1952 Summer Olympics Helsinki: XV Olympiad

A resurrection of the 1940 poster
featuring Paavo Nurmi

Having been under consideration in 1936 (no votes) and  actively seeking nomination in 1940 (second) Helsinki finally got to stage their games. They had been awarded the 1940 Games after Tokyo had been forced to abandon its hopes of hosting the games in 1938.

Progress on many of the Olympic venues had been well under way in 1939 when Europe once again found itself at war and Finland too found itself fighting for its independence. Indeed the Organising Committee were in air raid shelters whilst enemy bombing of Helsinki was going on while they decided on the winner of the competition to compose an Olympic Fanfare, it was to be heard only in 1952.

In the first round of balloting Helsinki had 14 votes the other 15 were split between Amsterdam (3) and the US cities of Minneapolis (4), Los Angeles (4), Detriot (2), Chicago (1) and Philadelphia (0). With the bottom three eliminated on the second round each of the top three received one additional vote enough to push Helsinki over 50%.


Nations 69 (+10)
Competitors 4955 (+841)
Sports 17 (nc)
Events 136 (+7)

19 July to 3 August, 1952 hosted by Helsinki, Finland

At 60°10′15″N Helsinki is the most northerly city ever to have hosted the Summer Olympics, beating nordic neighbour Stockholm's 59°19′46″N from 1912.

The poster for the games showed an illustration of Finland's own great distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who feats were to emulated by another great distance runner at these games (see below). The design was originally intended for the 1940 Games that Helsinki were preparing for at short notice. Along with 1912 triple distance running Gold medalist Hannes Kolemainen he did bear the Olympic Torch on its final leg to light the flame.

First Soviet gold medalist and indeed 1,2,3
wrapped in their blankets between throws

Israel were a new Olympic nation at the 1952 games they had been the 6th nation, as Palestine, to accept the invitation to the 1940 Helsinki Games but because of the war of independence in 1948 had not been able to make their debut then.

Also making a very much delayed first appearance was the USSR, the first gold for what became one of the Olympic Superpowers went to Nina Romanskova in the discus, in what was also the first instance of the Hammer and Sickle flag flying from all three poles in an Olympic ceremony as Yelisaveta Bagriantseva and Nina Dumbadze (who had lost her World record [53.37m] to Romanskova [53.61m] a month before and would reclaim it in October [57.04m]) took silver and bronze respectively. In the end the Soviet Union ended up 2nd in the medal table taking 22 Gold, 30 silver and 19 Bronze medals. They were most dominant in the Gymnastics something that is still true today taking nine of the possible 15 medals on offer and 22 out of the 47 medals of offer. Taking out the three team medals where they could only win one in each event that is half of all the medals awarded

1956 medalists in the womens K-1 500m in the German
colours on the left is arguably the only medalist for an
independent Saar

There were invites send out to the three German states at the time. Yes I did say three. The Federal Republic of Germany (West) accepted the invite sending 173 men and 32 women to take part in 123 events winning 7 silver and 17 bronze medals, the German Democratic Republic (East) did not send a team. The other German nation was Saarland or the Saar Protectorate that existed on the German/French border. The team from Saar produced  no medalists and returned to the Federal Republic on 1 Jan 1957, although their athletes competed for West Germany in the 1956 games, making this their only appearance at the Olympics. However, of all the years that German athletes took part in the Games this was the only time they failed to win a Gold.

However, if we are to look at Saar based on time as a separate state one of their 1952 athletes did pick up a medal for them in 1956. Her name was Therese Zenz and in the sea off Helsinki in her kayak only came 9th in K-1 500m. But in 1956 she would win silver in the same event (effectively Saar's only Olympic medal while not under the control of Germany), she repeated the achievement in 1960 (pictured on left) adding a second silver in the K-2 500m.

The People's Republic of China also competed for the first time. This lead to The Republic of China (Formosa/Taiwain) withdrawing their athletes from competition.

