INTRODUCTION Throughout human history people have always sought to challenge themselves to compete against others and to discover the limits of their capabilities Such desires can turn destructive leading to war But the ancient Greeks also recognized the good in these human traits and it was because of them that the Olympic Games featuring running races jumping contests throwing competitions and wrestling and boxing matches began more than 2,700 years ago The ancient Olympics ended in a d 393 but the Games were revived in 1896 in hopes of promoting world peace through sports Fittingly the first modern Olympics were held in Athens Greece but they moved around the world every four years after that In 2009 it was announced that the Games would be held in South America for the first time going to Rio de Janeiro Brazil in 2016 Every 1896 Olympian received a medal reading International Olympic Games Athens 1896 4
Only five sports have been contested at every Summer Olympic Games athletics known today as track and field cycling fencing gymnastics and swimming In the first three Olympics swimming competitions were held not in pools but in open water These sites included the Mediterranean Sea in Athens Greece in 1896 the Seine River in Paris France in 1900 and an artificial lake in Forest Park near St Louis Missouri in 1904 In 1908 in London England Olympic swimming was permanently moved to a pool in that case one built inside the Games outdoor track and field oval Early stars of Olympic swimming included Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller of the United States but swimming glory was also claimed by athletes from Australia France Great Britain and other countries Women participated in Olympic swimming beginning in 1912 in Stockholm Sweden and soon such female swimmers as Dawn Fraser of Australia and Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary were inscribing their names in the sport’s record books With each Olympiad swimming technique training and technology have improved and the world’s greatest swimmers have cut through Olympic waters with ever greater speed As times have been lowered excitement has been raised making the pool one of the most thrilling venues for Olympic competition INTRODUCTION 5
SWIMMING IN THE SEINE 1900 PARIS FRANCE The second modern Olympiad was a wild and loosely planned affair Held over a five-month period that was scheduled to coincide with Paris’s World’s Fair the Olympic Games were so under promoted by organizers that many athletes were uncertain whether they were participating in official Olympic competitions In the century since sports historians have been left scratching their heads Indoor pools were not widespread at the start of the 20th century leaving early competitions out-of-doors 6 1 8 9 6 A T H E N S G R E E C E 1 9 0 0 P A R I S F R A N C E 1 9 0 4 S T L O U I S M I S S O U R I 1 9 0 8 L O N D O N E N G L A N D 1 9 1 2 S T O C K H O L M S W E D E N 1 9 2 0 A N T W E R P B E L G I U M 1 9 2 4 P A R I S F R A N C E 1 9 2 8 A M S T E R D A M N E T H E R L A N D S 1 9 3 2 L O S A N G E L E S C A L I F O R N I A 1 9 3 6 B E R L I N G E R M A N Y 1 9 4 8 L O N D O N E N G L A N D 1 9 5 2 H E L S I N K I F I N L A N D 1 9 5 6 M E L B O U R N E A U S T R A L I A 1 9 6 0 R O M E I T A L Y 1 9 6 4 T O K Y O J A P A N 1 9 6 8 M E X I C O C I T Y M E X I C O 1 9 7 2 M U N I C H W E S T G E R M A N Y 1 9 7 6 M O N T R E A L Q U E B E C 1 9 8 0 M O S C O W S O V I E T U N I O N 1 9 8 4 L O S A N G E L E S C A L I F O R N I A 1 9 8 8 S E O U L S O U T H K O R E A 1 9 9 2 B A R C E L O N A S P A I N 1 9 9 6 A T L A N T A G E O R G I A 2 0 0 0 S Y D N E Y A U S T R A L I A 2 0 0 4 A T H E N S G R E E C E 2 0 0 8 B E I J I N G C H I N A 2 0 1 2 L O N D O N E N G L A N D
Early Olympic medalist John Arthur Jarvis dubbed himself the amateur swimming champion of the world SWIMMING IN THE SEINE 7 in attempts to sort out the various sports results and status Live pigeon shooting tug of war croquet cricket and a 200-meter swimming obstacle course were official Ballooning angling longue paume hand tennis cannon shooting kite flying fire fighting and life saving were not Conditions for many events were haphazard The track and field competitions were held in a park named Bois de Boulogne on a grassy knoll full of trees The marathon was so poorly marked and officiated that the fifth-place finisher American Arthur Newton claimed he hadn’t been passed and that the top two finishers both Frenchmen whose uniforms were curiously free of mud had obviously short-cut the course The swimming competitions were held in the Seine River a swift-flowing muddy waterway that cut through the heart of Paris The 1900 program for Olympic swim ming included a total of 7 events featuring competitors from 12 nations Australia Austria Belgium Denmark France Germany Great Britain Hungary Italy the Netherlands Sweden and the U S Of the 76 total com petitors 47 of them were French though the only gold medalist among them was Charles de Venville who won the first and only Olympic Underwater Swim contest an event in which swimmers were given 1 point for each second they remained underwater and 2 points for each meter traveled without stroking In all de Venville traveled 60 meters largely thanks to the current and remained submerged for 68 4 seconds John Arthur Jarvis of Britain took first-place honors in the 1,000-meter and 4,000-meter freestyle events The 4,000-meter race which Jarvis finished in some 58 minutes more than 10 minutes ahead of second-place finisher Zoltan Halmay of Hungary was the longest swimming race in Olympic history for more
