At the end of the year it’s been a tradition for Olympstats to post something to mark the holidays. This time we’ll focus on sportspeople and people who have other Olympic connections who were born at this time of year.

December 24 – Christmas Eve.

King George of Greece

The first person to mention was no Olympian in the standard sense but instead an important figure in the revival of the Games and whose family connections with Olympism span over three centuries.

Christian Wilhelm Ferdinand Adolf Georg  von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg was a prince of Denmark who was offered the Greek throne as a 17-year-old after the overthrow of the unpopular King Otto. As King George he offered his royal patronage to the 1896 Olympic Games and, later, the 1906 Intercalated Games, both of which increased his stature with the Greek public. In the fiftieth year of his reign, despite Greek successes in the first Balkan War, he lost his life to a gunman’s bullet. The assassin was variously described as an anarchist or mentally disturbed.

George’s son Constantine (Konstantinos) served as president of the Olympic Organizing Committees in 1896 and 1906 and his grandson, also George, served as president of the Greek Olympic Committee.

Another grandson, Prince Phillip of Great Britain, emulated his grandfather by officially opening the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne while a great-grandson, Prince Crown Prince Konstantinos (Constantine) was an Olympic champion in sailing. If you add in his links to the British and Spanish royal families, his bloodline links the first Olympic Games to the present day of 2022.

Anton Heida

In contrast, Anton Heida was not born into an aristocratic family. In fact after his competitive gymnastics career was over he performed in vaudeville as part of an acrobatic act called “The Olympic Trio”.

His unusual Olympic claim to fame is that he could be credited to have competed at the same Olympic Games for two different nations.  He was an Austrian native and when he won the team and individual all-around gold medal in the July turnverein competition, he was still an Austrian citizen. But he became a US citizen (which required that he renounce Austrian nationality) on 17 October 1904, so he was an American at the time of the late October gymnastics events

Alexis McAllister

Moving forward by more than a decade, Alexis McAllister was perhaps the outstanding performer in the 2022 FIFA football World Cup final. Unfortunately for him, Argentina were knocked out of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games in the group stage after a surprise loss to Australia

December 25 – Christmas Day

Freydoun Malcolm Khan

It’s an odd thought that the first Olympian produced by Iran was actually born on the holiest of Christianity’s holy days. Freydoun Malcolm Khan was born into Armenian-Persian aristocracy in London where his father was serving in London as minister plenipotentiary and later as ambassador.  His Olympic career saw him qualify for the second round of the Épée competition in 1900 but progress no further.

Noël Delberghe

An Olympic champion born on Christmas Day and with the given name Noël probably  fits the criteria to be mentioned in this post as well as anybody ever could be. Previously Great Britain had won all four Olympic water polo tournaments they had competed in but in 1924 they were defeated by the Hungarians by the odd goal in thirteen in their first round match. The Hungarians themselves were routed by Belgium in their next match and this led to a France versus Belgium final.

The French team, which included Delberghe from the Belgian border town of Tourcoing as one of their defenders, shut out their opponents for a memorable gold medal win.

Emanoul Aghasi

The second Iranian Olympian we mention to have been born on Christmas Day was also an ethnic Armenian. Better known as father to tennis superstar Andre Agassi, Emanoul competed at the London Olympics of 1948 and also four years later in Helsinki but lost his first boxing bout on both occasions. Aghasi retired from active competition after the 1952 Games and moved to Chicago to join his brother, renaming himself “Mike”.

Christ Noël Yarafa

To move things up a notch, it seems Christ Noël Yarafa of the Central African Republic is the ultimate in aptly named Olympians.  His Olympic performance was not outstanding as his national team finished 29^th of 30 teams in the teams time trial in 1992, one team did not complete the course, but as president of his country’s national cycling federation he is credited with almost single-handedly keeping the sport alive amid all the violence in the country, coaching and inspiring many young cyclists in Central Africa despite a chronic lack of funding for the sport.

Oleksiy Sereda

Oleksiy Sereda was born in 2005 and, as such, is still only 15 at the time of me writing this.

Already the Ukrainian has proved to be a stellar talent in the world of diving and has won medals in both the World and European championships and finished in the top six at the Olympic  Games on Tokyo. He has the potential to be a leading light for both his sport and trouble torn country for many years to come.

