The 1920s Olympics: Antwerp, Paris, and Amsterdam

Three times during the 1920s, the world’s athletes gathered to compete in the Olympic Games — the first post-war Olympiad at Antwerp in 1920, the triumphant return to the home of the modern Games at Paris in 1924, and the technically innovative and politically resonant Games at Amsterdam in 1928. Across these three Olympiads, the modern Olympic movement found its form. The rituals, the schedule, the symbols, and the controversies that have come to define the modern Games all took shape in the decade that followed the catastrophe of World War I.

The 1920s were, in many ways, the decade in which the Olympic idea proved it could survive the disasters that had nearly killed it. The 1916 Games, scheduled for Berlin, had been cancelled because of the war. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was deeply in debt. Many of the venues, athletes, and spectators who had been expected at the 1916 Games were dead. Yet within four years of the Armistice, the Games had resumed — at Antwerp in 1920 — and within a decade they had become the most-watched international spectacle on earth.

The 1920 Antwerp Olympics: The First Post-War Games

The 1920 Summer Olympics opened in Antwerp, Belgium, on August 14, 1920, having been awarded to the city in 1919 as a gesture of solidarity with the war-ravaged Belgian nation. Belgium had been one of the worst-hit countries in World War I: German occupation, the destruction of much of its infrastructure, and the loss of tens of thousands of lives in battles like Ypres and the Somme. The choice of Antwerp was both symbolic and practical — it was one of the few Belgian cities with sufficient infrastructure to host the Games.

The defining political decision of the Antwerp Games was the exclusion of the Central Powers. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were not invited. Russia was absent as well, both because of the ongoing Russian Civil War and because the new Bolshevik government had not yet joined the Olympic movement. The 1920 Games were, in effect, an Allied and neutral-nation celebration — a sporting continuation of the wartime alliance.

Athletically, the United States dominated the 1920 Games, winning 41 gold medals and 95 total medals, the most of any nation. The American team was led by swimmers, shooters, and track athletes, with stars like Duke Kahanamoku of Hawaii (who won the 100-meter freestyle) and the relay teams that established American swimming dominance for decades. Paavo Nurmi of Finland made his Olympic debut, winning the 10,000 meters and the cross-country individual events, foreshadowing the distance-running revolution he would lead in 1924.

Two of the most famous moments of the Antwerp Games were:

The Olympic flag, designed for the cancelled 1916 Games, made its debut. The five interlocking rings, symbolizing the five inhabited continents, were flown over the main stadium.
The “Blood in the Pool” ice hockey game. On February 2, 1920, in the hockey tournament (which was part of the summer Games program at the time), Canada and the United States played a brutal, foul-filled match. The Canadians won 2-0, but the game became legendary for the violence: at one point, Canadian forward Bobby Benson was attacked by American defenseman Frank Synott, and both teams were repeatedly sent to the penalty box. The game has been reenacted and discussed ever since as a defining moment in hockey’s violent early history.

The Antwerp Games also introduced the Olympic oath — a pledge taken by one athlete on behalf of all competitors to play fairly — a tradition that has continued to this day. The Olympic flame, however, was not yet lit at Antwerp; that innovation would come in 1928.

The 1924 Paris Olympics: The Return to the Source

The 1924 Summer Olympics were held in Paris, France, from May 4 to July 27, 1924. They were the first Games to be held in the city that had hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896, and the choice carried enormous symbolic weight. The French were eager to reclaim the Games for the city that had given them to the world, and the IOC was eager to re-establish the Olympics as a tradition of peace, internationalism, and athletic excellence.

The Paris Games were the first to be staged using a standardized 28-day format that would become the norm. They were also the first to feature an Olympic Village — a complex of wooden cabins near the stadium where the athletes lived together for the duration of the Games, a tradition begun in part to reduce costs for athletes’ national federations and in part to foster a sense of international community.

The official Olympic motto — “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger) — was adopted for the Paris Games, having been proposed by Henri Didon, a Dominican friar and sports educator, in 1891. The motto captured the spirit of the modern Olympic movement: continuous improvement, the breaking of records, the pursuit of human physical limits.

The United States once again led the medal count, winning 45 gold medals and 99 total medals. American track and field athletes, swimmers, and boxers were particularly dominant, with stars like DeHart Hubbard (the first Black American to win an individual Olympic gold medal, in the long jump), Jackson Scholz (200 meters), and the relay teams that set world records. American boxers including Fidel LaBarba (flyweight gold) and the Finnish distance runners led by Paavo Nurmi were also among the most celebrated athletes of the Games.

The Chamonix Winter Olympics

The most enduring innovation of 1924 was the debut of the Winter Olympics, held at Chamonix, France, from January 25 to February 5, 1924. Originally called the “International Winter Sports Week,” the event was retroactively recognized as the first Olympic Winter Games in 1926. Eleven nations competed, and 16 events were contested across 6 sports: bobsled, figure skating, ice hockey, military patrol (a precursor to biathlon), Nordic skiing (cross-country, ski jumping, and Nordic combined), and speed skating.

