By Jay Bavishi, Ivy League Public Information

Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the freedom given by their forefathers— the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Every two years, the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter and Summer Games are a celebration. On Friday in Athens, Tora Harris, Sada Jacobson, Adam Nelson and the rest of the Olympians celebrate their ability to compete among the world’s best.

The Ivy Leaguers at the Athens Games matches the record for Ancient Eight representation at the Olympics -- 54 athletes also went to the 1924 Paris Games. But the Ivies in Athens, Paris, and every other site of the Olympic Games owe the experience to the contingent of athletes at the first modern Games -- 1896 in Athens.

In the early 1890’s, French baron Pierre de Coubertin began pushing for a revival of the ancient Greek Olympic Games. A December 1895 New York Times article describes the Baron:

"…a man who comes from the best conservative block of France, who is deeply interested in the moral regeneration of his country. At present he is exciting a great influence by his writings in the Temps, the Débats, and the Revue Bleue, and by his active work in the schools and among the youth of France. M. de Coubertin has visited America at various times with the view to studying the methods of American universities…M. de Coubertin is also the chief mover in the plan to re-establish the Olympic games in the coming year."

This article referred to an annual American Whig Society debate regarding French politics— sponsored by Coubertin and held at Princeton University’s Whig Hall. Coubertin had donated a medal for the debate on one of his visits to the United States. What the article fails to mention is that on his visits to America he made a point to meet with Princeton professor William Milligan Sloane.

Coubertin’s Olympic odyssey officially started in late November 1892 while at the fifth-anniversary congress for the Union of French Societies for Athletic Sports, where the Baron served as Secretary-General. Those who attended the congress were not nearly as enthusiastic as Coubertin was about the Olympic Games. Still interested in reviving the Games, Coubertin again voyaged to the United States to find support for his dream. In doing so he stayed with Professor Sloane in Princeton for three weeks out of his four-month journey.

The connection between the two men could be found on a level far greater than sports. Sloane spoke fluent French and Coubertin was at ease with English. Both were history buffs— Professor Sloane penned numerous books on French history, including a four-volume work on Napoleon Bonaparte.

On the subject of athletics, Sloane also took an interest in reviving the Games. Sloane had served on the Faculty Athletic Advisory Committee at Princeton, and had the answers to Coubertin’s questions about American intercollegiate sports -- with which the Baron was fascinated. Sloane also had contacts with the other prominent intercollegiate athletic programs -- which at that time were mostly the Ivy League schools.

The Baron kept pushing for the Games and took a huge step toward achieving his goal in June of 1894 at the Sorbonne Conference in Paris -- where he established an International Olympic Committee. Sloane was the only American representative to attend and the first American named to the IOC. He served on the committee until Coubertin’s resignation in 1925.

The New York Times described the conference in a May 21, 1894 article:

“An international athletic congress is to be held here between June 16 and 20 under the auspices of the French Societies for Athletics. Baron Pierre de Coubertin is Commissioner General, Prof. Sloane of Princeton is the American Commissioner, and Theodore Stanton is the American member of the Paris Executive Committee. The Prince of Wales, the King of Greece, and other royal personages have already consented to act as patrons of the undertaking, and President Cleveland has been invited to do the same. During the congress fetes will be given in the Bois de Boulogne, where one of the principal attractions will be the baseball game played by members of the Paris-American Art Association. Ambassador Eustis will be invited to preside on the occasion."

At that point the mission became official, they were going to revive the Olympics for 1896. Professor Sloane was the IOC’s link to get the United States excited about the Games and he worked tirelessly to put together a team. His focus was first on Princeton’s campus and then with Harvard University and the Boston Athletic Association.

At Princeton Sloane found Robert S. Garrett, Herbert Brotherson Jamison, Francis Adonijah Lane and Albert Clinton Tyler. Garrett, at the time, was the captain of the Princeton track team. He came from a wealthy family and paid the way to Athens for his three teammates.

The Princeton athletes traveled with six Bostonians: Charles Arthur Blake, Thomas Burke, Ellery Harding Clark, James Brendan Connolly, Thomas P. Curtis and William W. Hoyt. Curtis was the only non-Crimson, he had attended Columbia and MIT -- and Burke enrolled at Harvard after returning from Athens. Out of this group all but Connolly were traveling under the banner of the Boston Athletic Association -- the organization that administers the Boston Marathon. Harvard was adamantly opposed to sending a school-sponsored team.

The dean of Harvard College, Le Baron Russell Briggs, wrote this in a letter to Ellery Clark:

"May I ask you not to emphasize unduly the Harvard side of your athletic position. I am quite willing that the facts should be known; but I should not like an exaggeration of the facts. You go, as I understand it, in the capacity of a B.A.A. man, and the fact that you are a Harvard man is, so to speak, accidental."

Connolly, who would end up being the first Olympic champion at the Games and thus the first since the ancient Games over 1500 years prior, traveled as a member of the Suffolk Athletic Club. The B.A.A. was, at the time, filled only with members of society’s upper crust.

Emphasizing Harvard’s resistance to support these athletes’ efforts is the fact that three of them -- Ellery Clark, James Connolly, and William Hoyt -- were enrolled undergraduates at the time of the Games. Clark was the only one given permission to leave -- his cause was no doubt helped by the fact that the President of Harvard had attended Harvard with Clark’s father. Connolly simply withdrew from Harvard. Hoyt insisted to the College that a trip to Europe would help cure his 'weak health.'

Whether it was issues of money, or getting permission to withdraw from school, the team -- accompanied by B.A.A. trainer, and later Harvard track coach, John Graham—just barely left for Naples, Italy, from New York City on March 21, 1896, on the S.S. Fulda. Harvard grad, and expert marksman, John Paine left separately -- he went to Paris to recruit his older brother, and fellow Harvard grad, Sumner to join him in Athens.

The team reached Naples via Gibraltar where the athletes had their last real practice on land before the start of the Games. The other practices were relegated to the ship’s deck. The team then took a train to Brindisi, Italy, another boat to Patras, Greece, and finally one last train to Athens. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up between the Greek (Julian) and Western (Gregorian) calendars, they reached Athens on Sunday, April 5, the day before the opening ceremonies. A planned twelve-day training period had been narrowed to just 24 hours.

"Slowly the magnitude of the whole affair began to dawn upon us," Clark wrote in his first-hand account of the Games.

What went on over the next nine days for the U.S. team made up completely of Ivy Leaguers can be summed up rather quickly -- domination. The team posted 11 first-place finishes -- which at the time earned a silver medal not gold.

No one expects the contingent of 54 Ivy Leaguers at the 2004 Games to achieve that same success. However, the global growth and popularity of the Games have united the world's greatest on one stage to make domination impossible.

Yet winning is not the lone purpose of this journey. The Ancient Eight has been an integral part of the Games from its foundation and the Olympic spirit has long been at the heart of the Ivy League.


Other Sources:

A description of the Sorbonne Congress where the IOC was established
A research paper on Coubertin's relationship with Americans (Adobe Acrobat Required)
An IOC biography on the Baron
A brief IOC summary of the 1896 Games
A Harvard Magazine article from 1996 about the 1896 Harvard Olympians
A research paper on Coubertin's second visit to the United States (Adobe Acrobat Required)
The Official Olympic Report from 1896 (Adobe Acrobat Required)