Lacrosse has been an infrequent guest at the Olympic Games. It was played at the 1904 and 1908 Olympics as a full medal sport then as a demonstration sport in 1928, 1932 and finally in 1948. Only three nations, Canada, the United States and Great Britain took part in the five editions of Olympic lacrosse.
With the possibility of the sport returning to the Olympic fold at Los Angeles 2028 it seems a good time to reflect upon the beginnings of the sport and its roots amongst the Native American communities of what is now the north east part of the United States and south east Canada.

The 1904 Olympic tournament was traditionally only competed between the Winnipeg Shamrocks and the hometown St. Louis Amateur Athletic Association but during my colleague Bill Mallon’s research into the St. Louis Games he discovered that a third team, from the Six Nations Reservation of Ontario, had competed and lost to the St. Louis team in what amounted to a semi-final.
The roster of the Six Nations team has been known for over 30 years but only in the form of the English translation of the tribal name of the players involved. Until today…

The traditional list of the team is as follows;
Almighty Voice, Black Eagle, Black Hawk, Flat Iron, Half Moon, Lightfoot, Man Afraid of the Soap, Night Hawk, Rain in Face, Red Jacket. Snake Eater, Spotted Tail.
Up until now it was impossible to link these names to those recorded in Canadian records but a finding by the Swedish athletics historian Tomas Magnusson has changed all that. We can now reveal that “Man Afraid of the Soap” was also known as Freeman Joseph Isaacs (1869-1937), the father of Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee Bill Isaacs.

Furthermore, we have solid evidence that the rest of Canada knew those squad players through their registered English names as opposed to their Native American names.
Those names being
Joe Crawford. Philip Jackson, Eli Warner, Amos Obediah, Thomas Will. Berman L. Snow, L. Bumbary,J. B. Eaver ,Eli Martin, Sandy Turkey, Austin Bill, W. E. Martin, Jacob Jamieson, Eli Henry, Joe Clark, Frank Seneca. Charlie Johnon, Robert Lottridge
Hopefully we may continue to gather more information until all the roster is revealed.

Freeman Joseph Isaacs
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/135901196/freeman-joseph-isaacs

I guess most of you reading this have memories of the 20th century but as we slip further into the current century we will eventually be replaced by those born after the millennium. On day 2 of the Pyeongchang Winter Games Redmond “Red” Gerard of the USA hastened this process by winning gold in the snowboard slopestyle for men and thus becoming the first Winter Olympic champion to have been born post 1999. Please note the careful choice of words there lest we get into the age-old argument of whether the current century began on January 1st, 2000 or January 1st, 2001. What is certain is that Gerard broke a host of age related records when he became Olympic champion.

Red Gerard

He became;

The youngest Olympic champion in snowboarding.

The youngest US Olympic Winter Games champion since 1928.

The first male Olympic champion to have been born in the 21st century.

The 3rd youngest Olympic Winter Games champion of all time (behind Billy Fiske (USA-1928-Bobsleigh) and Toni Nieminen (FIN-1988-Ski Jumping))

The list of Olympic champions born in the 2000s is as follows

[table]
Name,Sex,NOC,Sport,Year,DOB
Laurie Hernandez,F,USA,GYM,2016, 9 June 2000
Penny Olesniak,F,CAN,GYM,2016, 13 June 2000
Red Gerard,M, USA,SNB,2018, 29 June 2000
Ren Qian,F, CHN,DIV,2016, 20 February 2001
[/table]

For the record the first Winter Olympians born post 1999 were male ski jumpers in Pyeongchang.
In start order of the normal hill event they were;

[table]
Start order,Name,NOC,DOB
7th,Kevin Maltsev,EST,4 July 2000
18th,Jonathan Learoyd,FRA,3 November 2000
36th,Timi Zajc,SLO,26 April 2000
[/table]

Kevin Maltsev

And finally the youngest Olympic snowboard champions are as follows;
[table]
Name,Sex,NOC,Event,Year,Age
Red Gerard,M,USA,Slopestyle,2018, 17y 227d
Kelly Clark,F,USA,Halfpipe,2002, 18y 199d
Hannah Teter,F,USA,Halfpipe,2006, 19y 17d
Shaun White,M,USA,Halfpipe,2006, 19y 162d
Karine Ruby,M,FRA,Giant Slalom,1998, 20y 36d
[/table]

A comprehensive list of Olympic champions born in the 21st century will be available on this blog in around 150 years providing the technology of keeping brains alive in jars proves successful.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition here at Olympstats to publish a post at this time of the year with a tenuous link to the festive season. This year it takes the form of our version of the popular song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and we’ll try to cram in as many obscure links, bad puns and weak jokes as we can manage.

