Secrets of the Olympic Ceremonies. Myles Garcia
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- European Olympic Committees
The opening moments of the magical Barcelona 1992 Opening Ceremony.
What is an Olympiad?
The ‘Olympiad’ concept (or conceit) began with the ancient Greeks when they used it as a ‘calendar epoch.’ In Olympic parlance, an ‘Olympiad’ refers roughly to the (quadrennial) four-year time period beginning with a particular (set of summer) Games and until the clock runs out on that four-year period when the next set of Summer Games begins. Thus, the Games of the Xth Olympiad were the first Los Angeles Games of 1932. Any corrections of records, awards, placements, etc., took place following the Games; thus they occurred mostly within the Tenth Olympiad. When all of that was put away, they could then begin the XIth Olympiad with the 1936 Games of Berlin beginning on 1 August 1936.
Strangely enough, the Winter Games were not considered part of an Olympiad previously. Thus, when the Winter Games were introduced in 1924, this threw a whole curve ball into the concept of an ‘Olympiad.’ Between 1924 and 1992, they were held in the same calendar year as the Summer Games. However, going by the pre-Winter Games time concept, the Olympiad countdown always began with the summer edition. Olympic purists rigidly held on to this timeframe. But how, for example, could the XVth Olympiad (Helsinki 1952) begin when the Oslo Games were celebrated in February of the same year? It got to be all too much, and it was decided that, informally anyway, the Olympiad countdown would begin with the start of the calendar year, on 1 January.
As if that weren’t confusing enough, when the Games projected for 1916, 1940 and 1944 did not take place due to the world wars, the ‘Olympiad’ clock ticked on. So in Olympic history books, one will see that the VIth Olympiad began in 1916. The XIIth and XIIIth Olympiads are marked 1940 and 1944, respectively. So although no Games were celebrated in those years, nonetheless, the guardians of Olympic history still set aside those years for those respective ‘Olympiads’ even though nothing competition-wise actually took place.
To make things even more convoluted, there is a timing issue: the Olympic Games (per season) happen every four years. For the most part, this book will call them by the years they were played out (e.g., London 1948 or Innsbruck 1964); but Olympic host cities are chosen many years before the actual games. For most of the last century, they were picked five years in advance. In the 1950s, they were moved to a six-year lead-time. Finally, in 1991, it was extended to seven years (i.e., in 1991, the IOC voted for the 1998 Winter Games host). Often, because the selection of a host city alone provides its own fascinating story--and may have a bearing on the Ceremonial aspects, this strange time-continuum may have to be referred to. But if we were to refer to, say…Beijing 1993, this is not a typo. What we would be referring to is the time period when Beijing put forth its first candidacy, in the year 1993 and all events relevant to that time. (Just to finish this trend of thought, Beijing came back to run a second time in 2001 when it was finally selected to host the Games of 2008.) So a term like Torino “1999/2006” means the “bidding year / the staging year.”
Here’s a quick rundown of the Olympic Games of the Modern Era:
1896 – Athens, Greece (summer) – The ancient Games are revived.
1900 – Paris, France (s) – These Olympics were a sideshow to the 1900 Universal Exposition.
1904 – St. Louis, Missouri, USA (s) – The first Olympics outside Europe. Chicago was the originally designated host city; but after some manipulation by President Wilson and the Missouri congressional delegation, the honor was taken away from Chicago and given to St. Louis. But like Paris 1900, these 1st Games set in the U.S. were stretched out over several months and turned out to be a sideshow to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase World Exposition.
1908 – London, Great Britain (s) – Similarly, 1908 has originally been awarded to Rome, Italy. However, after the 1906 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Italy recused itself from hosting and London was called upon to host 1908.
1912 – Stockholm, Sweden (s) – Other than being called the “Jim Thorpe” games, these were very non-controversial games.
1916 – Originally awarded to Berlin, Germany, these were not celebrated due to World War I.
1920 – Antwerp, Belgium (s) – Similarly, 1920 has been originally awarded to Budapest, Hungary. However, because Hungary was a Central (i.e., aggressor) power in World War I, the honor was retracted.
1924 – Herewith, the (W)inter Olympic Games (or WOGs) began, and the first one was in Chamonix, France, although those were retroactively recognized. Summer was Paris again; and those were the Games immortalized in the film Chariots of Fire. (France was just ablaze with new, international sporting meets coming to life that year. The Summer Student World Championships which would later become the Universiades and the first Games for the Deaf (later the Deaflympics) were both born in Paris that year.)
1928 – St. Moritz, Switzerland (w); Amsterdam, the Netherlands for the summer and the first Games to ignite a cauldron.
1932 came back to the U.S.A. – first at Lake Placid for the winter; and Los Angeles for the summer. This was the first of the short-lived tradition of awarding both Games to one country.
1936 returned to Europe, Germany in particular. Winter went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps where the 1st winter cauldron was lit; and the summers were the notorious Berlin Games. The Nazis imbued these Games heavily with their branding including inaugurating the Olympic torch relay routine.
1940 was already set for Japan (Sapporo for winter and Tokyo for the summer) when the Japanese Empire’s aggressive actions in Asia caused the winters to be reassigned first to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in a 1939 vote. When the Nazis unleashed their own bellicose plans, and the IOC was still hoping to maintain their Games on a regular basis, St. Moritz and Helsinki became the last-minute replacements for a 1940 set of Games. But the full outbreak of war scuttled those plans as well.
Since host cities are picked 5 or 6 or 7 years before, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, was originally going to host the 1944 Winter Games; and London the summer. However, because Italy had been an aggressor and losing nation in 1945, the hosting by Cortina was rescinded from Italy.
1948 - The Games returned to their normal leap year cycle when St. Moritz again played host to the first post-WW2 Olympics; and London, despite Britain’s war-torn economy, agreed to fill in for summer.
Come 1952, when Europe’s shattered economies were starting to recover, Oslo, Norway hosted the 1952 winter; and Helsinki fulfilled its 1940 summer appointment at last.
By 1956, Italy had been forgiven, so Cortina d’Ampezzo also fulfilled its earlier commitment. The summer Games went to Melbourne, Australia, taking place the latest they had ever been: in November and December, due to the reverse seasons of the southern hemisphere. There was actually a 3rd Olympic Games that year when the equestrian events had to stage their own min-Olympics in Stockholm in June since Australia’s quarantine laws could not be bent to accommodate the Olympic horses.
1960 - American television (CBS) had finally paid attention to this quadrennial spectacle when it paid for rights to televise the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California; and the summer in Rome, finally fulfilling its hosting duty 52 years later. This was the start of the ever-burgeoning TV rights income for the local organizing committees and the IOC; and we shall take note of them from here on.
1964 saw the winter torch relay from Olympia to Innsbruck, Austria, initiated. When the summer Olympic Games finally came to Asia and Tokyo, Japan, television images of the Games were beamed overseas via satellite for the first time as well as some sports were televised in color domestically.
1968 - The Winters in Grenoble, France were the first Olympics to be televised fully in color; and the Summers in Mexico City were the first Olympic Opening Ceremony shown live in the U.S.
1972 – 32 years after its original designation, Sapporo, Japan hosted the first Winter Olympics