James B. Connolly: Unlikely Olympic Hero
How the first American gold medal winner paved the way by "paying his way"
1896: The year of the first modern Olympiad
The 19th century is coming to a close. In the west the industrial revolution has brought many problems with it such as pollution, abusive labor practices, and income inequality, but it has also contributed to an emerging middle class with newfound prosperity and leisure time. Millions in Europe and America use this newfound wealth and leisure time to develop an interest in sports like golf and tennis and in turn spectator sports like track and field, football, soccer and baseball (The emerging middle class in the 19th century) . The Olympics would benefit greatly from this economic phenomenon
In terms of professional sports, promoters in America would first charge spectators to attend horse racing, with 50,000 fans attending a horse race in 1823 on Long Island, New York. It’s believed admission was first charged for a professional baseball game in 1858.
The first collegiate (amateur) athletic competitions did not emerge until the mid-19th century. The first collegiate sports competition was a rowing regatta between Harvard and Yale in 1852 (A History of Collegiate Rowing in America).
The first athletic club in America was the Olympic Club founded in San Francisco in 1860. The first college football game occurred in 1869 between Williams and Amherst, and the first track meet in 1873 was between Amherst, Cornell and McGill University (Montreal).
The birth of the modern Olympics would coincide with the emergence of mass media in the 19th century. As literacy rates grew, newspapers in America and Europe started to proliferate. In turn the first use of photography in newspapers occurred in March 1880, preceding the first games by just 16 years. In turn, the first motion picture was created in France in 1888 just 8 years prior to the first games. As a result, there exists grainy black and white footage of the 1896 Olympic opening ceremonies.
The First US Olympic Team
There were no U.S. Olympic Trials to qualify for the Athens 1896 Olympic Games.
The athletes (all male) came mostly from Ivy League school backgrounds and had to essentially crowd fund their training, travel etc., to get to Athens
The first-ever Team USA was comprised a cluster of athletes from the Boston Athletic Association and another group from Princeton University, along with a handful of other athletes.
Meet the men who represented Team USA at Athens 1896:
Arthur Blake: (Harvard) Blake was the one behind the Boston Athletic Association’s initial interest in sending a team to Athens. He finished second in the 1,500-meter run but did not finish the marathon.
Thomas Burke: (Boston University School of Law) Burke was one of the nation’s elite athletes and dominated the field to win the 100-meter dash and 400-meter run at Athens.
Ellery Clark: (Harvard) He finished first in the long jump and high jump at Athens, the only person ever to win both of those events. He also competed in the all-around competition (the predecessor to the decathlon) at St. Louis 1904.
Tom Curtis: (MIT) Curtis finished first in the 110-meter hurdles at Athens.
Robert Garrett: (Princeton) Garrett had never seen – let alone thrown – a discus before competing at Athens. That did not stop Garrett from finishing first in both the discus and shot put; he added second-place finishes in the high jump and long jump.
Bill Hoyt: (Harvard) He competed in the pole vault at Athens. He cleared 10 feet 10 inches to finish first.
Herbert Jamison: (Princeton) Jamison finished second in the 400-meter run.
Frank Lane: (Princeton) Lane was the first American to compete in the modern Olympics, winning a 100-meter dash preliminary heat.
John Paine: (Harvard) Paine finished first in the 25-meter military pistol competition, then skipped the 25-meter free pistol, allowing his brother to win that event.
Sumner Paine: (Harvard) Sumner took second in the 25-meter military pistol event and won the 30-meter free pistol competition.
Albert Tyler: (Princeton) Tyler competed in the pole vault finishing second.
Charles Waldstein: (Columbia) The 40-year-old Waldstein was the oldest member of the American contingent. He participated in the 200-meter military rifle shooting event.
Gardner Williams: The lone American among the 13 swimmers who competed in Athens, Williams entered the 100- and 1200-meter freestyle races.
James B. Connolly: (Harvard) Connolly was the first-ever modern Olympic champion, winning the triple jump. Connolly also placed second in the high jump and third in the long jump.
James Connolly: An Unlikely U.S. Olympic hero
Connolly was one of 12 siblings born to Irish-American immigrant parents. While James Brendan Connolly was a good athlete, he dropped out of school before high school and worked as a clerk at an insurance company then moved to Savannah, Georgia, where one of his brothers helped him get a job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Connolly enrolled at Harvard for a special engineering course, but his tenure at Harvard was brief. After just one semester, Connolly left Harvard and would pay his own way to travel to Europe for the Athens 1896 Olympic Games. Connolly paid his own way because his Suffolk Athletic Club lacked the cash.
The journey to Athens, Connolly wrote in an autobiography, started with a boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean to Naples, Italy. It was there that Connolly’s wallet was stolen and later recovered by police, who wanted Connolly to press charges against the thief. Taking time to do that, Connolly wrote, would have made him miss the American contingent’s train to Brindisi, and so he was forced to flee the police (who were anxious to have Connolly press charges against the thief) and narrowly caught the already departing train.
A steamer ride followed and then a further 10-hour train ride before the group arrived in Athens, thinking they had nearly two weeks to prepare for competition after their lengthy travels.
However, at their first breakfast in Athens, Connolly looked at a program and only then did he realize that the Greeks went by a different calendar. The track and field events began that day, starting with Connolly’s top event, the triple jump (then known as the triple saute).
At the time, the triple was either a hop, step and jump or two hops and a jump. Connolly was the last triple jumper to go off. He noticed that three competitors had done a hop, step and jump, while the rest did two hops and a jump – a technique he had not used since his youth.
“I came to Athens all set to do a hop, step and jump; yet in that stadium that day, in contest for an Olympic championship, I shifted at the last moment to a two hops and a jump, which I hadn’t jumped since a boy against other boys,” Connolly wrote.
The winner of the very first modern-day Olympic competition, Connolly finished first by a full meter and received the silver medal awarded to first-place finishers at Athens 1896. Second-place finishers received bronze medals, the only other medals awarded there.
Connolly tied fellow American Robert Garrett for second in the high jump (winning the bronze medal) and was third in the long jump (winning no medal). Fellow American Ellery Clark finished first in both the high jump and long jump.
Upon his return to Boston, Connolly resumed his career as a writer, working for newspapers and magazines. He also served in the Ninth Massachusetts Infantry during the Spanish War of 1898.
Connolly returned to the Olympics at Paris 1900 and finished second in the triple jump, bringing home the bronze medal.