So let’s take you on a journey through the lyrics of the song….

On the First day of Christmas my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

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Links to trees we can find, Cuban runner Felix Carvajal interrupted the 1904 marathon to pick from an apple tree and paid the price with a case of stomach cramps while the German government rewarded every Olympic champion with a sapling of an oak tree in 1936, but pear trees seem to be impossible to link.

So in that case we rely on A. Partridge in the pairs.  Now it’s fair to say Alex rarely competed in pairs rowing after his career as a junior ended and his Olympic medals came as a member of a British eight in 2008 and 2012 but hey, it’s Christmas, so we’re relying on it being the season of good will here. Partridge won silver and bronze medals and had the unusual distinction of being first over the line in 2004 despite having never left England. He lost a place in Athens after suffering a collapsed lung in a race in Lucerne but his team-mates made sure his efforts were recognised by painting his name on the bow of his boat.

On the Second day of Christmas my true love sent to me two Turtle Doves

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We can find doves fairly easily. It can take us from British golfer William Dove in 1900 to Ashley Dove from South African baseball a century later and, if you include nicknames there’s even a turtle lurking in the shape of beach volleyball’s Misty May-Treanor.  Instead we’ll go down a more esoteric path and remember the Olympic tradition of releasing doves of peace during the opening ceremony and, specifically, why it came to an end. The year was 1988 and the doves had been released as they had been for decades with little more than increased laundry bills to mark the fact.  This time however the birds decided that rather than take the shortest route of the stadium they would wait a while and some even perched on the edge of the as yet unlit Olympic cauldron. Unfortunately for them they were still there when the time came to light the flame and were incinerated in an instant. There were no doves present in 1992 or any subsequent celebration except in the symbolic form of biodegradable paper doves

On the Third day of Christmas my true love sent to me three French Hens

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You may think of aquatics here but even we draw the line at swimming poule puns so we’ll go the obvious this time. There doesn’t seem to be a French connection but Jennifer Hens competed for Australia in the air rifle event at the Rio Olympics. Sadly for her she could only finish 39^th of the 51 competitors which probably left her in a foul mood. Equally René Lasserre, the French rugby player, was given the nickname “Poulet” which translates as chicken.

On the Fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me four Calling Birds

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Calling birds is actually a fairly recent addition to the lyrics. Originally it was Colley birds, an English dialect word for the colour black. If we favour that then Gambian sprinter Saruba Colley becomes our prime suspect. Realistically though we need a Bird calling the shots so who better than Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird? Bird was still a high school student in 1976 and had to wait until NBA players were allowed to take part before making his Olympic debut in 1992.

On the Fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me five Gold Rings

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So this one is easy right? Five rings on the Olympic flag – an unmistakeable sign of the Olympic movement since Baron de Coubertin designed it in 1912. According to him “the six colours [including the flag’s white background] combined in this way reproduce the colours of every country without exception. The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the tricolour flags of France, England, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Hungary, and the yellow and red of Spain are included, as are the innovative flags of Brazil and Australia, and those of ancient Japan and modern China. This, truly, is an international emblem.”

Alternatively if you want an actual gold ring you look to “Bullet Bob” Hayes, the only man to win an Olympic gold medal and a gold Superbowl ring.

On the Sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me six Geese a-Laying

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Famously Olympic legend Emil Zatopek used to race his family’s geese on his way from school as a youngster leading his mother to complain how hard it was to fatten the birds when Emil would accidentally include them in his training regime.

Three geese have actually competed at Olympic level in their youth. Well, sort of. A young goose is called a gosling and three of that name have appeared at the Games. William Gosling was a member of the victorious football team in 1900 and later became the High Sheriff of Essex, Bermudan diver Frank Gosling (nicknamed Goose) competed in 1948 and 1952 after serving a pilot guarding naval convoys to Russia during WW2 and more recently New Zealand hockey player Dion Gosling appeared in Athens.

