The th Summer Olympic Gamesthe Olympic Flag

Stockholm
1912

Where?Stockholm Sweden
Which Olympics?The fifth (summer)
How long was it?From 5 May till 22 July
Joining countries:28
Athletes:2546
Whereof women:55

Sweden always wanted to be host country of the Olympics, and finally in 1912 it was host country.

The Olympics were opened through king Gustaaf .

'de Coubertin' would that there had to be only 14 sports, to hold it well-ordered. The 'clean' Olympic sports had priority.

This year was much better than previous Olympics, almost no complaints. The Finns still didn't want to walk behind the Russian flag. There was a Finnish runner who wanted he had lose when he saw that the Russian flag was at masthead for him.

The 5000-meter run was the most exciting ever. The Finn Hannes Kolehmainen won with one step for the Frenchman Jean Bouin in 14,36.60.

Amateur / Professional

Jim Thorpe, an Irish, French, and the most of all an American-Indian descendant, was in Stockholm often champion at a sports-component; he won the pentathlon (Components of it: long jump, discus throw, javelin, 200-meter run and 1500-meter run, he was third at 1500-meter run and at the other components first. Through counting up the places, Thorpe was winner of the pentathlon.) and the decathlon (Herewith was sported over 3 days and there were given points at every component, the one with the highest score won, and that was Thorpe with 8,414 points (688 points more then number two).). He was self fifth at high jump and seventh at long jump.

In January 1913 wrote a sports writer from the "Worcester Telegram" that Thorpe had played a baseball-match for 25 dollars before the Olympics and shouldn't be an amateur. There was in those time a very heated fight between professional and amateurish playing games, but there came a prejudice (against the Indians) which led to the return of the Olympic medals of Thorpe and removing his prestations from the books. Now is it almost clear that Thorpe didn't play for the money, it was a very small sum, and he didn't realize what the consequences would be for his amateurish career.

There is tried some times to give Thorpe his medals back, like: the refused golden medals, which were sended to his most important rivals at the pentathlon and decathlon, which were the Swedish Hugo Wieslander and the Norwegian Ferdinand Bie. But they were written in the books with their prestations.

In 1973 Jim Thorpe got rehabilitation as amateur, at the American track-and-field-union AAU. It was bad luck that he already was 20 years dead. The IOC refused to write his name in the books again. There was often the thought that his case didn't was helped through Avery Brundage, who was IOC-president from 1952 to 1972 and at the Olympics in 1912 the team-mate was of Thorpe and who finished at the pentathlon as fifth (finally he was sixth).
But in October 1982 Jim Thorpe got, who was given the name of best athlete of the first half of the century in 1950, finally grace from the IOC and his medals were sent to his grandchildren.

Small facts:

  • This year was the introduction of the electric time measurement and finish-photos.
  • New sports: the modern pentathlon and the decathlon.
  • There was only one event at cycling, which was the longest in the history of the Olympics, namely 320 kilometers (that's 200 miles)!!!
  • The most protracted wrestlingmatches of the world, 9 hours (undecided) and 11 hours and 40 minutes.
  • At these Olympics was the oldest winner of gold ever: the Swedish Oscar Swahn was winner at the sharpshooting running deer when he was 64 years and 258 days.
  • These Olympics had a tragic incident; the Portuguese Francisco Lazzaro had a collapse during the marathon and died. What this incident made worse, was that Portugal joined the Olympics for the first time.

    • The medals of these Olympics
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