by H. G. Nelson
Later in the meet, Ted turned out for tennis, scoring a contested bronze. This created the first of many Olympic medal controversies. Olympic ding dongs can take centuries to sort out. There is no tiff in the world of sport like an Olympic rules ruckus. Finally, in 2008, Ted was given the nod for bronze from that first modern Olympic tennis medal hit-out. Sadly, Ted could not be there for the medal presentation as he had moved on to the Wimbledon in the sky in 1935.
As Edwin ‘Teddy’ Flack was our sole representative in Athens in 1896, he had to do the lot. Captain the team, carry the flag in the opening and closing ceremonies, run the water, wear the big hat as Australia’s chef de mission and be a sporting ambassador for the yet-to-be-federated nation, as well as compete. It was a big ask!
As Edwin ‘Teddy’ Flack was our sole representative in Athens in 1896, he had to do the lot.
There was no Australian nation in 1896 as we understand it today. There were no national colours; the idea of green and gold was decades away up around the bend. Edwin ran in the colours of Melbourne Grammar, his old school – a lovely touch, cementing the concept of the Olympics as an international school sports carnival with gold, silver and bronze up for grabs.
The Athens Olympics was The Lion’s only big international meet. After the long boat trip back to Australia he retired from the international sporting scene to breed cattle. There is a bronze statue of Ted in Berwick High Street. The Lion, rather belatedly, was ushered into the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame in 1985. This was a glittering night of nights for Flack freaks. The great and the sporting good finally acknowledged his extraordinary leonine prowess.
Three Australians made the trip to the 1900 Games in Paris: swimmer Fred Lane, sprinter Stanley Rowley and shooter Donald Mackintosh.
There was no government handout for the team, and athletes had to make their own way to Paris and cover the costs of transport, accommodation and competing.
The Olympic pool, that mine of precious metal for Australian swimmers over the decades, had not been invented in 1900. The concept of a body of chlorinated water, twenty-six degrees centigrade, fifty metres long, with eight lanes roped off, had not been imagined by the bright sparks in the world of wetness. ‘Fearless’ Freddie Lane got the poolside party started when he snared Australia’s first aquatic triumph. Fred, like the rest of the Paris competitors, made do with the River Seine for his swims. That special stretch of water between the Courbevoie and the Asnières Bridges was Fred’s sodden office.
He had been introduced to water sport at an early age. He was four years old when his brother pulled him from a near-death experience in Sydney Harbour. After his pre-school plunge from the wharf, young Fred realised he needed to learn to swim. He was soon finning along in the drink like a northern red snapper.
There were seven swimming events on the Paris card. Seventy-six starters turned up from twelve countries to take the plunge. The card featured the 200 free, 400 free, 1000 free, 200 back and the 200-metre team swim. As a final highlight there was the mystery event, the 200-metre obstacle race.
Fearless Fred won the 200 metres, beating the Hungarian superstar, Zoltán Halmay. It was a quick swim because Fred dropped into the tidal rip in the middle of the river. He cashed the cheque he wrote in the 200 free forty-five minutes later with another win in the 200-metre obstacle race.
The obstacle race was the bankside talking point of these Games. Twelve competitors from five nations fronted for the final. It was a hot field: some observers say the best wet hurdle and hindrance line-up ever. But the knockers point out it was only run once at Olympic level, so there is a certain amount of truth to this poolside observation.
Swimmers had to plough up the 200 metres of the Seine, climbing over a pole at the start and then over a line of rowing boats before swimming under another line of boats as the final obstacle. It was described in the Paris newspaper Le Monde by swimming correspondent Jean Paul Pigasse in these tart terms: ‘The 200-metre obstacle wet-side wiff-waff is a “Knockout Olympic Style” event with a golden gewgaw on offer.’
The French team had a distinct home river advantage. The local crew did not have to travel far or adapt to foreign food, or put up with uncomfortable accommodation, or cope with changeable weather conditions. Fred put these snags to one side and came home in a time of 2.38.4. It was a personal best. Second home was the Austrian swimming sensation and 200-metre obstacle superstar, Otto Wahle.
