The late IOC President Jacques Rogge with the mascot at the 2012 Winter Games in Innsbruck. Rogge was considered the founding father of YOG.
Did the first Youth Olympics really take place in
Paris 100 years ago?
by Philip Barker
This week, the 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are set to open in Gangwon, South Korea.
They are the fourth in the series of Winter YOG and the first to be held outside Europe.
The concept was devised under the late IOC President Jacques Rogge for athletes between the ages of 14 and 18.
The inaugural Games were held in Singapore in 2010.
The first Winter Games followed in Innsbruck in 2012.
Thereafter they alternated between Summer and Winter Games at two year intervals until the sequence was interrupted by COVID-19 after the Winter Games of 2020 held in Lausanne and St. Moritz.
Yet 100 years ago, there were competitions for a similar age group held during the Olympics in Paris.
The French called them “Jeux de L’Enfance.”
The Paris 1924 Official Report said that “they became immediately popular for the greatest benefit of Youth.”
They were held in the Stade de Colombes on days when there was no other competition.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin had been very keen to restore the Olympic programme after the Great War. Coubertin had forged a relationship with Ellwood Brown, the secretary for physical education at the Central Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in the United States.
Brown and his colleagues had worked hard to establish sporting activities and spread the Olympic ideal in the Far East and wrote to say that “they had established a Kindergarten Olympics.”
Brown was even invited to address the 1920 IOC Session in Antwerp. The minutes record that “he made a very detailed speech,” in which he put the YMCA’s expertise in physical education at the disposal of the IOC.
“The fundamental aim is to bring sports within the reach of every possible person in every possible country,” Brown had said.
Coubertin, in typical style “thanked him for his indefatigable devotion to the Olympic cause which he served with intelligence and zeal.”
The following year, Paris Olympic Organising secretary Frantz Reichel informed the IOC of “plans to allow the YMCA to organise sports demonstrations at the Games.”
Coubertin gave his approval “providing the IOC protocol was adhered to in all areas.”
It was none too surprising that Coubertin had been enthusiastic. In the 1880s he had been inspired by visits to English public schools and particularly impressed by their use of sport as an educational tool.
Coubertin saw Olympic education as a key tenet of the movement and made the initial suggestions for establishing a studies centre, which many years later was made real when the International Olympic Academy was established.
In 1924, the demonstrations planned “had the goal of developing the physical constitution of children and achieving a perfect balance between physical, moral and intellectual faculties.”
The man in charge was Professor Louis Schroeder, head of the gymnastics department at the YMCA College in Springfield, Illinois.
Schroeder had served in France with the US Army. He stayed on to coach the French team at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp.
His work in 1924 delighted the organisers. “He succeeded in arranging a remarkable ensemble, comprising demonstrations, notable for their diversity and ingenious combinations,” one official said.
Participants included boy scouts and cub scouts in France and America, schools from across France and YMCA Groups from the US, Italy and Great Britain.
The invitations to the London YMCA arrived during March 1924. Their committee immediately voted “a grant of £25 towards the costs if a team could be assembled.”
Each day at precisely 2:30 p.m., the programme began. The Ranelagh baseball club, set up in Paris by American expatriates, began proceedings against The Paris “All Stars,” a specially chosen American team.
This was followed by a basketball match between Methodist Memorial and London YMCA.
Later there was cageball. Similar to handball, it had been developed for military use by Emmett Dunn Angell, a naval sports instructor, but was adapted for younger participants.
“It solves the problem of an invigorating healthful, pleasurable competition in which no one is excluded,” he claimed.
There were zig-zag races, relays with clubs and batons and demonstrations of dodge-ball.
“Each sport was minutely studied and adapted for each age group,” said the organisers.
The British basketball team enjoyed “remarkable success, defeating, after hard games, three separate teams of Americans, French and Italians.”
Volleyball involved various French towns and later, an international match involving French and American youngsters.
Sadly, the stands were almost empty, despite organisers inviting children along to swell numbers. “We should add that they followed the events passionately,” they claimed.
Even so, organisers claimed, “The practice of these sports had remarkable results in the schools. These sports were not only demonstrated but taught and became popular immediately, to the great benefit of the young people.”
Schroeder eventually returned to the US and later became an estate agent. He delighted in telling reporters that he had been responsible for the “Olympic” debut of basketball and baseball.
Basketball was eventually included on the Olympic programme in 1936, volleyball in 1964 and baseball achieved medal status in 1992, so it could be said that the Jeux de l’Enfance did indirectly play a role in changing the programme.
Before he became IOC President, Rogge was President of the European Olympic Committees (EOC).
He led the way in establishing “European Youth Olympic Days,” designed to bring youngsters together after a decade in which the Olympics themselves had been blighted by successive boycotts.
The idea was expanded and the concept of a global Youth Olympic Games was agreed.
In 2008, Singapore was chosen as host city.
Rogge hoped the event would meet “a challenge of combining elite sport, modern education and culture.”
Staged in August 2010, they attracted 3,524 competitors who took part in 26 sports. Although the cost of staging them was much greater than originally projected, they were nonetheless considered a tremendous success.
“This is the legacy of your Presidency,” said Ser Miang Ng, Singapore 2010 Organising Chairman. “Thank you for your vision and your gift to the youth of the world.”
In the years since, many who made their mark in YOG have gone on to compete in the Olympics.
They also embodied inclusiveness and friendship, qualities of the original Jeux d’Enfance in Paris 100 years ago.
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