Paris 1924

With the Paris 2024 Olympics kicking off soon, here's a look back at the last time the city hosted the games.

It’s t-minus five days until the start of the Paris Olympics and the city is (nearly) ready. While normally I barely pay attention to the Olympics due to my general disinterest in sports, this year, it’s been hard to ignore between the Olympic torch coming through the city and all the metro and Seine quay closures.

From the extended metro line to seeing Paris 2024 plastered on just about every lamp post and discretely ushering the homeless to other French cities, city officials have gone all out to ensure Paris is at its finest.

But it’s not the first time Paris has hosted the Olympics, or J.O. as they say in French. This will be the third time the city of lights has hosted the games, the first time being in 1900 as part of the World’s Fair and the second in 1924.

The Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower, where the opening ceremony will end on Friday.

Paris 1924 was when the Olympic games really came to be.

The city itself was being reshaped after the first world war, as Les Années Folles (the roaring twenties or the mad years) transformed how people lived and worked. The arts flourished, and people thronged at jazz shows and dance halls. The Art Deco style dominated fashion and architecture, and many artists and writers (like Hemingway, Picasso, and Matisse) flocked to the city for inspiration.

While many of the places and people of the summer of 1924 have been forgotten today, it was a year of many milestones.

It was the first time there was an Olympic Village, with a then record of 3,089 athletes, of which 135 were women. Unlike today’s village, which will be reutilized as apartments, the village was temporary and made of wooden houses with running water and three beds. Athletes were served three meals a day and shared showers and toilets.

Like today’s games, many of the stadiums and events were held outside the city of Paris. The village was near the main stadium, Stade Olympique in Colombes, a northwest suburb of Paris. Later renamed the Stade Yves-du-Manoir, the stadium still stands today and will host the Olympic games for the second time in its history.

The first Olympic-sized swimming pool was created during the 1924 Paris games.

The Paris 1924 Olympics were also the first time the games were covered on the radio, as well as the first time the standard 50 m pool with marked lanes was used (the Olympic sized swimming pools we all know today).

Ireland also made its first appearance as an independent nation, while American long jumper William DeHart Hubbard became the first Black athlete to win an individual gold medal.

The games lasted four months and even included an art competition. Architecture, literature, painting, sculpture, and music competitions were held before the sports competition, as the founder Pierre de Coubertin wanted to celebrate not just the body but the mind as well. Unfortunately, this tradition didn’t stick, and much of the winning artwork of the time has been forgotten, left collecting dust.

William DeHart Hubbard was the first Black athlete to win an Olympic gold medal.

Crowds of over 60,000 people were reported to have attended, propelling some competitors into superstars. U.S. swimmer Johnny Weissmuller won three gold medals for swimming and a bronze for water polo. Between competitions, he would entertain the crowds, and he went on to star in Hollywood, playing Tarzan in a series of films.

Given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I’m planning to pay a bit more attention to the games this year (and I’ve even managed to score a few tickets).

While I’ll likely spend more time drawing in my sketchbook than I will be cheering for athletes, I’m looking forward to the two weeks of the Olympics, crowds and all.

À la prochaine fois,

-Moriah

P.S. Comment below to let me know if you’d like me to share some of my drawings from the Olympic games I am attending.