1952 Helsinki

Helsinki 1952

Artistic Gymnastics

Athletics

Boxing

Canoe Sprint

Diving

Equestrian

Fencing

Football

Hockey

Modern Pentathlon

Swimming

Weightlifting

Armenia

Australia

Brazil

Czechoslovakia

Denmark

Finland

France

Great Britain

Hungary

India

Italy

Jamaica

Luxembourg

P. R. China

South Africa

Sweden

United States

USSR

The star of the side was Balbir Singh Dosanjh, who worked for the police force in Punjab but was far better known for his goalscoring exploits on the hockey pitch\. He had been part of the India team that took gold in 1948, and in Helsinki was given the honour

Balbir SINGH DOSANJH

Five-star Singh on song as India wins fifth consecutive hockey gold

Zybina’s journey towards the top of her sport had tragic beginnings\. When still a child her mother and brother both died of starvation during World War II\. She only just survived herself and was an emaciated and slight child\. Nobody who saw her then could possibly have guessed that she

Shotputter Zybina forges triumph out of tragedy

Jackson's subsequent progress was rapid\. She had grown up running on grass and had to adjust to cinder tracks and starting blocks, but her natural talent was never going to be fettered\.

Jackson surges to dazzling sprint double

Czechoslovakia's Emil Zátopek was, of course, already well known by the time Helsinki 1952 came around\. He had won the 10,000m title four years earlier in London, as well as taking silver in the 5,000m\. But in Finland he cemented his place as one of the all\-time greats of long\-distance

Emil ZATOPEK

Zátopek completes incredible long-distance treble

After the first two legs, the Australians had already established a commanding lead, and Cripps preserved their advantage around the bottom bend by Cripps\. The disaster struck\. As she passed the baton to anchor Jackson, her knee rose up at the wrong moment, hit the baton out of Jackson's hand

Teenager Jones becomes youngest champion of the track

Their names were J&oacute;zsef Bozsik, Zolt&aacute;n Czibor, Gyula Grosics, N&aacute;ndor Hidegkuti, S&aacute;ndor Kocsis and Ferenc Pusk&aacute;s, and they were key players in a legendary team, some with revealing nicknames such as &ldquo;Golden Head&rdquo; for Kocsis, &ldquo;Old Man&rdquo; for Hidegkuti, the &ldquo;Black Panther&rdquo; for goalkeeper Grosics and the &ldquo;Galloping Major&rdquo; for

The legend of the Hungarian Golden Team was born at the Helsinki Games in 1952

With the Soviet Union taking its Olympic bow, the rest of the world had the chance to see stars such as Chukarin for the first time\. His path to Helsinki, though, had been an unusual and arduous one\.

Four golds for master gymnast Chukarin

He chose to stay with his wife and she duly gave birth to a boy called Frank\.

Canoeist Havens makes his father proud

The USA&rsquo;s super\-heavyweight weightlifter John Davis, who landed in Helsinki having not lost a contest for 14 years, belonged firmly in the third category\.

Weightlifter Davis continues 14-year winning streak

To make his childhood even tougher, his family were moved to a detention centre during the Second World War, leaving behind their home in California\. And yet there, out in the desert conditions of the Tule Lake camp, Kono found an unexpected form of happiness\.

Kono defies heavy burden to win weightlifting gold

Fencing with both foil and épée, he had competed in both team and individual events, winning a medal in each of the four events he contested during his first two Games\.

Fencer Mangiarotti continues incredible medal streak

Konno was not big for a swimmer\. He stood just 1\.68m tall, but had shown natural ability in the water from a young age\. Born in Hawaii, he grew up in Honolulu and then went to university in Ohio, where he was on both the swimming and diving teams\.

Consistent Konno wins four medals in four events

McCormick's first event was the women's springboard\. American divers had taken every Olympic medal in the event since it was introduced in 1920\. Six Games, 18 medals, all won by one nation\!

Patricia MCCORMICK

McCormick maintains US dominance on the springboard

His childhood had been tough\. The youngest of 11 children, he grew up in New York’s Brooklyn district, where he got into trouble for playing truant from school and had various run\-ins with the police over minor offences\. He found his salvation, though, in boxing, rapidly developed from a talented

Teenager Patterson makes his mark in the Olympic ring

The Soviet Union were hot favourites for gold, but their challenge fell apart in spectacular style\. They were losing 5\-1 against Yugoslavia before four late goals earned them a replay\. In the second match, the Yugoslavs fell 1\-0 behind before staging their own comeback to win the game 3\-1\. The

Puskás inspires Magical Magyars to football gold

Back in the 1950s, butterfly, a relatively new innovation, was still considered to be a type of breaststroke, and it had been gaining ever greater popularity among leading swimmers\. In Helsinki, for the first time, all eight finalists chose to adopt the butterfly\. As it turned out, it was also

Davies floats like a butterfly to win breaststroke gold

In the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese government finally decided to send a delegation of athletes just one day before the Games were due to start\. Football and basketball squads were dispatched, but arrived in Finland too late to take part\. In fact, only one member of

Wu flies the flag for Olympic debutants China in the pool

His Olympic debut at London 1948 ended in disappointment, when two punctures had ruined his chances\. He immediately decided to forget the long\-distance races and concentrate instead on the track\.
That switch of tack had proved fruitful, and he went on to win gold medals at the British Empire Games

Mockridge wheels his way to double gold

The favourite was 18\-year\-old Geertje Wielema of the Netherlands, but her preparations were blighted by illness\. The Dutch swimmer had done very little training for six months before the Games, a setback that might well have stopped lesser athletes from even competing\. She proved her strength in the semi\-final, where

Harrison triumphs in battle of breaststroke starlets

It was only when the mystery man climbed out of the pool that he was identified as Boiteux's father\. “Papa\!” he shouted, pointing to himself\. His joy owed to more than just parental pride\. The Boiteux family knew exactly how much effort it took to get to the top of

Jean BOITEUX

Boiteux earns gold and a watery embrace from his father

Among the women taking part was Lis Hartel of Denmark, whose brilliance on a horse was made even more remarkable by the fact that she was paralysed below the knees after contracting polio some eight years earlier, when she was 23\.