The Chamonix Games were organized largely by French, Swiss, and Scandinavian sports officials, with the support of the IOC. They featured athletes like Norwegian speed skater Clas Thunberg (who won three gold medals) and Canadian ice hockey players (whose team, the Toronto Granites, won the gold medal in the first Olympic ice hockey tournament). The 1924 Winter Games were a modest affair by later standards, but they established the principle of a separate Winter Games that has been maintained ever since.

Paavo Nurmi and the Finnish Distance Revolution

The single most dominant athlete of the 1924 Paris Games — and arguably the most dominant distance runner of the twentieth century — was Paavo Nurmi of Finland. Nurmi had already established himself as the world’s greatest distance runner at the 1920 Antwerp Games, but in Paris he reached a level of performance that has rarely been approached.

In the space of a single week, Nurmi won five gold medals:

The 1,500 meters (in which he ran the last 200 meters so fast that he lapped several runners)
The 5,000 meters
The 3,000-meter team race
The cross-country individual race
The cross-country team race

Nurmi’s training methods were as revolutionary as his racing. He used a stopwatch to time every phase of his training and races, and he developed a stride-rate counting system that allowed him to measure his efficiency. He also became one of the first athletes to use a scientific approach to diet and conditioning, refusing to race in the heat of the day (he preferred evening races) and weighing his food portions with unusual precision. His success inspired a generation of runners to adopt more scientific training, and “scientific distance running” became the standard in the sport.

The 1928 Amsterdam Olympics: New Symbols, New Athletes

The 1928 Summer Olympics were held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from July 28 to August 12, 1928. The Netherlands was a small, neutral country that had not been a major combatant in World War I, and the choice of Amsterdam reflected the IOC’s desire to return the Games to a more neutral ground after the politically charged atmospheres of Antwerp and Paris.

The Amsterdam Games were technically innovative in several ways:

The Olympic flame was lit for the first time, a tradition that has continued at every subsequent Games.
A new 28-day standard schedule was established.
Women’s track and field events were added for the first time, with 5 events: the 100 meters, 800 meters, 4 × 100-meter relay, high jump, and discus throw. The 800-meter race, won by Lina Radke of Germany, became one of the most controversial events in Olympic history — many of the female runners finished in a state of collapse, and the event was subsequently removed from the program until 1960. The image of exhausted female runners led many in the 1920s to conclude that women were physically unsuited to such exertion, a misconception that would take decades to overcome.
The standardized athletic schedule of morning heats and afternoon finals was introduced.

The United States once again led the medal count, with 22 gold medals and 47 total medals. American stars of the Amsterdam Games included:

Johnny Weissmuller, the Chicago-born swimmer who won three gold medals (100 meters freestyle, 400 meters freestyle, and 4 × 200-meter relay) and set multiple world records. Weissmuller would later become one of Hollywood’s most famous Tarzans, starring in a dozen films beginning in 1932.
Ray Barbuti, who won the 400 meters.
David Alderman and Frank Cibulski, members of the American rugby team that won the gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics — the last Olympic rugby tournament to be held until the sport’s revival at the 2016 Rio Games.

The German women’s gymnastics team dominated its sport, winning the team gold medal and several individual events. Mikio Oda of Japan became the first Asian athlete to win a gold medal in track and field, taking the triple jump. The men’s 100 and 200 meters were both won by the Canadian sprinter Percy Williams. These victories helped broaden the geographic base of the Games and marked the beginning of a more genuinely global competition.

The Controversies of 1928

The 1928 Games were not without controversy. The American basketball team had to practice in a temporary gymnasium on the deck of a cruise ship moored in the harbor because the main venue was still under construction. The decision to use the ship reflected the chaotic preparation for several events, and the resulting publicity was embarrassing for the Dutch organizers. The Soviet Union was not yet a participant, having only recently joined the Olympic movement. The exclusion of several national teams for political reasons (notably Germany, which had been readmitted, but only after contentious negotiations) marred the international atmosphere.

The dominant American memory of the Amsterdam Games, however, was the team’s gold medal in the 4 × 400-meter relay, in which the U.S. team — anchored by Ray Barbuti — won a come-from-behind victory. The relay team members became national celebrities, and the race itself was one of the most exciting of the decade.

The Legacy of the 1920s Olympics

By 1928, the modern Olympic Games had been firmly re-established as a global event. The 1920 Antwerp Games had restored the tradition; the 1924 Paris Games had refined the rituals; the 1928 Amsterdam Games had introduced the symbols and the women’s events that would define the Games for the rest of the century. The IOC had been revived as a functioning international body. National Olympic committees had been established in dozens of countries. The Winter Games had been inaugurated. The flame had been lit. The motto had been adopted.

The 1920s Olympics were not just athletic competitions — they were political, cultural, and technological milestones. They helped heal the wounds of World War I by bringing former enemies and allies together on the same playing fields. They introduced new rituals and symbols that have endured for a century. And they established the Olympic athlete as a global celebrity — a figure whose performances would be followed by millions through the new media of radio and newsreel. The decade’s three Games were the foundation on which the modern Olympic movement was built.