The Olympic flame was born in Amsterdam, women were allowed to join track and field and an IOC plot to grant exclusive photographic rights to one company was foiled amid public protests outside a stadium that would become one of the most celebrated Olympic architectural structures in the history of the Games.
Although there were 78 fewer competitors in Amsterdam, at 3,014, than there had been in Paris four years earlier, 290 of the total (as opposed to 136 in Paris), were now women. A record 46 nations took part in 109 events at a Games that marked a move against accepting all that the IOC wanted.
Succeeded by Henri de Baillet-Latour as IOC president, Pierre de Coubertin, by then 65, was too ill to attend a Games that he was perhaps best to stay away from. De Coubertin had long spoken out against women on the track. Against his wishes, the IOC had, however, been forced to allow women onto the track after a world women's organisation held its own Games for female athletes in competition to the Games themselves.
As had been the case in Paris 1924, the stars of the show were yet again Paavo Nurmi and Johnny "Tarzan" Weissmuller. Nurmi added three more medals to take his tally to 12 successes in three Games, while Weissmuller would reinforce his status as the fastest man in water before retiring to fame on the silver screen as the original Hollywood Tarzan.
Amsterdam marked the start of one of the most remarkable winning runs in Olympic history. The hockey tournament was won by India, whose victory was the first of six successive triumphs by that nation until Pakistan took the title from them in Rome 1960.
The IOC attempted to grant exclusive rights to a photographic company for the first time but the measure meant confiscating cameras from the queuing public. Protests ensued outside the stadium designed by Jans Wils that would eventually be awarded first prize at an Olympics design competition, and the IOC lost its appetite for monopoly.
For the first time at the Games, a flame was ignited on the marathon tower in front of the stadium, a tradition that survives to this day, while Greece, as birth nation of the Games, led the parade at the opening ceremony for the first time.
Among nations to enjoy their first gold-medal successes were Japan. Lina Radke-Batschauer's victory in the 800m represented the first victory in athletics for Germany and would mark the start of a change in the atlas of sporting success. Indeed Germany's readmission to the Games was truly triumphant, its athletes rising to runners-up on the medal table with 10 gold medals behind the US tally of 22 gold, 18 silver and 16 bronze medals. Britain finished 11th with just three victories.
CRAIG LORD
The Times
