The British Olympic Association: A History

K. Jefferys

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781349473007
  9781137363411
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137363428
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Britische Geschichte

Since its creation the British Olympic Association (BOA) has been one of the most important institutions in sports governance. In spite of its prominence there has hitherto been no single-volume history of the Association. This scholarly yet accessible study fills that gap, assessing the origins, evolution, strengths and shortcomings of the BOA.

1

Antecedents and Origins: Athens 1896–St Louis 1904

Abstract: Britain provided ideological and practical underpinning for the efforts of the French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin as he sought to revive the ancient Olympics on an international scale. De Coubertin revered the British attachment to fair play principles, and Charles Herbert, Secretary of the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA), was an influential member of the newly created International Olympic Committee (IOC), which pledged itself to establishing a cycle of quadrennial Games, beginning in 1896. The Games held in Athens, Paris and St Louis were modest, haphazard affairs. The formation of the BOA in May 1905, led at the outset by the charismatic Lord Desborough, nevertheless cemented Britain’s reputation as a strong supporter of de Coubertin’s vision at a time when prospects for the Olympics looked bleak.

Jefferys, Kevin. The British Olympic Association: A History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137363428.0005.

According to one BOA publication in the 1980s, ‘the British had a powerful influence on the revival of the Olympic Games’.¹ But in the view of historian Matt Llewellyn, this exaggerates British involvement; he argues that the Games held ‘an extremely tenuous position in Britain’ during the formative decades of the modern Olympic movement.² Whilst it was the case that for most Victorian and Edwardian Britons the Olympics did not generate much enthusiasm, whether in sporting, journalistic, public or political circles – certainly not of the type witnessed in the twenty-first century at the London 2012 Games – this was not surprising given the historical context. The Olympic movement was small and scattered in nature at the time of the first modern Games in Athens in 1896, and for several years thereafter. The nation as a whole may not have been in thrall to the Olympics, but a number of British individuals and institutions were as prominent as those from anywhere else in the world in seeking to revive the spirit of the ancient Greek games (776 BC–394 AD).

Britain’s record in the sphere of Olympic heritage went back as far as the so-called Cotswold Games of 1612. Much later, in the 1850s, the doctor and philanthropist William Penny Brookes launched the ‘Wenlock Olympics’ in Shropshire, combining sporting and educational challenges in an annual programme of events (which continues to this day), open to those of all social backgrounds. As similar gatherings sprung up in other parts of the country, leading figureheads including Brookes sought to bring organisational coherence to proceedings by forming a National Olympian Association (NOA) in 1865. This prompted, however, the formation of a rival body among wealthy, middle- and upper-class gentlemen who disliked the democratic tone of the NOA. Within years, the more socially exclusive, southern-based Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) claimed to control all athletic competition in England. The NOA was marginalised and disappeared, though Brookes and his supporters continued to go their own way by staging local variants of the ‘Olympics’. Brookes was also instrumental in setting up a new body in 1886, the National Physical Recreation Society (NPRS), supported by prominent politicians such as the Leeds MP Herbert Gladstone, son of the Liberal Prime Minister and later Home Secretary. Few individuals could claim more credit than Brookes for consistently seeking to spark an Olympic revival, both the NOA and the NPRS acting in effect as precursor organisations of the British Olympic Association.³

In addition to this practical heritage, Britain provided much of the ‘ideological and institutional framework’ that underpinned the efforts of the French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin as he sought to revive the ancient Games on an international scale.⁴ A proud patriot, de Coubertin regarded the absence of regular physical training among French youth as a root cause of his nation’s decline in the mid-nineteenth century, culminating in defeat during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71. Instead of entering the military or the law – a standard course for many of his wealth and status – de Coubertin devoted his life to encouraging educational causes, above all, the athletic development of the young. After various visits across the Channel in the 1880s (where he met William Penny Brookes among others), the Baron became convinced of the need to adopt and extend the sporting traditions of the major British public schools and ancient universities. These institutions were crucial in driving forward an explosion of interest in sport in Britain and throughout the Empire: among participants, officials and spectators, and in a wide range of sports such as rugby, football, athletics, tennis and golf. De Coubertin was particularly struck by the manner in which the public school–university nexus sought to inculcate through sport a range of character traits, such as courage, honesty and respect. Although many of his countrymen did not share his enthusiasm for British methods and values, the Baron was not to be deterred. By 1894, he was in a position to arrange an ‘International Athletic Congress’ in Paris, backed by aristocratic patronage in the form of 50 honorary members, including eight Britons (the Prince of Wales among them). De Coubertin also persuaded nearly 80 prominent administrators from various countries to attend. These became the bedrock of the newly created International Olympic Committee (IOC), which pledged itself to setting up a new cycle of quadrennial Games, beginning in 1896. The modern Olympic story was set to unfold.⁵