Other less controversial first time nations were The Bahamas, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Guatemala, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Netherlands Antilles, Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam.

Sport innovations

There were no new Olympic events although the women gymnasts rather than taking part in just a team event had the events we know today, floor, vault, beam and uneven bars as individual events along with their overall team event. The Modern Pentathlon also saw the introduction of the team event based on the scores of the individual event. Elsewhere there were minor changes to classes and division of competition but there was nothing majorly different event wise from London 4 years previously.

However, there were innovations as to how the results could be relayed to spectators. In the athletics stadium and electric scoreboard was used to convey the results of the running events. At the jumping and throwing events numbers were flipped over to convey how the competitors were doing. At other venues where space was limited a codification of nations names to 2-5 letters was used to indicate results on score boards, this did away with the need to show things in 4 languages. This was the start of the standard three letter codes we now all now recognise for international sport of all types, not just at the Olympics.

Women and non-military on Horseback

For the first game the Equestrian events were opened up to non-military officers. This also as a result led to women being able to compete. It also remains the only sport that men and women compete for the same medals in all events on an equal basis regardless of gender. Most of the other Olympic sports have male and female events.

This led to the Danish dressage rider Lis Hartel making history as the first woman to win an Olympic medal on horseback in the individual event. Considering that the London Olympics emerge in the year of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee the fact that in the year of the accession of such a horse loving monarch the first woman to win an equestrian medal did so on a horse called Jubilee. Even more astounding is that Mrs Hartel as a result of polio was paralysed below the knees and required assistance to mount and dismount. The duo where to repeat their silver performance in four years time when the Melbourne equestrian events were held in neighbouring Sweden at Stockholm (but more on the reasons why next week).


Lebanese medals

Zakaria Chibab first
Silver medal for Lebanon

Lebanon gained their first Olympic medals in the 1952 Games. Indeed totally 1952 has provided half of all the medals that the Levant state has achieved and they were both gained in the same event. It even warrants a mention in the official report of the Games.

A pleasant surprise was the emergence among the medalists of two Lebanese wrestlers P. 347

Those medals game in the Greco-Roman Wrestling silver in the bantamweight class (52-57kg) to Zakaria Chibab and bronze in the Welterweight class (67-73kg) to Khalil Taha. Very little is known about these wrestlers apart from their appearance at these games and the fact that they produced the first medals for their nation and that results in those bouts.

Luxembourg Gold and Czech family fortunes

The 1500m field contained the World Record holder at the distance Werner Leug (Ger) in a race in which he just pipped his compatriot Günter Dohrow (who failed to make the final here). There was also Roger Bannister (GB) who within 2 years would be the first man to run a sub 4 minute mile but who many thought was the favourite, plus the Swedish milers Olle Åberg and Ingvar Ericsson.

The Olympic record going into the final as the 1936 winning time of 3:47.8 and this race was fast, so fast indeed that that the first eight finishers all ran faster than the existing Olympic record. However, the fast finishing Luxembourger Josy Barthel shocked all the big names to take the tape and the gold medal. This is the only gold that the tiny European Grand Duchy has won in Athletics at any Games so far.

To win any distance over 1500m in Helsinki you had to be Czech and indeed you had to be called Emil Zátopek. On the 20 July the man from Kopřivnice, who shares my birthday, lined up to run 25 laps of the track in the 10,000m. After the fifth lap he took to the lead setting the pace and was never headed. He ended up running reverse splits running the second 5000m faster than the first. (14:43.4 to 14:33.6) Alain Mimoun of France came second some 15 seconds behind the new Olympic Record. However, Britain's Frank Sando had lost a shoe on the first lap and completed the race to finish 5th. Sixteen of the 33 runners if they had run the same time in London four years earlier would have beaten the silver medalist.

