British sprinter Harold Abrahams wins 100m gold in 1924
OLYMPICS
1924 vs 2024
Paris hosted the Olympics in 1900 and 1924 , and 2024 saw the French capital play host to the Games for a third time , exactly 100 years after its last turn as host city . Much has happened in the sport of athletics over the interceding 10 decades . – BY SIMON TURNBULL for WORLD ATHLETICS
In 1924 , there were 27 athletics events on the programme , and all were for men only . Women were not admitted into the Olympic track and field arena until the 1928 Games in Amsterdam . In contrast , the 2024 Olympics featured 23 disciplines for women and 23 for men , plus ( for the second time since the Tokyo 2021 Games ) a mixed 4x400m relay and ( for the first time ) a mixed marathon race walk relay .
Legendary Finn , Paavo Nurmi , won five gold medals in 1924
Start of the 1924 Olympic Marathon
Images : Courtesy BNF Gallica- / Agence Rol / Wikimedia , Library of Congress / Wikimedia , AZMovies . net
There have been many changes to rules and regulations since 1924 . For example , Morgan Taylor of the USA won the gold medal in the 400m hurdles in 1924 , in 52.6 seconds , which was 1.4s quicker than the then World Record , but his performance was deemed invalid for record purposes because he had knocked over one of the hurdles !
The Way Things Were
The athletics events at the Games of 1924 were contested at Stade de Colombes , home of the Racing rugby union and football clubs , north-west of the city centre . ( Eric Liddell , the British winner of the 400m and inspiration behind the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire , made the first of his seven appearances for the Scottish rugby team two years previously in this same stadium ). The cinder track was 500m in circumference , but since then , Olympic athletics programmes have been contested on standardised 400m tracks .
The film Chariots of Fire told the story of the 1924 Olympics
The Olympic Games of 1924 was the first to feature a closing ceremony , and it also introduced the first Olympic Village to accommodate athletes , who had previously been left to their own devices . That said , the collection of wooden huts , with three beds in each , lacked the comforts of today , but it did provide bathrooms , a cafeteria , a post office , a currency exchange bureau , a dry cleaner , a newsagent and a hairdresser .
There were no medal ceremonies in 1924 . Medals were despatched by post after the Games finished . Interestingly , British sprinter Harold Abrahams – another hero of Chariots of Fire – only received his 100m gold and 4x100m relay silver a month after returning home . The Parisian organisers had put insufficient stamps on the package , and he had to pay an excess postage charge !
The men ’ s 800m final at Paris 1924
This is an abridged , shortened version of two original articles , republished with permission of World Athletics .
Last Hurrah Events
Four events that appeared on the programme in Paris a century ago have since been dropped from the Olympic athletics schedule : The crosscountry ( individual and team competitions in the same race ), the 3000m team race , the 10,000m race walk , and the pentathlon . Noteworthy is that the legendary Finn , Paavo Nurmi , collected three of his record five gold medals in those now-discontinued events , winning the crosscountry individual title as well as helping his country win the cross-country team and 3000m team races . He also won the 1500m and 5000m finals two days before the cross-country race , in the space of an hour !
The five-event pentathlon featured long jump , javelin , 200m , discus and 1500m . Another Finn , Eero Lehtonen , retained the title he had claimed in Antwerp four years previously , but the highlight of the pentathlon competition was the 7.77m long jump World Record achieved by eventual bronze medallist , Robert LeGendre of the USA . His performance in the pentathlon was actually vastly superior to the 7.44m with which his teammate William DeHart Hubbard took gold in the long jump final the following day , but Hubbard , the first black athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal , claimed the World Record with a leap of 7.89m a year later .
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