And, for completeness, I have to point that badminton shuttlecocks have traditionally been made from goose feathers and that a flock of geese featured at part of the opening of London 2012.

On the Seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven Swans a-Swimming

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Once Lianna Swan swam at the Rio Olympics there could be no other choice here. Born to an English father and a Pakistani mother she had the good sense to finish in 7^th place in her heat of the 50m freestyle so that she would literally be a swan a-swimming to seventh.  The Swan sisters who competed for Brazil in sailing probably wouldn’t be as happy to find themselves swimming and neither would those Olympian members of Australia’s Swan River Rowing Club.  If multiple gold medal winning cross country skier Gunde Svan found himself swimming then it’s fair to guess that climate change is doing some strange things to the Winter Olympics.

On the Eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me eight Maids a-Milking

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From an easy choice to a much more difficult pick.  American wrestling gold medallist Rulon Gardner grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm but he’d probably not thank you for calling him “a maid a-milking”.  New Zealand equestrian star Mark Todd sold most of his herd of dairy cattle to finance his successes at the 1984 Games and 1992 gold medallist Sally Gunnell began her hurdling career by jumping hay bales at her family’s dairy farm. If you look beyond the milk references you can find Tilly van der Made, a Dutch runner of the 1960s.

On the Ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me nine Ladies Dancing

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Believe it or not there is a crossover between Olympic sports and ballet.  Sophie Hichon won a bronze medal in the women’s hammer at the Rio Olympics after studying ballet for a decade and the same can be said of Canadian skeleton slider Sarah Reid.  Ski Ballet (later acroski) was a demonstration sport a quarter of a century ago but its chances of becoming a full medal sport have faded dramatically since as the popularity of the event declined so dramatically that official competitions ended in 2000. More recently ballroom dancing (in its guise as dancesport) has lobbied for inclusion.

On the Tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me ten Lords a-Leaping

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Lord’s cricket ground hosted the archery events in 2012 and the Italian men’s certainly celebrated their gold medal win with a lot of leaping about.  This time we can actually find ten Lords. We have US diver Alice Lord, her compatriots Harvey (track and field) and Arthur (golf), Australians in the form of Max (basketball), Ron (football) and Karen (swimming), athlete Fred and swimmer Bob from Great Britain, South African rower David and Swedish swimmer Torsten.

But that only adds up to nine you say? So let’s add an actual titled Lord to the list. Lord Burghley who won the 400m hurdles title at the 1928 Olympics and then spent nearly half a century as a true “Lord of the Rings” as a member of the IOC.

On the Eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me eleven Pipers Piping

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With a generous interpretation of the rules you can actually get to eleven pipers at the Olympic Games. Six people with that surname have competed at the Games – the most successful by far being the Canadian ice hockey player Cherie Piper with three gold medals. Piper’s team won 15 out of 15 games during her Olympic career and scored ten goals for every one conceded.

So where do we find the extra five pipers?  Strangely the answer comes from 1924 in Paris. For some reason the British team were escorted during the opening ceremony by five kilted military bagpipe players. What the French made of it is not recorded.

On the Twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me twelve Drummers Drumming

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So we’ve reached the end of our not very serious journey  and… we’ve reached a dead end. No Olympians called Drum, Drumm or Drummer. No Snares, no one called Hi-Hat or Cymbals. A few called Bass but that seems tenuous even for us. So instead we’ll retreat once more to the comfort of Olympic ceremonies. In Beijing 2008 drummers marked the start of the opening ceremony (though we’ll have their word for the exact number – they’re really wasn’t time to count) with a display of traditional Chinese drumming while four years later the deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie led a mere thousand drummers during the section based on the Industrial Revolution.

So there we are – we’ve reached the end of our circuitous journey and, if we’ve cheated a little at times, please forgive us. It is Christmas after all…

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Olympic Year of 2018 from all at Olympstats.com.

 

http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/ lists ever Olympic gold medal winner that has ever lived so you might be surprised to know that this post concerns Olympic champions that have never graced the pages of that website. These are the champions who have only existed within the covers of a book, the frames of a cartoon or whilst projected on the silver screen or into your homes via television. For decades writers have used the Olympic Games as a backdrop to stories of sporting triumph or, in some cases, used a supposed Olympic background to emphasize the heroic and villainous traits of a character.
Let’s start with the movies. I have deliberated avoided films which are based on real Olympic history, even those whose grasp on history is at best fairly tenuous.