This very popular event was dropped from the subsequent line-ups, as no one could see the important underwater action where the race was won and/or lost. The event screams for inclusion as a demonstration sport on the swim card for Paris 2024 and to hold its place for Brisbane 2032. In part as a homage to Fred Lane and those early pioneers, but also because today’s television technology allows spectators to see all the brutal underwater action in living colour.
Stan Rowley from Australia’s cherry capital, Young, scored a third in the track sprints. He had a great Games. Stan was a model of consistency, finishing third over sixty metres, third in the 100 metres, and yes, it was another bronze spot in the 200 metres.
Shooting for gold for Australia’s Don Mackintosh featured a live pigeon shoot in Paris. It is still talked about when old Olympic heads gather and reminisce about past glories over a glass of gold medal–winning chardonnay. This glamour shoot blasted 300 birds from the sky. There were two categories, one charged twenty francs to enter and the other 200 francs.
The pigeons were released from traps in front of the shooters. Then it was bang away for a cash prize. It was a simple competition. In the first leg of the event a purse of 200 francs was up for grabs, approximately US$3.916 million in today’s money. The big purse and the gold medal lured the world’s best.
When the guns fell silent, feathers carpeted the spot where the podium (not yet part of the medal presentation celebrations) would be in future Games. In a lovely sporting gesture, the top four finishers agreed to split the purse. This was in the real spirit of the Games as the Baron imagined it in 1896. Athletes were encouraged to compete for prestige and glory, not money. He suggested they leave financial gain for the world championships and national competitions.
The live pigeon shoot was the only event in Olympic history in which animals were killed. For the sake of the squeamish, as in 99.89 per cent of the population, the organising committee declared the event a non-Olympic affair and shoe-horned the blaze-away into the cultural programme.
Shooting pigeons as an art . . . well, there were issues with that tricky concept from the start. But it was a very Olympic solution. If it is not sport, it must be culture. A live bird shoot ban sensibly came into force in 1902. In St Louis (1904) and beyond, the flying feathered targets were all clay pigeons.
In the twenty-franc blow-off, Australian ‘Deadeye’ Donald Mackintosh came first, taking out twenty-two birds. Don was up against 166 other competitors from around the world. The lolly on offer explains the big numbers of the trigger happy.
Post-shoot, Donald was quizzed by The Argus shooting and duck hunting correspondent, Heiko F. Meins. The Walkley Award–winning Meins began by asking, ‘Slugger, how do you feel now that you have bagged the gold?’
. . . Heiko, how do I feel? Heiko, I am over the moon. This is a dream come true. I felt very nervous coming into the shoot. But once I got in the trench, technique took over. Both the birds and the bullets came out beautifully today. You saw the numbers. I have never shot like that. I would like to look at the score card, but I reckon I hammered four with a single bang early. Never done that before.
Heiko asked, ‘Slugger, I notice you were using a different trigger-pulling technique out there today?’
As a shooter, Heiko, you know you get days like these. I was using that new Giorgio de Morandi breathing technique. I was pulling the trigger between heart beats. But Heiko, the results are in the book. I won. They can’t take it away from me.
‘Deadeye, how much do you put the win down to the gun you were using?’
. . . Heiks, this is the new Lee Enfield. It’s the same gun Digs will use in the Boer War in South Africa. It can really make a mess of a turkey. You can hardly find anything apart from feathers and lead once they are hit. The officials did a tremendous job tracking down the bird count today. People will knock the result, but the organisers did a great job. They produced a good quality of bird with plenty of get up and go.
And you know, Heiko, I love Australia. I put in today for the great nation that Australia will become next year. I wanted to show kids that if they work hard, they can achieve golden dreams. My message to youngsters wanting to go all the way is: Don’t shoot at the bird, shoot at where the bird is going to be. It is as simple as that.
