Paris 1900, for example, was held as an adjunct to the World Exhibition taking place in the French capital that year, while St Louis 1904 was tacked on to a World’s Fair celebrating the purchase of Louisiana from France. Both those Games ran for several months.
Stockholm 1912 Legacy
The Games of the V Olympiad still took place over a relatively long period of time by today’s standards, running from 5 May – when the tennis competition began – to 27 July. With no other events to distract them, however, the organisers focused on the Olympic Games as a spectacle in its own right, setting up a committee to market and promote the occasion and, with it, Sweden as a tourist destination. With sport finally taking centre stage, there were numerous innovations on show, including automatic timing devices and a photo-finish camera for track events.
With all five continents represented, Stockholm 1912 can also be considered the first global Olympic Games, with 28 nations taking part, a record at the time. Among them was Japan, the first Asian country to compete at the Games. Women’s swimming and diving events made their first appearance on the Olympic programme as the Games slowly but surely opened up to female competitors. Other firsts included the inaugural Olympic Games arts competition and the first official Olympic poster – a central pillar of the organisers’ innovative and expansive marketing campaign.
Although they were successful, the Olympic Games Stockholm 1912 were the last to be held for eight years. Berlin was due to host the Games of the VI Olympiad in 1916, only for the First World War to intervene, causing their cancellation. The world’s leading athletes would not reassemble until Antwerp 1920.