Chataway hits the ground as Zátopek heads
for second of his three golds

On 22 July he took part in the heats of the 5000m securing his place in the final. The final was another two days later. German Herbert Schade led most of the way but in his wake were five other runners Zátopek and Mimoun, Chris Chataway and Gordon Pirie from Great Britain and Gaston Reiff the defending champion from Belgium. They stayed together until about 600m from the end. At that point Reiff left the track and Pirie was dropped by the other four.

At the bell Zátopek took the lead, but the other three all came back past him on the back straight first Schade, then Mimoun and Chataway. With 250m to go Chataway kicked to the front, but halfway round the final bend Zátopek surged to the front again him followed by Mimoun and Schade. Chataway stepped on the inside curb and fell. He recovered but just lost on the line to Pirie for 4th place. Zátopek it was for gold in yet another Olympic Record with Mimoun again having to settle for silver.

Three days later Zátopek took part in his first ever Marathon. James Peters of Great Britain went off fast from the gun opening a lead even while the runners were still in the stadium and soon had over 100m lead over the next athlete. That was a lead he held until about 13km, when he was joined by Zátopek and Gustaf Jannson (Swe). By half distance Peters fast start was staring to pay as he was 10seconds behind the other two, by 30km he was a minute back, at 32km he was too exhausted to carry on. However, by this stage the double Olympic Champion had already started to put a gap between himself and the Swede at 30km he led by 26secs, by 35km by 1min 5 secs and over 2 minutes by 40km. In the approach to the stadium Argentine runner Reinaldo Gorno overtook Jannson for silver, but Zátopek was already the three time Olympic champion in the longest three athletic disciplines.

More Czech gold but keeping it in the family

Czechoslovakia did manage another gold in the athletics in the 1952 Games. It came in the women's javelin an hour after Zátopek had won his second gold in the 5000m. Throwing an Olympic Record 50.47 her name was Dana Zátopková, her husband was Emil Zátopek who had left London with one gold medal and two gold rings so he could marry his fiancée who had come 7th then. She's been invited to London the scene of the first of her four games and her late husbands first gold, but she doesn't want to miss a thing by nipping between venues so is staying at home with her TV remote.


First the Olympics  then youngest ever undisputed World Champ

Patterson in action ducking a punch in his first round bout

The Middleweight division final of the boxing didn't take long. Indeed most of the champion's opponents didn't go the distance. As the official report says:

The most phenomenal boxer, however, and the most victor was a youth of seventeen, the coloured American middleweight Floyd Patterson. Only his first opponent, Omar Tebbaka of France, lasted all three rounds. All the others fell to this agile youth and his amazing reach before the final gong. The final Paterson - Tita (Rumania) was the shortest in modern Olympic history, ending in 42 seconds in a knockout. The Official Report, page 399

Those ringside knew they were witnessing embryonic greatness. By the end of the year of the next Olympics had come around he had become the Youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history (until Mike Tyson later took that record) but also the first Olympic Gold Medalist to win a professional heavyweight title.

Cycling crashes

One thing about cycling whether on the road or on the track is that sooner or later you will witness a crash. Normally these events somehow the cyclists get back up and back on their bikes. In the 1000m Scratch Sprint race there was a horrific crash (pictured) in the repechage in the quarter finals when Frank le Normand of France suffered a burst tire and took out Stéphan Martens of Belgium. Falling unto concrete and then grass on the infield.

Under the rules of cycling such a crash demands a rerun of all four competitiors but Normand being hospitaslised was unable to take part and Martens was so badly injured that he wasn't able to put up a showing.

See also: The full list of my blogs about previous Olympics

Looks like David Cameron wants a Big Secret Society

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Based on characters by Charles M. Schulz

First we have the Snoopy snooping row today we hear that the Conservatives want more closed, secret court hearings.

The issue is over whose say so court proceedings should be secret. Cameron says it should be the Ministers, but Clegg is saying this power should not go to Parliament but remain with the judiciary. Maybe David Cameron fancies himself as the next James Bond (which after all is just 4 years older than the PM as a film franchise) with Theresa May as Q, but there is too much talk from the Tories about subterfuge at the moment.