In his Olympic wrap-up, Heiko reported that other contestants complained that ‘Our Macca’ went berserk over the three heats, banging away at anything that moved. They moaned, ‘That Australian shooter went totally troppo. There was so much smoke, gun powder and feathers wafting about no one could see the pigeons!’
In the next event, the 200-franc entrance fee blow-off, Deadeye had a poor shoot. He only collected eighteen kills and tied for third.
While Donald scored in the twenty-franc shoot, the Committee reclassified both the Mackintosh events as non-Olympic. But in the mysterious way in which the Olympic officialdom works, in 1992, he was finally awarded Olympic gold and bronze medals for his efforts in Paris.
Deadeye was a product of Rockbank, now an outer suburb of Melbourne. He originally shot for the Bacchus Marsh Club, bursting onto the scene, stunning the club with an easy-on-the-eye style and blessed with a natural trigger-pulling ability. His career took off. He was soon in demand on the professional shooting circuit. He often shot three days a week, touring the lucrative European circuit where crowds of 100,000 would turn out to see the champ take a bead on a Black Orpington pullet, a pet budgie or an endangered South American condor. He shot on the pro live parrot circuit from 1896 until 1908. His trick shooting was a sensation. He could bag a budgie from 200 metres with his head in a paper bag and ping a parrot from the car park sitting in the back seat of a Benz. His accuracy was recognised when he was tapped as world champion.
He could bag a budgie from 200 metres with his head in a paper bag and ping a parrot from the car park sitting in the back seat of a Benz.
When Donald was not banging away, he relaxed from the intense pressure of international competition by writing poetry. The poet with a loaded pen, the artist with a shotgun: it is such an Australian image. Knowing that Deadeye was a whizz with words it is easy to see why officialdom relocated the pigeon shoot to the cultural programme.
Donald had to give the sport away when he lost sight in his shooting eye, but he had the poetry trade to fall back on. He published Whooping Cough (‘The song of a one-eyed wombat as the bumper bar of the hearse approaches’). This award-winning volume of 230 poems was a popular seller between the World Wars, especially with the wilder, beret-and-maroon-velvet-jacket-wearing, bohemian smoking set that lurked in Melbourne’s downtown laneways. A critic swore that ‘All Deadeye’s rhyming couplet work with the fountain pen was infused with the stench of cordite and the flutter of feathers’. That top review is from The Lively Loon in Oriental Rugs vol 6, July 1924.
Shooting is still a great Olympic staple. On the current card there are six different disciplines. The men bang away at targets, starting with the ten-metre air-pistol, then the ten-metre air rifle or slug gun, followed by the twenty-five-metre rapid fire pistol; by now the contestants are getting warm, and next up is the tricky fifty-metre, and the three positions event (standing, kneeling and prone). The big cannons are then unpacked for the shotgun skeet and bringing the golden bang-off home is the ever-popular shotgun trap.
It is the same card for women shooters. But the show does not stop there. Team events begin with the ten-metre air-rifle mixed, ten-metre air-pistol mixed, and finally the curtain comes down on the Olympic Festival of the Boom with the team shotgun trap.
An Olympic shoot is a great day out for the whole family. All these separate disciplines require different training, different techniques, different weapons, and most importantly, different bullets. What a card! No wonder the world licks its lips in anticipation of this golden Festival of Detonation every four years.
An Olympic shoot is a great day out for the whole family.
Continuing Deadeye’s success, Patti Dench broke Australia’s shooting medal drought for women when she banged her way to medal glory, picking up bronze for the twenty-five-metre air pistol at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The Dench medal was in the bag years after Deadeye’s success in 1900 Games. But to return to our tale, it was time for the St Louis Games of 1904, the Games of the third Olympiad.
These Games were originally awarded to Chicago. But a clash of dates with the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition World Fair produced a big stink. The Baron de C. had to step into the ring of controversy with a packed peace pipe, strike a match and play Solomon. After passing the pipe around the circle, the Games tent was packed up and sent strolling down the highway from Chicago to St Louis. These were the first Games held outside Europe, but tensions created by the Russo-Japanese War meant that only sixty-two of the 651 athletes who took part came from outside North America: 645 men and six women turned up to have a crack at ninety-five gold medals in sixteen sports. To state the bleeding obvious, there was a huge Stateside home ground advantage.
