Gold and bronze medals presented to General Victor G. BALCK, honoring his 80th birthday.
From
http://www.aafla.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1978/ore124/ore124o.pdf
. Founder IOC member from 1894 to 1928. “The father of Swedish sport” was born on 25th April 1844 in Karlskrona. Captain in 1894 when he participated in the Congress to reestablish the Olympic Games as Director of the Central Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm and President of the gymnastics union. An all-round sportsman, in 1880 he organised the first national sports competitions and introduced competition sport to the school curriculum. He founded many clubs and was the leading force behind the Olympic Games which were staged in Stockholm in 1912 under his direction. He was President of the International Skating Union from 1893 to 1925, founder of the SOK and member until his retirement in
..
1925. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From
by David Miller, (Mainstream Publishing, Edinburg, 2004) p. 20, on how close the Olympic movement came to failing, if not for the leadership of Balck and a few others:
Nearly fail it had. Between the second and fourth Games of Paris and London, criticism of de Coubertin in America was rife , led by James Sullivan, organiser of the third Games at St Louis and volubly supported by IOC member Caspar Whitney, war correspondent and explorer: The International Committee, with Pierre de Coubertin as chairman, showed little more conception of the significance of the classic event committed to their care than might have been expected of a barker.'
Sullivan and Whitney both wanted to create a new international body, supposedly one that would extend American influence within the new Olympic Movement. After the fourth Games in London, Whitney had stated: 'As soon as Mr Sullivan returns, I'm going to take up vigorously the question of reorganising the present International Committee. It seems .. . a perfectly ridiculous organisation ... no more than a personal plaything for de Coubertin, who appears to take courses of action quite without consultation with any but himself.' Sir Theodore Cook, British IOC member, recorded in his "rime Sunlit Hours - A Record or Sport arid Life that `the IOC is an inept organisation, and its leader flounders in his inability to accept practical suggestions. The IOC is absurdly unbusiness-like'. In spite of Cook's disparaging comments, the I0C would hold together, thanks to the efficiency of successive Games in London and Stockholm and the respective leadership in Britain and Sweden of Robert do Courcy-Laffan and Viktor Balck ; and of William Sloane , American doctor of philosophy who separated himself from the strictures of Sullivan and Whitney, and of the equally loyal Willibald Gephardt from Germany.
BALCK was
a pillar
upon whom de Coubertin increasingly leaned
and the correspondence between them
was extensive.
Ahead of his time, Balck was conscious of likely trends
, and at the IOC Congress at Le Havre in 1897 was already suggesting that IOC members should include representatives of international sports federations and that the Games programme should he constantly reviewed and approved. Congresses are staged intermittently, embracing all arms of the Movement as opposed to the annual Sessions of the IOC. The 1905 Congress in Brussels, 29 NOCs sent a total of 120 delegates. It was this mounting collective interest that helped the IOC survive the disarray of the 1904 Games in St. Louis.
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From
http://www.numismatics.org/exhibits/FullCircle/index.html
The Olympic Heritage in Coins & Medals
An Exhibition by the American Numismatic Society Olympiad IV, London, 1908
.
With de Coubertin's vision once again on track, following a second joyous success in Athens, all seemed to bode well for London in 1908. The Olympics had finally garnered international attention and were attracting participants from more than the original dozen or so countries; 22 nations were to compete in London. For the IVth Olympiad, the newly organized British Olympic Committee took the task of hosting the Games seriously and erected at Shepherd's Bush, in London, a great stadium, the first constructed specifically for the modern Olympics. The Committee also was determined to imbue the Games with the grandeur and pomp of the British Empire, and thus made sure that the smallest details of the program were in order, including the use for the first time of gold, silver and bronze medals denoting first, second, and third place. In spite of the care-ful preparations, however,
the Olympics of 1908 were not a happy set of Games
. Many contestants, especially those from the US, felt that the British were poor referees and purposely insulted the competitors. There was so much bickering, in fact, that
the London papers called the Games a fiasco, and advised that they be stopped forever
. Olympiad
.
V,
.
London,
.
1912
Once again,
the future of the modern Games seemed to hang in the balance; failure in Stockholm would seal the fate of de Coubertin's Olympic vision
. But the
Swedes were determined to make the Games of the Vth Olympiad the best yet, and they succeeded
. A national lottery was held to raise the growing sums needed to host the Olympics, which meant that new stadi-ums and extensive entertainment programs were de rigueur. To de Coubertinís pleasure, the Swedes also extended the program to include competitions in the fine arts. In stark contrast to the gloom of the London Games, those of 1912 were described as a prolonged love fest, which no doubt helped the Olympic move-ment to survive the long interruption caused by the First World War. For the first time in Olympic history, modern or ancient, the Games were cancelled on account of war; the Games of the VIth Olympiad, 1916, had been scheduled to be held in Berlin.
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From
http://www.kickbike.fi/index.phpmid=48&a=show&id=45
