[Click to read Chapter 1]
6
You know, the Olympics didn’t always have medals, or even the idea of second place. Back in the 8th century B.C. in Greece if you competed in an Olympic event you did so knowing it was a winner-take-all kind of thing. There was an olive wreath for the number one guy, and for all the losers, well, nothing. They didn’t have to make all that many wreaths, either, because in those days there was no pole vaulting, no synchronized swimming, no handball and no badminton. Just forget about table tennis.
The tradition of giving medals, in fact, did not begin until 1896 at the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens. Oddly enough, at those Games the first place winners got silver medals, not gold, while second place got copper, not bronze. The third place finishers, again, came up empty. It was not until the 1904 Games in St. Louis that the winners began receiving gold medals, with silver and bronze then going to second and third places.
Between 1896 and 1928 no two Olympic Games shared the same design for their medals. The medals for the 1900 Games in Paris weren’t even round, they were rectangular. A wide variety of places, objects and people—both real and mythical—showed up on the thousands of medals coined in those years. You could find the port of Antwerp, the Universal Exhibition monuments in Paris, Greek temples, and, of course, the Acropolis. There were laurel branches and palm leaves, assorted globes and crowns, sports equipment, a trumpet and even a harp, supposedly representing the cultural program of the Games.
As for the people, here’s where it got a little strange. As you might expect, both Zeus, the king of the gods, and Nike, the winged goddess of victory, made an early appearance on the medals. And there were plenty of anonymous figures, especially athletes, usually naked. There was a herald, proclaiming the opening of the Games, and female figures crowning some unnamed Olympic champion. Once—and only once—there was a victorious athlete helping the loser up off the ground beneath him. For local flavor, the medals offered both St. George the dragon slayer and Per Henrik Ling, the Swedish fencing master who founded the Central Gymnastic Institute in Sweden. In 1920 for the Games in Antwerp the medal designers took a true leap into obscurity with the representation of Silvius Brabo, a Roman soldier who was said to have cut off the hand of Druon Antigoon, the giant who was exacting a toll from anyone wishing to pass along the river Schelde in Antwerp.
Perhaps because they were afraid of what local oddity might come next, the International Olympic Committee held a competition before the 1928 Games to settle on a design for the medals. The Florentine artist Giuseppe Cassioli won the competition with a design that included the old reliable Nike on the front, holding a palm and a winner’s crown with a coliseum in the background, and an Olympic champion on the reverse, carried away by the crowd while he waved his arm in victory. That design remained the standard for the next nine Games, including the 1948 Games in London, until Munich in 1972.
From then on, all Olympic medals were 7 centimeters in diameter, and at least 3 millimeters thick. The gold medals are not gold; both the gold and silver medals must be 92.5 percent silver, and the gold medals are covered in 6 grams of gold. Bronze medals are bronze. Some psychological studies have shown that bronze medal winners are more satisfied than silver medal winners. Not so disappointed that they didn’t get the gold? Bronze looks more like gold? Who knows. For the Games in 1920, 912 medals were struck; by 1992 they numbered in the thousands. In some sports, like boxing and judo, there are multiple bronze medal winners, one for each eliminated semi-finalist. Such was the case with Jerzy’s medal; he was one of two bronze medal boxing winners in his weight class for 1948.
On the other hand, his medal in boxing was Poland’s only bronze medal in those Games; in fact, it was Poland’s only medal of any kind, and it represented their weakest showing in the history of the Games.
Amanda? She knew nothing of any of this as she took her first tentative steps toward the last room in the upstairs of Jerzy’s house in Brooklyn. She was just curious, and still pretty angry. She was looking for trouble, and getting ready to find it.
[Click to read Chapter 7 of Losing the Bronze]
Losing the Bronze is Copyright ©2009 Nigel Hinshelwood