Boxing made its Games debut, and Australia competed as a nation (without NZ). Basketball, hurling and baseball were the demonstration sports. When the action stopped and placings were decided, gold, silver and bronze medals were handed out for the first time.
Runners Corrie Gardner and Les ‘Macca’ McPherson made the long trip. The ‘G train’ placed sixth in the 110-metre hurdles and ninth in the long jump. Corrie was a well-known Australian Rules footballer, who pulled on the boots for Melbourne (forty-eight games) and Essendon (twelve). He played on the wing. He had a big tank. As a student at Melbourne Grammar, he was inspired to compete at the Olympics by a school visit from The Lion, Edwin Flack. When he lobbed in St Louis, he was surprised no accommodation had been arranged for him, so he had to camp out in a downtown park.
McPherson blew into Mound City and promptly withdrew from his event when he discovered the hurdles in the 400 metres were twelve inches lower than the ones he used in training. As he said in a letter back to his parents, ‘Mum, it was a total joke. I could not believe they wanted me to compete in this Mickey Mouse event!’
In 2009 a bunch of Games nerds trawling through the record books discovered there was a third Australian on the St Louis team. Francis Gailey was Australian and not American, as was previously believed. Frank swam in the 220-, 440- and 880-yard finals without success, but he did Australia proud when he was placed third in the one-mile swim. He lived in San Francisco after the Games and was thought to be an American, hence the century of record-keeping confusion.
These were unusual Games, spread out over four months. There were ninety-one events, forty-nine of which were contested by American athletes only. The final medal tally reflected this domination, with the United States winning seventy-seven gold medals; the next best results were Cuba and Germany, who won four each.
After a cup of tea and a lie-down, the bags were packed for London in 1908. Actually, Rome was the chosen venue, but the Games were moved to London after Mount Vesuvius blew its stack in 1906. Bad luck has dogged the Olympic city selection process. After the big blow, Italy was stuck for a quid. The move was not easy. These Games were stretched: they lasted six months and four days, the longest of the modern era.
Australia and New Zealand sent a combined team of thirty athletes and came away from London with one gold, two silver and two bronze.
The gold was in rugby. Silver went to middleweight boxer Snowy Baker, who lost the big one in a controversial split decision.
Snow took off the gloves and backed up for his pet events we
aring just the Speedos. He finished twenty-second in diving off the three-metre springboard. But Baker had a swim left in him. He plunged in, holding down a slot in the four-by-200 relay. Our team finished fourth.
Harry Kerr, the great walker with a twinkle in his toes, brought home bronze in the 3500-metre walk. The wizard of the wet, Frank Beaurepaire, flew to get second in the 400-metre free and backed up for third in the 1500 free. It was an excellent Games for the joint venture.
In 1912 the youth of the world packed their bags and shorts for Stockholm. The Olympic kerfuffle was gathering pace. The years were zipping by. It was time for the fifth Olympiad.
A total of 2408 competitors from twenty-eight countries competed in 102 events in fourteen sports. The Baron’s wheeze was getting serious. It was in Stockholm that Australian women swimmers began a run of remarkable success. Women’s swimming was included in the Games schedule for the first time.
The story of Australian golden success begins with Fanny Durack, but right from the start there were battles with swimming officialdom. Before our swimmers clambered onto the blocks, even before they got on the boat, the NSW Ladies Swimming Association opposed women participating in the Games. Fanny and her great rival Mina Wylie were refused permission by the NSWLSA to compete at Stockholm. Eventually, after pressure and protests, including the burning of the Ashfield pool in a night of wild ‘let them go’ outrage, officialdom caved in. The girls were allowed to go, provided they paid all their expenses.
The story of Australian golden success begins with Fanny Durack, but right from the start there were battles with swimming officialdom.