Martin Smith - The Telegraph Book of the Olympics

In memory of David Welch, Fleet Streets finest Sports Editor and the man who provided the catalyst for Londons successful bid to host the Games of the XXX Olympiad. The tragedy is that he will not be there to see his dream fulfilled.

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not the winning but the taking part. Although this is Baron Pierre de Coubertins most familiar motto, when the athletes appear for the first time at the Olympics in London it will be something else he said that will be ringing in their ears. Citius, fortius, altius means Faster, stronger, higher but in its least competitive interpretation it can be taken as meaning: never mind going for gold just aim to beat your personal best.

This may have been the case with some events at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, but it has not always been so. Think of Hitlers Games of 1936, or the drug-fuelled Eastern bloc regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, or the unashamed ambition of China to sit atop the medal table at the Beijing Games in 2008. However, the one consistent theme in every Olympics has been, and always will be, the absolute necessity to produce your best on the only day that truly matters during the four-year cycle of an Olympiad. Its the one day when there can be no excuses, no if onlys: when theres nowhere to hide. Every athlete aims to peak on this day, and it is the knowledge that your competitors are in the shape of their lives, expecting to deliver their ultimate performance when its required, that makes the drama of Olympic competition so captivating and winning so special.

And its not just the athletes who enjoy the countdown to the Games. Journalists know that what they write will be read for years to come by people who might not even have been born when the Games took place. In the instantaneous and disposable world we inhabit today its vital that special skill and ambition be preserved, rewarded and celebrated. The best writers can place us at events long since past, allowing us to relive the tension, the atmosphere, the action and reaction, and those who were not present to feel the excitement as close to first hand as possible.

My contribution to this book was written in Athens as I reflected on winning my second Olympic gold medal. Retirement followed, and my Olympic role at Beijing 2008 changed from competitor to Telegraph reporter. Others in the book who have been both the observed and the observer include Lord Sebastian Coe and my former crewmate and now Telegraph colleague Sir Steve Redgrave, true Olympic royalty who won five gold medals at five Olympics. In his piece, Sir Steve describes how he met the legendary American 400-metres hurdler Edwin Moses and was so awestruck he could hardly speak. That may appear illogical, but it somehow sums up the aura of the Olympic Games, where the spirit of Citius, fortius, altius turns men into gods and will be called upon once again in London this summer.

JAMES CRACKNELL

February 2012

The third coming of the Olympic Games to London provides an opportune moment to reflect upon 116 years of endeavour, struggle and glory on sports greatest stage. As this book illustrates, The Daily Telegraph has been there reporting and analysing since Baron Pierre de Coubertin rose to his feet in the Sorbonne in the last decade of the nineteenth century A.D., and made an impassioned plea for a modern version of the Games originally performed by the Ancient Greeks. And the Telegraph will still be there when the Flame is extinguished to mark the end of the Games of the XXXth Olympiad in the summer of 2012.

It was the London Games of 1908 that really enthused the Telegraph, and every Olympics since have been reported by staff writers. In fact, so enthralled were the Telegraph by the Games centred on The Great Stadium at Shepherds Bush in west London, that they devoted page after broadsheet page of non-illustrated, small-print coverage, day after day. It has not been possible to reproduce here everything that was published during the course of those Games, but it would be considered well nigh exhaustive even by twenty-first century standards. At times it was almost as if the newspaper was the official mouthpiece of the organisers; their every communication was relayed with almost meticulous obsequiousness. You could barely move for information about the Marathon, which was being billed from the start as the centrepiece of the whole shebang. In the days before the race, there were thorough details about the 26-mile 385-yard route from Windsor to the Stadium, where to watch, road closures, instructions to the competitors attendants about where they could follow on bicycles, what would happen if runners had to drop out, and suggestions of who might win. The reports of the race and its aftermath went on for pages; there really were few angles overlooked. The story of Dorando Pietri erroneously called by his forename Dorando initially, but corrected later was manna from heaven. His stumbling, shambling display on the track, getting up, falling over, helped back up again, and his subsequent disqualification for illegal assistance, was described, picked over and commented upon as the biggest news story of the day. There was reaction from Italy, Pietris home, reaction from America, home of Johnny Hayes, the eventual winner, and reaction from Buckingham Palace, where Queen Mary was so caught up in it that she announced she was going to present a cup to the little Italian who had touched her heart. There was even a notice to contradict rumours that Pietri had passed away, like Pheidippides, the original Marathon runner, terminally exhausted by his exertions. When a fully recovered Pietri appeared at the following days prize-giving ceremony, he was accorded a welcome unprecedented in those days but which we would recognise as a forerunner to modern-day celebrity: it was as if David Beckham had entered the arena. The Telegraphs man sought out the hero of the hour for an interview, conducted through enthusiastic interpreters, and was able to pass on to readers details of Pietris background, as well as news of a plethora of marriage proposals sent by smitten female admirers.

The success of London, and the interest generated for the Olympics themselves, encouraged the Telegraph to dispatch an unnamed Special Correspondent to the Games in Stockholm four years later. In todays world of soundbites and mixed zones, reporters are forever bobbing up and down and out of their seats in the stands to chase their stories; for much of the first half of the twentieth century, the journalists would remain in their allotted place and report chronologically what was passing before their eyes. So their report for the following days paper might start with the Marathon runners leaving the stadium, continue with heats of the 1,500 metres, some Greco-Roman wrestling, news from the halfway mark in the Marathon, the high jump and high-hurdle preliminaries, and conclude with the arrival of the runners some two and a half hours later from their circuit of the world outside. The prose was often purple, the competitors almost swamped by the colour. In 1924 B. Bennison, the first Olympics reporter to be by-lined, only gets to the description of Harold Abrahamss Chariots of Fire 100-metres gold medal after he has noted a world record in the 400 metres hurdles by an American.

Bennison covered the Games single-handedly through Antwerp, Paris and Amsterdam. Then it was back to a Special Correspondent for the long trip to Los Angeles in 1932, and the odd comment on the athletics from Bevil Rudd, of whom more in a sentence or two. However, in the lead-up to the 1936 Games the