Thankful this time it appears that Clegg has taken the bull by the horns before it even contemplates the merest possibility of bolting from through the doors of Westminster, saying:

"[Security Services] cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over the principle of open justice".

Clegg has even said that the Tories have gone about announcing legislation in a "blunderbuss" fashion, the past few days when there have been leaks about secrecy legislation plans being a case in point. Spuriously coughing out a worst case scenario that may have been discussed that in no way would get approval by the Lib Dems, hence making us look bad only to then come in later with another proposal that is less scary after all the initial accusations have passed and nobody gives them as much attention.

However, Nick Clegg has told the National Security Council that the Lib Dems will not back legislation that allows more court hearings and inquests behind closed doors. The excuse from Ken Clarke that the USA are  afraid of the openness of UK judicial proceedings is not a valid one. The USA had long held secret, closed sessions of their supreme court sometimes subpoenaing witnesses at the last minute. They are one of the most secretive states in the world at times for all the appearance of openness on the outside.

Their failure to ratify Protocol I and II of the Geneva Conventions and other Internation Human Rights Conventions, or at least without much alacrity means that the USA is one of the least accountable countries in the World to everyone else. Their use if extraordinary rendition and sanctioning of evidence obtained through torture are things that aren't to be held in esteem. Indeed their retention of capital punishment would make them ineligible for membership of the EU. So the USA is hardly an example of being above board in terms of judicial practice, so the fact that they fear handing over secrets that may expose some of the practices mentioned in an open review is hardly a cause to hide those ourselves.

The Conservatives want secrecy, the Lib Dems want openness. We know how the secrets of the MPs expenses went down with the general public, so how on earth do the Tories think that keeping something so fundamental a secret is going to go down? I'm glad the Lib Dems are in government at the moment and are campaigning for openness and the retention of open justice.

David Cameron is not so much wanting a Big Society as to still be the member and leader of a Secret Society it seems.

Further to my earlier blog post, here is some good news about Lib Dems standing up for civil liberty. In a letter to the Guardian fifteen of our MPs have spoken up for the party. Not just over the last 48 hours but over the last months and indeed the years that I have been a member of supporter, in other words since the Lib Dems were founded.

They say:

It is absolutely vital that the public get a chance to see and debate the details of any proposals to extend state surveillance, not just being presented with a Home Office fait accompli. It is also essential that the initial plans include adequate safeguards – which should be stronger than the current weak controls.

They talk about the "duty … to safeguard basic freedoms against the encroachment of state power" and that at the recent conference (and it was only last month not months ago) conference "called for stronger safeguards on existing surveillance measures to guarantee that the balance of power is firmly in favour of ordinary citizens".

They got it and these are just the sort of firm messages that Nick Clegg and other Lib Dems should have been saying since Sunday when this story reared its head again.

Indeed when the coalition agreement already states  "We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason." We shouldn't be talking about extending police powers in this area but working out what comes under good reason and how to delete the storage of the rest.

Speaking in The S** today (and I apologise for this link) Theresa May says:

"I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free."

Just how does further encroaching on personal freedom achieve this. As Trefor Davies from the Internet Service Providers' Association states these groups will just go ahead and use proxy servers. As he say by doing so

"You could send emails back and forth to al-Qaeda to your heart's content, the Government wouldn't know."

And as for paedophiles:

"There is a danger we are driving people to an underground culture."

As anyone who uses certain websites whether global LGBT ones or other things for certain human rights discussions will tell you, mirror sites to proxy servers exist even for some of these and you would have no clue simply from the traffic that it generates what is going on. If you even could see the traffic report.

So why haven't us Lib Dems been standing up against this as a matter of principle not merely saying we will make sure that any extension of powers is highly safeguarded. The worry is that extension of powers will be given to the police without supervision. We are looking for greater safeguard on the existing powers while Mrs May says that the police cannot afford to lose any of their existing powers.

