The 1896 Olympic Games

During the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, much of the world watched and celebrated as athletes broke world records and took home medals, fulfilling their Olympic dreams. The athletes’ scores were available instantaneously and are now easily accessible, but what about the performance records of the first modern Olympic athletes? The Modern Olympic Games began in 1896 in Athens, Greece, but an official record of these Olympic games does not exist.
This work is the first in a series of comprehensive reference works giving the results of the Olympic Games, beginning in 1896. Based primarily on 1896 sources, the sites, dates, events, competitors, and nations as well as the event results are compiled herein for track and field, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis (lawn), weightlifting, wrestling and other sports and events. Although mainly a statistical analysis, this work does include a short synopsis of the Sorbonne Congress and reprints of famous articles about the Olympics.

Bill Mallon is a cofounder and vice-president of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) and the original editor of the Journal of Olympic History. He is a surgeon in Durham, North Carolina.
Ture Widlund lives in Stockholm.

Bill Mallon and Ture Widlund
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 168
Bibliographic Info: tables, statistics, appendices, notes, references, index
Copyright Date: 2009 [1997]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4065-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0950-8
Imprint: McFarland
Series: History of the Early Olympics

Introduction      ix

Abbreviations      xi

References      xiii

1896 Olympic Games—Analysis and Summaries      1

SUMMARY STATISTICS      17

NOTES      24

Summary Articles

The Olympian Games at Athens (Charles Waldstein)      26

The Olympic Games of 1896 (Pierre de Coubertin)      30

The Olympic Games (Miss Maynard Butler)      37

High Hurdles and White Gloves (Thomas P. Curtis)      41

The New Olympian Games (Rufus Richardson)      45

The Olympic Games by a Competitor and Prize Winner (G. S. Robertson)      54

Athletics (Track & Field)      64

NOTES      74

Cycling      81

NOTES      85

Fencing      87

NOTES      89

Gymnastics      91

NOTES      95

Shooting      97

NOTES      101

Swimming      103

NOTES      105

Tennis (Lawn)      107

NOTES      109

Weightlifting      111

NOTES      113

Wrestling      115

NOTES      116

Other Sports and Events      117

NOTES      120

Appendix I: 1896 Program      121

Appendix II: Competitors (by Country)      126

“The Olympic Games”—a Classical Greek Ode by George Stuart Robertson, 1896      143

Index      145

“numerous interesting facts about the poorly documented early years of Olympic history”—Booklist; “the sites, dates, events, athletes and participating countries are listed, together with all the results”—Olympic Review; “impressive…superior to all those yet produced”—Olympika; “as a historian of sport I can only thank the author of this and other authors of volumes in the series for their fastidious labour of love that will provide a mine of information both to enjoy for its own sake and to form the basis for academic research”—Reference Reviews.