Was Russia late to the Olympics?
What an Olympics! It was a proud moment to see each of the participants stretching to do their best. It was even more proud to see the medals India brought home — seven — the richest haul we have ever had in Olympics. It was cherry on top when Neeraj obtained his Gold with such a brilliant javelin throw.
One of my friends asked me if there was a masala history related to the Olympics. Turns out, there are quite a few indeed. Russia has had their share of incidents at Olympics under all the banners they participated in — Russian Empire, USSR, CIS and modern day Russia. In Tokyo 2020, Russia participated as Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), as they were banned from competing under their flag. Today we will learn a masala history about Russia and the Olympics — for that we will board our time machines and set the time dial to London 1908.
We have all had our share of showing up late for something — but have you heard the story of an entire team showing up late for the world’s biggest sporting event?
Charles Pierre de Frédy, the Baron de Coubertin was the founder of the International Olympics Committee in 1894, when he was just 31 years old. He is rightfully referred to as the ‘father of modern day Olympics’. Baron de Coubertin became the second President of IOC and had his own Olympics success as a participant. In the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, art competitions were part of the program — music, literature, architecture, painting and sculpture. The Baron entered the literature competition and won the gold medal with his poem ‘Ode to sport’.
In April 1896, Athens hosted the first version of the Modern Olympics. The participants were European nations and the USA. The concept was welcomed and a subsequent version happened in 1900 at Paris. In 1904, Russia was at war with Japanese and given the tensions, the IOC decided to host the Olympics outside of Europe. Hence St. Louis hosted the third version, with Russian Empire giving the games a miss. The next Olympics was set to happen at Rome in 1908.
The 1908 Olympics was scheduled to run for 6 months, starting April 27 and ending October 31. However Mount Vesuvius erupted in April 1906, putting a break to Rome’s dream of playing the host — this will eventually happen in 1960. London was chosen as the venue for the games. The London 1908 Olympics was planned and organized in just 18 months and the event was overshadowed by doping scandals and caused international uproar. Record keeping was very poor in those days, so a lot of data is handed down and has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Russia was going to participate in the 1908 Olympics after giving the previous one a miss. On the inaugural day, controversies started. During that time, Finland was part of the Russian Empire and so they had to participate under the Russian flag based on IOC rules. The Finnish team refused to do that and most athletes marched without any flag. But wait, the Russian team wasn’t to be seen on the inaugural day. Why?
Those of you who read the Masala History ‘The mystery of Missing dates’ published during the new year weekend might remember the story of calendars. The world started out as a simple place within 10 months. Then 2 more were added. Julius Caesar drove the concept of the modern day year by starting a new year from January 1 and letting it run for 365 days. Augustus Caesar realised the importance of making sure that the number of days in a year corresponds to the actual revolution of Earth around the Sun and hence introduced the concept of leap year.
Pope Gregory issued a correction in the late sixteenth century so that the time doesn’t leap faster than the Earth’s revolution. Accordingly, going forward, a leap year is not one if the year would be divisible by multiples of 100, except 400. Also to correct for all the previous centuries, he proposed to cut down 10 days from the existing calendar. This was called the Gregorian calendar and the world was expected to adapt to it. And this is where the confusion began.
Catholic nations quickly adopted the Gregorian calendar. England did that another 50 years later. However, other countries took their own time to adapt to the Gregorian calendar causing dates to be different in different countries. Russia was one such country, thereby causing huge calendar confusions. So in 1908, when the Olympics commenced, England followed the corrected Gregorian calendar, while Russia was still in its Julian calendar.
So the legend goes that given the calendar confusion, the Russian team messed up on understanding the actual dates of Olympics commencement and hence showed up late to the event. This is boosted by the fact that the initial official report of the 1908 Olympics does not even mention Russia. And Russia did not participate in the initial event — shooting. This is in spite of the fact that one of the most prominent shooters, Nikolai (Panin) Kolomenkin, did turn up for the Olympics and won a gold medal in a different event prompting us to feel that the team must have been late by a few weeks given the calendar confusion.
This is a little hard to believe and appears as a masala sprinkle on a set of unfortunate coincidences. After all, Russia was living with its European neighbours for centuries with different calendars and such a confusion doesn’t seem probable. So why did Russia then miss out on events?
The reasons could be multifold. For one, Russia did not have its Olympic committee back then. Sports was not a serious business and was discouraged as a career. In fact, in the 1908 Olympics, only six Russian athletes participated. And they were not funded by the Russian Empire, but were rather playing either by themselves or support of their clubs. Given there was no official ‘national team’ and each individual was fending for themselves, the calendars could have played spoilsport for one or two of them, but that should just be it.
Russia had a good 1908 though. Their first ever Gold medal was won there by Nikolai (Panin) Kolomenkin in ice-skating. This was a very complex sport that required skaters to draw perfect geometric figures on ice. And was eventually removed from the Olympics. Russia won a total of 3 medals in the event, with the other two silvers coming from wrestling.
So did Russia really land up late to the Olympics? Probably not — must be similar to the fictitious but well believed story of how Indian footballers played without shoes at the 1948 Olympics because of financial constraints of the then government (this calls for its own story)! However, the fact that there is a legend around this shows how absence of verifiable data could give rise to concocted stories that cannot be completely denied.
Tailpiece: As said earlier, the Russian Empire frowned upon sports as a career. The gold medal winner Nikolai, who worked for the government, is said to have hidden his ‘hobby’ of skating and shooting. He actually participated at the Olympics with his pseudonym Panin and not with his real name. When he arrived at Moscow with the gold, instead of being given a hero’s welcome, he was scolded by senior officials who forced him to drop the sport. Later, Nikolai would go on to become a coach and also establish the most popular skating school in Russia.
(Thank you ‘Russia Beyond’ for providing some interesting inputs to this story).
