from Philip Barker at the
2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham
90 years ago, the Games in Los Angeles were the first summer Olympics to feature a medal podium.
The presentation of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals had become standard practice, but in early Olympic Games they were presented in very different fashion.
In 1908, Queen Alexandra made presentations to the majority of medallists at a Ceremony at the conclusion of events at the Stadium.
The whole thing resembled the awarding of prizes at a village flower show rather than the familiar victory ceremony we know today.
The medals were awarded in similar fashion right up to the 1928 Amsterdam Games.
It was often the case that recipients had already departed for home.
It was at these Games that Canadian representatives encouraged their Commonwealth counterparts to consider the establishment of a British Empire Games.
These were intended to come “trailing clouds of glory from their Olympic origins.”
Team official Melville Marks Robinson, known to all as “Bobby” spearheaded the organisation of the first British Empire Games in Hamilton Ontario.
Amongst the guests watching the proceedings in Hamilton was International Olympic Committee President Count Henri Baillet-Latour.
Previously there had been no little suspicion from IOC members about the aims of the new Empire Games.
At an IOC session Baillet-Latour was moved to reassure his colleagues. “Fears expressed in certain quarters that the proposed organisation by Canada in 1930 might seriously prejudice the Olympic Games were groundless,” he said. In fact, Baillet-Latour went further. “They are clearly pro-Olympic,” he said.
Minds were calmed no doubt by the strict line on amateur status taken by organisers.
The Hamilton organisers called upon teams to “certify on the entry forms that each contestant is an amateur within the meaning of the definitions laid down.”
Apart from a glowing report on proceedings in Hamilton, Baillet-Latour also took away another idea thought to have been introduced by Robinson in Hamilton.
He wanted a medal dais for gold silver and bronze medallists which would elevate the champion above everyone else in the stadium.
This was duly introduced and the first champion to receive his medal in this way was Canadian triple jumper Gordon “Spike” Smallacombe.
The idea caught on and has been repeated at every Games since.
This was transplanted to the Winter Games at Lake Placid in 1932 and also included in the Los Angeles Olympics that summer.
The podium has been there ever since, although in recent Winter Games, presentations have taken place at a specific Medals Plaza in the main sports hub of the Games.
Here in Birmingham, the first medals have already been presented at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
The ritual has changed little from those pioneering days almost a century ago.
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