If you consider the headlines of the last few weeks it’s with a certain sense of irony we begin with the character of Ivan Drago from the 4th instalment of the Rocky series of movies. The chemically assisted Soviet boxer, probably designed as a champion from the Moscow Olympics, may be a caricature of Communist era Russia but has remained a popular villain in the thirty years since the film was released. The script also makes it clear that Drago’s wife, Ludmilla, is herself an Olympic champion in the swimming pool. Incidentally the actor, who played Drago, Dolph Lundgren, had a genuine Olympic link – he was the section manager for the US modern pentathlon team in Atlanta in 1996.

Ivan Drago

The Rocky series may be nearly forty years old now but that’s nothing compared to the longevity of James Bond. In the 2002 film “Die Another Day” we are introduced to MI6 agent Miranda Frost, an Olympic champion from the Sydney Olympics, who is eventually revealed to be in the debt of the North Korean villain of the piece after he arranged that her opponent for gold “overdosed on steroids”. An earlier film in the series, “For Your Eyes Only”, featured an East German Olympic biathlete turned assassin.
Shooting seems a popular Olympic sport in cinematic terms with the Oscar nominated 2014 film “American Sniper” featuring, as a main antagonist, a Syrian Olympic champion marksman called Mustafa and, as strange as it seems, another fictional champion shooter threatened to cause a diplomatic incident for a time in 2005. The Bollywood film “Sarkar” features an Olympic medallist from Dubai who is hired as a contract killer. Unfortunately for the filmmakers the UAE’s only Olympic medal at the time had come from Sheikh Ahmed al-Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family, in trap shooting. An apology was sent to Sheikh Ahmed and the controversial scenes were edited.

1937 saw the release of “Charlie Chan at the Olympics”, which blended real footage from the Berlin Games into a murder mystery. After the eponymous hero solves the crime he finds time to watch his son win an Olympic swimming title.

Even the ancient Olympic Games has been referenced on celluloid in cartoon form through the shape of “Asterix at the Olympic Games” where the eponymous Gaulish hero wins an Olympic title when every one of his opponents succumb to the temptation of magic potion and is disqualified.

One of the best movies to be based around the subject was “Downhill Racer”, a 1969 vehicle for the then box-office sensation Robert Redford, which centred on a brash American making his way on the European skiing circuit and towards an Olympic title. The acclaimed critic Roger Ebert said at the time it was “the best movie ever made about sports—without really being about sports at all.”
The following year film producer and self-confessed Olympic fan Richard F. Zanuck produced “The Games”, a movie based on four runners of vastly differing backgrounds who competed for glory in the marathon at a fictional Rome Olympics. Filmmakers have long seen athletics as a rich seam to mine for Olympic movies as was seen in the 1955 film Geordie, about a Scottish Hammer thrower and Golden Girl from 1979 which centred on the premise of a neo-Nazi scientist adopting an American orphan with the single purpose of turning her into an Olympic pentathlon champion.

Other sports that have flourished on the silver screen include figure skating in the guise of romantic comedy “The Cutting Edge”. The story of a spoilt American skater teaming up with a former ice hockey player on and off the ice was successful enough to spawn three sequels. The dubious acting talents of Dolph Lundgren once again feature in “Pentathlon”, probably the only thriller based around the Olympic modern pentathlon. Lundgen plays an East German champion whose comeback for the 1988 Olympic Games is threatened by his former coach turned neo-Nazi terrorist. It was badly received at the time and is generally considered the worst movie on this list. 1997’s “Murder at 1600”, with Diane Lane as a US Secret Service agent who was also an Olympic shooting champion, was another that was panned by the critics.

Moving our attention towards television, and also to the distant future, we can point out that 1960s kids TV puppet show Thunderbirds. The show, which was hugely popular in the UK and Australia, featured a character called Gordon Tracy who was / will be an Olympic swimming champion at the butterfly stroke around the year 2060. Much later US animated comedy series “Futurama” introduced the limbo into the 30th century incarnation of the Olympics and set one of the main characters, Jamaican bureaucrat Hermes Conrad, on a quest for the championship against his arch rival Barbados Slim.