Lis HARTEL

Dressage silver for inspirational trailblazer Hartel

The first opportunity for someone to win gold using the stroke came in the women's 200m breaststroke final\. This was a great era for Hungarian breaststrokers and the country had three swimmers in the final\.

Székely edges compatriot Novák in breaststroke duel

The 33\-year old Wires was a veteran of the sport, who had won silver in 1948 in the 10,000m kayak singles\. Ahead of the 1952 Games he teamed up with Hietanen, a 25\-year\-old who was making his Olympic debut, to compete in the pairs\.

Local heroes Wires and Hietenen thrill on way to kayak gold

They had a number of strong stars, among them a young fisherman called Thorvald Strömberg, who had to contend with the pressure of home support and the challenge of one of the greatest canoeists of all time\.

Strömberg makes waves on home waters

While their male counterparts toiled, failing to win a single medal in five events, the Hungarian women claimed nine of the 15 medals on offer, including four out of five golds\.

Szőke spearheads charge of Hungary's women in the pool

Remarkably, the same four athletes – Wint, Leslie Laing, Herb McKenley and George Rhoden – made up the quartet that travelled to Helsinki\. And their objective remained the same too: to beat the USA to the gold medal\.

Relay quartet make Jamaica proud

Her athletics career started just after the end of the Second World War, when she took silver in the high jump at the 1946 European Championships\. Eight years later, she returned to the European arena to win a gold medal in the pentathlon and silver in the long jump, while

Versatile Chudina takes three medals from three events

Barthel cut a short and slight figure, even by the standards of middle\-distance runners\. He also hailed from Luxembourg, a country whose only previous gold medals had come in art and, in 1900, courtesy of a marathon runner who had actually been competing for France\. In short, Barthel was a

Joseph BARTHEL

Barthel emerges from under middle-distance radar

Doing so requires the ability to maintain incredible levels of technique, strength and stamina over a period of many years\. It also needs some luck\. Decathletes tend to be bedevilled by injuries due to the extreme physical pressures to which they have to subject their bodies\. Staying fit and healthy

Decathlete Mathias defends the indefensible

Among the hugely talented athletes who were given their chance to excel on the Olympic stage in 1952 was Lars Hall, a carpenter from Sweden who had won the world championship title in both 1950 and 1951 and arrived in Helsinki as the favourite for gold\.

Lars HALL

Civilian Hall wins modern pentathlon gold

An unassuming 3,000m steeplechaser, Ashenfelter, known commonly as “Nip”, trained using benches in local parks and in his own back garden\. He was seen as a decent competitor, but not a likely winner\. For although his personal best of nine minutes 6\.4 seconds was an American record, it was still

Horace III ASHENFELTER

FBI agent Ashenfelter breaks cover to win the steeplechase

Born on exactly the same day as her husband, Zátopková had excelled at a range of sports as a youngster, notably handball\. She only took up the javelin in her 20s, but her ability was instantly apparent, and just a few years later she represented Czechoslovakia at the 1948 Olympic

Zátopková inspired by feats of husband to win javelin gold

Within a year, he had qualified for the 1948 Olympics, where he finished eighth\. Two years later, he equalled the world record and then, in 1951, he broke it outright\.

Adhemar Ferreira da Silva, primeiro brasileiro bicampeão olímpico

Da Silva's record-breaking streak to triple jump gold

The two had dominated the USSR all\-around competition for some time, with Horokhovska getting the upper hand in the years preceding Helsinki 1952\. But the pressures of the Olympic environment were different – it was the first time the Soviet Union had sent a team, and it was the first

Bocharova's golden balancing act

The undoubted star of the women’s gymnastics competition was Mariya Horokhovska, a true all\-round talent, whose abilities had long since been recognised at home, but who came to Helsinki as a little\-known quantity in international terms\.

Gymnast Horokhovska scoops magnificent seven medals

He had been in the United States Air Force, acting as a tail\-gunner and flying in 27 bomber missions\. Yet his desire to pursue his career as an athlete remained undimmed, and he continued to enter events – and to win titles\.

Malvin Groston WHITFIELD

Warrior Whitfield retains 800m title

Back in 1952, making such split\-second calls was a much trickier business, and it was never harder than in the final of the men's 100m, a race that produced perhaps the closest finish in the event’s history\. Six men crossed the line in the same tight photo frame\. Look a

Flying Remigino edges closest sprint in history

After excelling as a schoolboy gymnast, in 1939 Shahinyan became the Soviet Union junior champion\. He then fought in the Second World War, injuring his leg\. He never fully recovered, which is why he continued to walk using a stick to support him, but he received extensive treatment and showed

Shahinyan opens Olympic account with four medals

Nina Romashkova had taken up the discus when she was just 18 but immediately showed huge natural ability\. She entered her first major competition in 1948, and a year later was ranked third in the USSR\. Two years later, she won the national title, a feat she would repeat on

Romashkova leads Soviet sweep of the women's discus