teams in all competitions at the Olympics until 1908, and even then there were plenty of exceptions. Fourth, there has never been a standard way of rewarding third place across all sports, as seen at Beijing when we compare the boxing, where both beaten semi-finalists get a bronze medal each, and the fencing, where the beaten semi-finalists have to fight again for the third place. Finally, the geopolitical make-up of countries has changed over time: you only have to think about the Cold War debates over who or what ‘Germany’, ‘Korea’, and ‘China’ represented, or to look at the division of the supreme Indian hockey team of 1936 into separate Indian and Pakistani teams in 1948, to see the issue here.

With these caveats in place, let’s take a look at just what Great Britain’s medal haul in 1908 involved. Great Britain (which, picking up on the last point above, included all of Ireland) won 56 golds, 51 silvers, and 39 bronzes. Taken out of context and placed alongside subsequent dominant countries, this is awesome, and is not surpassed until the 1980s boycotts by the USSR’s 80 golds in 1980, and the USA’s 83 in 1984. China’s 51 this year seem almost modest by comparison. As ever, though, context is everything: and without wishing to demean the many high quality performances of 1908, we need to dig beneath the simple table. Only 22 countries were represented in 1908; and when we break that down further into team sizes, the British performance seems less amazing. Great Britain’s team accounted for 707 of the 2,029 competitors. The next largest team was France, with 208; and three countries – Argentina, Iceland, and Switzerland – had single competitors. The next issue is that the British provided the only entrants, or the vast majority of entrants, in some events. The most famous example is the 400 metres on the track, where Wyndham Halswelle had a walkover following an American disqualification and walkout. Less famously, racquets was a purely British affair, while 41 of the 57 archers were British, as were 32 of the 42 boxers, 13 of the 14 motorboat racers, and 40 of the 64 sailors. Finally, some team sports still worked on club rather than national lines, which blurs the table still further. The five teams in the tug of war, for example, included three British police force teams; the three teams in the polo tournament were Ireland (a rare official use of the name), Hurlingham, and Roehampton; while the British rugby union team that lost 32-3 to Australia in the tournament's only match was Cornwall’s county team. And I’ve not event mentioned the obvious home advantage and the, shall we say, one-eyed refereeing that went on from the all-British officials.

I’m not trying to demean the experience of 1908. The Olympic Games then were new and evolving, and many of our certainties about them simply didn’t exist then. Nor am I trying to belittle the British successes in Beijing by saying that the 1908 benchmark was massively inflated. Indeed, the opposite is true: Olympic success is now far harder than it was then. What I’m aiming for is a bit less anachronism and a bit more research before we use past medal tables as evidence of any meaningful comparisons.

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Comments

[Katy Bevan]

Hello Martin,
Missed your talk at in the Loop, however I thought you might be able to help. At a Cultural Olympiad meeting someone mentioned that there had been a medal for knitting in 1948. Do you know if there is any truth in this?
Thanks for you help
Katy

[Martin Polley]

Hi Katy

In the Loop went well. I'll be doing an extended version of the paper at the Leisure Studies Association conference in Bolton in April 2009: www.bolton.ac.uk/conferecnes/leisurelives

I can't find any record of knitting at the 1948 Olympics. There was an arts competition as a formal part of the Olympics Gaems, with prizes in architecture, painting and graphic art, sculpture, literature, and music. The only category that I could see knitting going in was the applied arts and crafts section of painting and graphic art, but the prizes there went to poster designers and the makers of the silver Olympic torch. I'd be fascinated to know your source.

Best wishes

Martin