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Did you know that?
1896 | 1900 | 1904 | 1908 | 1912 | 1920 | 1924 | 1932 | 1948 | 1952 | 1956 | 1960 | 1964 | 1968 | 1972 | 1976 | 1980 | 1984 | 1988 | 1992 | 1996
** Japan became the first Asian country to participate in the 1912 Stockholm
Games.
** During the 1912 Games the boxing event was not held for the first and
only time in the Olympics since hosts Sweden did not allow boxing contests
in their country.
** Englishman Charles Perry, who was responsible for the tracks for the 1896
and 1908 Games laid the track at Stockholm in 1912.
** For the first time in the 1912 Games an electrical timing equipment was
used for the running events.
** The 1912 Games was the first to use the public address system.
** The modern pentathlon was introduced for the first time in the 1912
Games. In the fifth place of this event was one Lieut. George S Patton
(USA), who later became a controversial general during the second World
War.
** American Ralph Craig who took both the sprints in the 1912 Games, should
not have won as under the current rules he would have been disqualified
for making three false starts to the race.
** The only one cycling event of the 1912 Games was the longest race of any
kind ever in Olympic history - a distance of 320km (199 miles). It was
won by South African Ruloph Lewis in 10 hours 42 minutes.
** During the 1912 Games some of the wrestling bouts lasted more than 10
hours! In the Greco-Roman middleweight category a bout for the silver
medal between Russia's Martin Klein and Finland's Alfred Asikainen went on
for a record 11hr 40min. In the light-heavy weight finals the judges had to
halt the fight after the bout had gone for over 9 hours. Both the
wrestlers were given silver medals, with no gold awarded.
** During the 1912 Games, Swedish shooters Carlberg brothers Wilhelm and
Eric, became the first twins to win Olympic gold.
** During the 1912 Games, a rare sibling combination came in the 6m class
yatching when the French winner "Mac Miche" was crewed by the three Thube
brothers.
** American Indian Jim Thorpe who had won the athletic pentathlon and
decathlon with consummate ease during the 1912 Games, had his gold medals
taken back and his performances removed from Olympic annals, six months
later, when it was reported that he had played some minor baseball as a
professional. Twenty years after his death in 1953 the American Athletic
Union reinstated him as an amateur, but IOC stubbornly refused to
acknowledge his performances. It had been suggested that Thorpe's cause
was not helped by the fact that then president of IOC from 1952 to 1972
Avery Brundage was a team-mate of Thorpe in 1912 and with the
disqualification of the latter, Brundage was placed fifth from the earlier
sixth. Finally, in October 1982 Thorpe, the man who had been voted in 1950
as the greatest athlete of the first half-century, was pardoned by the IOC
and the medals pre sented to his family.
** Portugal's Francisco Lazzaro collapsed and died during the marathon event
of the 1912 Games.
** Otto Herschmann, who won the silver in the team sabre fencing event in
the 1912 Games, was the president of the Austrian Olympic Committee. He
remains the only sitting national Olympic committee president to win a
medal in the Olympics. Incidentally he died in 1942 in a Nazi concentration
camp.
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