There is a red line there, one that is marked out in the coalition agreement. If we don't stand firm on this one, what will become of our party? Worryingly although these 15 have now stood firm, why haven't our frontbench team done it already?

We don't give the police blanket warrants

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Should the police be able to gain internet records of terrorists or criminals in order to help them with their job, bring about justice and keep us safe?

Of course they should.

Should they be able to do this carte blanche on their own say so without making the case to either a judge or a Home Office minister?

Of course not and therein lies the problem with the current draft legislation that has been proposed. That is why only last month the Liberal Democrats at conference did call to ensure "that there shall be no interception of telephone calls, SMS messages, social media, internet or any other communications without named, specific and time-limited warrants".

The current scheme apparently under consideration removes the power for police to have that authority to take action. They can do it on their own judgement. This is the same police that take pictures of me on parades and marches of various types in case I might be a terrorist or potential looter. This is the same police that take pictures of me going towards football matches because of course Livingston Football Club has a long history of violence, not!

We don't give the police a blanket warrant to enter home that they wish to do so, nor do we allow them blanket access to any phone line. Yet Theresa May is saying that extending just such a right to social media and email brings it in line with powers that that police already have with phone records. No! It crosses over that line. Retrospectively convincing somebody of the right to access is not the same as acquiring a warrant up front, a warrant is for a specific person, reason and time.

Of course if the police can persuade a judge or minister of the need to intercept someone's communications that is different matter. But they have to persuade them of the need and gain the specific warrant before taking action. They should not have the right to act as judge, arbitrator of need, surveillance officer and arresting officer should the need arise for the latter.

The coalition agreement even upholds this principle that "We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason." We need a better reason that simply because the police think so to extend that right to them. It needs to be backed up by the case by an independent arbitrator of the law. Protecting not only those doing the surveillance but also the right of those the surveillance is carried out on to be assumed innocent until proven otherwise. Mrs May may not like the right of people to be presumed innocent, yet as Home Secretary she has to uphold that pinnacle of UK law or else we all have failed.


I do hope that this illiberal extension of power does not get passed by our Liberal Democrat MPs. If it does I will seriously have to work out how to stand by the words of someone that if our liberties were taken away that we should consider civil disobedience to ensure they are returned, yes those words were from Nick Clegg.

UKIP Libertarian unless if comes against the authority of The Church* #equalmarriage #fisk

With a former Conservative councillor defecting to UKIP over the issue of equalising marriage for same-sex couples up steps David Coburn of UKIP's National Executive Committee to promptly put his foot in it by clearly not understanding the first of the big words he used. As usual I shall fisk in red.

 "We are a libertarian party Libertian n. 1.One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state. 2. One who believes in free will. adj. of, relating to, or characteristic of a libertarian which doesn't believe in the government interfering in how people live their lives. We support civil partnerships, enabling gay men and women to register their long-term commitment to each other. I have fought for this all my life. 

 "But David Cameron seems to be saying that marriage is something else so much for maximising individual rights as true libertarians. If so, it is clearly in the domain of the church and other faiths – and it is none of government's business to meddle with it. Ok we come to a point here. The consultation before the people is currently for civil marriage nothing to do with how the churches conduct marriage. They are not meddling in religious marriage and have nothing to do with the church and other faiths.

Mind you on the issue of the church and other faiths, some of them want to be able to offer equal marriage (Quakers, Unitarians, some Liberal Jews, and others)  but the current consultation isn't letting them because it is only focusing on civil marriage. Should the government stop meddling there and let each faith group determine what it wants to define marriage as? Surely that is the Libertarian approach.

 "It seems that, through some kind of political correctness, David Cameron is picking a fight with the millions of people whose religious faiths do not recognise same-sex marriages I state again some faith groups do, but he isn't letting them recognise same-sex marriage David Cameron is only working in the civil sphere. That, in our view, is an aggressive attack on people of faith, and an act of intolerance in itself so being Libertarians only so far as it doesn't go against the authority of say the Church of England and the Bishop of Rome (and you thought UKIP didn't want Germans and the rest of Europe to dictate to us here in the UK). 