In literature the classic children’s book “Matilda” by Roald Dahl featured the fearsome Miss Trunchbull who was described as an Olympic javelin, discus and hammer thrower from the 1972 Olympics. It is unknown if she was successful in her efforts in Munich. The introduction of a “throwing the girl by her pigtails” event might have ensured victory.
Another favourite of children was the runner Alf Tupper, the “Tough of the Track”, whose appearances in British comics lasted from 1949 to 1992. His longevity as a middle distance runner is marked by his wins at both the Helsinki and Barcelona Olympics.

The theatre has not provided much to add to this list with the exception of “Amigos”, a play by the award winning Australian playwright David Williamson. It concerns the relationships inside a medal winning rowing quartet thirty four years after they reach the podium at the 1968 Games.

Of course there may be more that we have missed, please feel free to remind us of any omissions.
Thanks to David Clark for suggesting this subject.

Some of you may recognize the quote that headlines this posting as being from the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that one of the reasons that the Olympic Games existed in ancient times was for the training of both body and soul that would be required in times of military conflict. Whether he is right or wrong is a matter for personal conscience but one thing that cannot be denied is that, since the advent of the modern Games, many Olympians have fought and died as soldiers or have been killed as part of a myriad of conflicts across the globe.

On the day which Americans call Veterans Day and which other countries call Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, we can indeed remember them.
http://www.sports-reference.com currently lists 752 casualties of war on our website.

The full list is, sadly, too long to list here but is available at http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/friv/lists.cgi?id=65

However we can list a dozen representative examples.

Ron Zinn (USA)
Athletics
Although assumed deceased, technically still listed as MIA (missing in action) in Vietnam.

Janusz Zalewski (Poland)
Sailing
Member of the Polish resistance. Injured during the 1944 Warsaw Rising, he was murdered along with fellow hospital patients and medical staff during Nazi reprisals.

Teófilo Yldefonso (Phillipines)
Swimming
Killed in concentration camp Capas, following the Bataan Death March.

Tony Wilding (New Zealand)
Tennis
Joined the British army and was leading an armoured car unit when he was killed at Aubers Ridge during the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle.

Silvano Abbà (Italy)
Modern Pentathlon
Abbà was a military man, who led the Italian Savoy Cavalry squadron in August 1942 at the Battle of Izbushensky near Volgograd. Abbà was killed, along with 700 other riders who were slaughtered by the Soviets. It is considered the last cavalry charge in military history.

Werner Seelenbinder (Germany)
Wrestling
Killed by beheading in Brandenburg Prison after years in concentration camps for leading resistance movements against the Nazis.

Birger Wasenius (Finland)
Speed Skating
Killed during the Winter War early in 1940 while fighting for the Finnish army on the islands of Lake Ladoga.

Freddie Tomlins (Great Britain)
Figure Skating
Killed as a RAF crew-member in fight against a German submarine in/over the British Channel.

Henryk Szlązak (Poland)
Wrestling
Killed by an artillery shell during the Warsaw Uprising.

Percival Molson (Canada)
Athletics
Killed in action when hit by mortar fire while attempting to rescue a fallen friend on the outskirts of Avignon, France.

Stella Agsteribbe (Netherlands)
Gymnastics
Killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

André Corvington (Haiti)
Fencing
Killed in action in World War I near Reims whilst serving as a medic in the French army.

Born into a medical family, his father Henri Forestier was a director at the therapeutic spas in Aix-les-Bains. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and made a commander of the Légion d’honneur for his bravery in the First World War as a field doctor. Whilst completing his medical studies he excelled for the university rugby team and was called up to play for the hastily put together French team for the 1920 Antwerp Games. Forestier was also an excellent swimmer and skier.

It was in the field of medicine however that Forestier was to excel. Working with the neurologist Jean-Athanase Sicard, he pioneered radiodiagnosis in neurology with the discovery of the use of Lipidol and is also remembered for his introduction of gold salts as a remedy for rheumatoid arthritis. Forestier has the unusual distinction for an Olympian of having a disease name after him – Forestier’s disease is a degenerative spinal arthritis found predominately in elderly men.