From Athens to St Louis

How far were Britons involved in de Coubertin’s new venture? For most of the aristocrats and affluent gentlemen in Britain who had time to devote on a voluntary basis to sports administration, the major priority in the Victorian period was to establish national governing bodies (NGBs) for individual sports. Bodies such as the AAA, the Football Association (FA) and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) claimed oversight of their sports by writing the rulebooks and assuming responsibility for regular calendars of events and fixtures. Matt Llewellyn notes that these new institutions tended to be ‘robustly parochial’, not much interested – except in the case of cricket, where the governing authority, the MCC, had been existence for a much longer period – in competing against overseas rivals. It followed that most NGBs took little cognisance of the early Olympic movement.⁶ Yet in the absence of established organisational structures for international competition of the type envisaged by de Coubertin, a focus on home-grown competition was to be expected. Regular, multi-nation contests on a global scale were unlikely to spring out of nowhere. The most likely pattern – to which the Olympics adhered – was for gradual growth in the wake of modest beginnings. Tennis provides a case in point: the inaugural Davis Cup was fought over in 1902 by the United States and Britain, but within a generation, it developed into a worldwide event attracting ever-growing numbers of entrants.⁷

An emphasis on the inward, domestic focus of British sports administrators should not detract, moreover, from the vital contribution made by two prominent British allies of de Coubertin, each of whom helped to ensure that the Baron’s vision became something more than a pipedream. The first notable individual was Charles Herbert, the influential Secretary of the AAA. Although he had reservations about de Coubertin’s ambitious agenda, Herbert came up with an extensive list of contacts with sporting connections throughout the British Empire, so paving the way for the convening of the 1894 Paris congress. Alongside Lord Ampthill, an Oxford rowing ‘Blue’ who was later to be Viceroy of India, Herbert was among the high-ranking social elites from different parts of the world invited by de Coubertin to become a member of the IOC. In practice, Ampthill had little direct involvement in proceedings, but his invitation marked the start of a long-term trend whereby Britain could claim its interests were always watched over at any given time by at least two IOC members, one or more of whom was frequently influential in the senior counsels of the movement. Charles Herbert, for example, who served on the IOC until ill health forced his retirement in 1906, took a leading part in drawing up the rules for athletic competition at the Athens Games. He also helped to determine the IOC insistence that the Olympics would be open only to amateur competitors, defined initially as those ‘who did not accept prize money of any kind’. Although he did not attend in person, Herbert was also influential in backing de Coubertin’s efforts to draw British athletes to the inaugural Games in Athens.⁸

The 1896 Olympics, while significant in marking the revival of the modern Olympics – and with hindsight the first in a long, unbroken series – were regarded at the time as a very modest affair. Athletes entered individually rather than as part of national teams, and the necessity for competitors to cover their own expenses and accommodation costs limited the numbers who travelled to Greece. In total there were nearly 250 athletes, most from a few European nations; the expansion of the Games to all parts of the world was to be a protracted and uneven process. For the dozen or so British competitors, the whole thing was an informal, even haphazard, affair. George Robertson, a hammer specialist and classics scholar from Oxford, had to throw the discus on turning up to find that no hammer event had been arranged. Lawrence Levy from Birmingham went to take part in weightlifting but ended up officiating. And the Irishman John Pius Boland, who was holidaying in Greece, only entered the tennis competition (in which he won two gold medals) the night before matches commenced.⁹ Matt Llewellyn takes a critical view of the whole event, noting that British athletes were ‘in no way representative of an officially organised British team’. This could hardly have been otherwise in view of the experimental nature of the Games and the absence of a single recognised Olympic authority in Britain. Whilst Llewellyn is on strong grounds in concluding that the modern Olympics emerged ‘neither born fully nor properly developed’ – with no settled format or place as yet for women athletes – for de Coubertin the very staging and completion of the Athens event represented success, demonstrating the potential at least to herald something that could become an established feature of the international sporting landscape.¹⁰

The second key British figure who helped to develop de Coubertin’s Olympic dream in the late Victorian and Edwardian period was the Reverend Robert Stuart de Courcy Laffan, headmaster of Cheltenham College. At an IOC meeting at Le Havre in France in 1897, Reverend Laffan greatly impressed the Baron with a passionate speech about the moral benefits of sport, delivered impromptu and in fluent French. The result was an invitation to join the IOC, which Laffan readily accepted. He thereafter became, in historian Martin Polley’s words, de Coubertin’s ‘man in London’, loyally serving the IOC until the time of his death in 1927.¹¹ In many respects, Laffan was the unlikely champion of the fledgling Olympic movement. The son of the British governor of Bermuda, he attended schools in Europe (where he became fluent in several languages), and though he represented his Oxford college in rowing, he was not a prominent athlete or a trained physical educator. Yet from the time of his Le Havre speech onwards, he dedicated much of his life to supporting the Olympic cause, missing only two of the annual IOC meetings – held at different locations across Europe – over the next 30 years. In effect, he blended his religious faith with a strong advocacy of sport as tool for personal development and international harmon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Antecedents and Origins: Athens 1896St Louis 1904
• 2  Solid Foundations: Athens 1906 London 1908
• 3  Trials and Tribulations: Stockholm 1912Amsterdam 1928
• 4  The Shadows of Depression and War: Los Angeles 1932London 1948
• 5  Post-War Challenges: Helsinki 1952Montreal 1976
• 6  Years of Turbulence and Change: Moscow 1980Atlanta 1996
• 7  Into the Twenty-First Century: Sydney 2000London 2012 and Beyond
• Appendix: British Olympic Association Senior Office-Holders
• Select Bibliography
• Index