"In addition, if the government does legislate in this way, we believe that any criticism of same-sex marriage which may be expressed by someone on the basis of their faith could be classified as a 'hate crime' whereas only calling same-sex long term commitments by some second class name so that some can talk only about married couples and ignore that other classification isn't . That would be a grotesque assault on people's freedom of conscience. But not libertarian enough to look at everyone's freedom on conscience"

Of course the problem above has arisen from UKIP claiming to be Libertarian, however that is Libertarian with provisos and caveats. Murray Rothbard describes Libertarianism thus:

"a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another. What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism."

Therefore true libertarians should be allowed to be with whomever they want. If they want to marry they should be free to do so whether it is someone of the opposite or same sex, after all that does not invade the person or property of another. If someone wishes to marry someone of the opposite sex it is not diminished by the desire of someone to marry someone of the same. However, if the person married to someone married or desiring to be married to someone of the opposite sex denies someone seeking to marry someone of the same sex and call it marriage that is an invasion.


Walter Block adds:

"The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms."

So unless equalising marriage threatens to bring about violence against others it should be legalised by a libertarian.


So UKIP and especially David Coburn are you Libertarian or against against equalising gay marriage? I put it to you that you cannot be both.


* Capitalisation of 't' in the in the title is because it is the State and Roman Catholic churches that are most vocal in their opposition (there are of course others), there are other smaller churches that are not opposed to equal marriage.

5cm more on my April Fool Nose

Of course my last post was an April Fool. I haven't triple jumped anywhere near 16m plus in over 20 years.

My Olympic dreams are over, well unless they bring bowls into the mix, but in the meantime keep up with my series of posts about the Olympics that have already taken place.

Hope you enjoyed though.

I'm looking for 5cm

Somethings you never lose. In my case it is something that was drummed into 31 years ago. How to get the perfect technique in the triple jump. Thanks to Murray Lee and a certain symbol of the mid 20th Century as reference I was always rather good at the event. Sadly at school being one of the best in Northern Ireland didn't necessarily mean that you made it to Northern Ireland school boy level, we were just too good, at least in my year.

However, free and off to University my light was less hidden my a bushel, though it was never my number one priority that was middle distance running and eventually steeplechase. It almost became something that I overlooked and just turned up a meets that had a contest and score top or close to top points in it. I probably should have concentrated on it when I younger, before I did too much damage to my foot, knees and back through running.

However, when one has time on your hands one has to fill the time. So a little bit of practice and the technique has come back. This week of course has been the first decent week of the year. So I was actually able to practice down at the new sports facility out the Old Belfast Road for the first time properly going full speed. I was delighted on Monday to match my old personal best of 16.82 metres on my second jump. Especially as that was three cm short of the B standard qualifying for London. So with my coach we watched back the tape of the technique to see how we could fine tune it.

There was about 10 cms to be gained at the board and a slightly higher and therefore longer step would get me nearer to the pit. So I went back to try again. It was long, but it was a foul. So a slight adjustment once more and I sailed out to 17.15. My coach started to go delirious, I wasn't sure why. I was merely getting ready to take part in some club meets, triple jump doesn't clash with my bowls as it takes place in the morning with long jump in the afternoons.

"Ok," I said, "I know it is a good jump. But that was only training."

"Yes," he said, "But you are just shy of Olympic Qualifying."

"I won't get there with just the B standard." I say.

"I don't mean the B, you were already close to that earlier. I mean the A."

I thought he was joking until I got home and looked it up, he was right.

Yesterday I had another session. It was a bit cooler and there was a bit of wind swirling around. I did jump further than 17.20 but was way over the board. So we think I have it in me, and I'm really looking forward to training again. Who knows I may end up in London in July.