[table]

Full Name,Max Phillip Emmerich
Born,1 June 1879 in Indianapolis (USA)
Died,29 June 1956 in Indianapolis (USA)
Affiliations, Socialer Turnverein Indianapolis (USA)
Country ,United States
[/table]
[table]
Year-Sport,Event,Place,
1904,Athletics,All-Around, DNF
1904,Gymnastics, Individual All-Around Men , 67th
1904,Gymnastics, Individual All-Around Field Sports, Men, Gold
1904,Gymnastics, Individual All-Around Apparatus Work, 100th
[/table]

From Indianapolis, Max Emmerich competed in two sports at the 1904 Olympics. Besides the gymnastics events he entered the all-around competition in track & field. At that sport, however, his participation lasted only a few seconds; as in the first event – the 100 yard dash – he pulled up lame after only a few yards. Emmerich won the triathlon in the gymnastics program, but it was really a track & field competition. It consisted of the 100 yard dash, long jump, and shot put, and was a part of the 12 event all-around competition.

In 1909 Emmerich, a bank clerk at the Capitol National Bank in Indianapolis, suddenly disappeared. Suspicious bank officials examined his accounts and brought in the Pinkerton Detective Agency when it became apparent that fraudulent transactions had taken place. Emmerich was tracked by a Pinkerton detective to a motel in Jacksonville, Florida, from where he was about to leave for South America, arrested and returned to Indiana. Emmerich, fellow Olympian Harry Prinzler and another conspirator were each sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling $40,000. When released in 1913 he returned to accountancy.

A hundred years ago this month British Empire and French forces embarked on what became known as the Gallipoli or Dardanelles campaign against the Ottoman Empire with the aim of capturing the capital city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). One of the bloodiest campaigns of World War One, the failure of the Allied Forces brought down the British government and left a lasting legacy particularly in Australia and New Zealand where the date on which the campaign began is now remembered as ANZAC day. Although the exact figures are disputed it’s believed that over 100,000 soldiers were killed during the campaign including approximately 60,000 Turks, 34,000 British and Irish, 10,000 French, 8000 Australians and 2500 New Zealanders as well smaller numbers from Newfoundland and India.

War cemeteries

Amongst the dead where two men who competed at the Olympic Games;
Oswald Carver was the private school educated son of a wealthy Manchester merchant. He studied at Charterhouse School and at Cambridge University where he rowed in 1908 Varsity Boat race. Later that summer Carver was a crew member of the University boat that won the bronze medal at the first London Olympics. A captain in the Royal Engineers he was wounded in the back on the 4th of June 1915 and died three days later. He left a widow and two children.

Paul Kenna was a career soldier who earned the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military honour, for bravery during the Anglo-Sudan War.
“On 2 September 1898, at the Battle of Omdurman, Sudan, when a major of the 21st Lancers was in danger, as his horse had been shot in the charge, Captain Kenna took the major up on his own horse, to a place of safety. After the charge Captain Kenna returned to help Lieutenant De Montmorency who was trying to recover the body of an officer who had been killed”
He also fought in Somalia and in the Boer War before making his Olympic appearance in 1912 in his fiftieth year. In October 1915 Brigadier-General Kenna was touring the front line when he was shot and killed by a sniper.

Paul Kenna

Chris Porter was not technically an Olympian since he was only a non-playing member of the Great Britain football team at the 1908 Olympics but it would be an oversight not to mention him here. The son of a Manchester publican played league football, as an amateur, for Stockport County and Glossop North End and was a free scoring member of the England national amateur team.
Porter served as a private with the 6th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment but was sadly killed in action during the Gallipoli Campaign in June 1915.

The events of the Gallipoli Campaign particularly resound in Australia as this was the first time Australian troops had ever suffered large losses. Although a number of prominent Australian sportsmen lost their lives during the campaign, no Australian Olympian perished in the conflict.
Claude Ross, who competed at 400m in the Stockholm Olympics, survived only to be killed later in the war whilst serving in France. Rower Keith Heritage was amongst the first to land and last to leave the peninsular but he too met his fate whilst serving on the Western Front.

Wilfred Kent-Hughes was wounded at Gallipoli but recovered to claim a place in the Australian team in the 400m hurdles. Although a Member of Parliament at time, he served as an officer in the Australian Army in WW2 and was a prisoner of war in Singapore. He was to become the chairman of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Committee.

Olympic rugby champions Sydney Middleton and Tom Richards, swimmer Frank Schryver and athlete turned actor Joseph Lynch also served in the Dardanelles.