The 1948 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and officially branded as London 1948, were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus caused by the outbreak of World War II, these were the first Summer Olympics held since the 1936 Games in Berlin. The 1940 Olympic Games had been scheduled for Tokyo and then for Helsinki, while the 1944 Olympic Games had been provisionally planned for London. This was the second time London hosted the Olympic Games, having previously hosted them in 1908, making it the second city to host the Summer Olympics twice (after Paris). The Olympics would return again to London 64 years later in 2012, making London the first city to host the games three times, and the only such city until Paris, who hosted their third games in 2024, and Los Angeles, who will host theirs in 2028. The 1948 Olympic Games were also the first of two summer Games held under the IOC presidency of Sigfrid Edström. The 1948 Summer Olympics were the only Summer Olympics to be held in the 1940s, as the 1940 and 1944 Summer Olympics were cancelled due to World War II. It was also the first Summer Olympics that took place during the Cold War.
The 1948 Olympics came to be known as the "Austerity Games" due to the difficult economic climate and the rationing imposed in the aftermath of World War II. No new venues were built for the games (with events taking place mainly at Wembley Stadium, also known as Empire Stadium, and the Empire Pool at Wembley Park), and athletes were housed in existing accommodation at the Wembley area instead of an Olympic Village, as were the 1936 Games and the subsequent 1952 Games in Helsinki. A record 59 nations were represented by 4,104 athletes, 3,714 men and 390 women, in 19 sport disciplines. Germany and Japan were not invited to participate in the games; the Soviet Union was invited but chose not to send any athletes, sending observers instead to prepare for the 1952 Olympics. Israel requested to participate (symbolically represented by Raya Bronstein and ) but was denied as the International Olympic Committee did not yet recognize the country, while the Olympic mandate of Palestine expired. This in turn shifted the view of the Arab countries who had intended to boycott the event and now decided to take part.
One of the star performers at the 1948 Games was Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen. Dubbed the "Flying Housewife", the thirty-year-old mother of two won four gold medals in athletics. In the decathlon, Bob Mathias of the United States became the youngest male ever to win an Olympic track and field gold medal at the age of seventeen. The most individual medals were won by Veikko Huhtanen of Finland, who took three golds, a silver and a bronze in men's gymnastics. The United States topped the medal table.
Election as host city
In June 1939, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the 1944 Olympic Summer Games to London, ahead of Rome, Detroit, Budapest, Lausanne, Helsinki, Montreal and Athens. World War II stopped the plans and the Games were cancelled so London again stood as a candidate for 1948. Great Britain almost handed the 1948 games to the United States due to post-war financial and rationing problems, but King George VI said that hosting the Olympics would help to restore Britain from World War II. The official report of the London Olympics shows that London was not pressed to run the Games against its will. It says:
The Games of 1944 had been allocated to London and so it was that in November 1945, the Chairman of the British Olympic Council, Lord Burghley, went to Stockholm and saw the president of the International Olympic Committee to discuss the question of London being chosen for this great event. As a result, an investigating committee was set up by the British Olympic Council to work out in some detail the possibility of holding the Games. After several meetings they recommended to the council that the Lord Mayor of London should be invited to apply for the allocation of the Games in 1948.Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad London 1948(1951), p. 17
In June 1946 the IOC, through a postal vote, gave the summer Games to London and the winter competition to St Moritz. London was selected ahead of Baltimore, Minneapolis, Lausanne, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.
London, which had previously hosted the 1908 Summer Olympics, became the second city to host the Olympics twice; Paris hosted the event in 1900 and 1924. London later became the first city to host the Olympics for a third time when the city hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Organization
Lord Burghley, a gold medal winner at the 1928 Olympics, member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and president of the Amateur Athletics Association was named Chairman of the Organising and Executive Committees. The other members of the committees were: Colonel Evan Hunter, General Secretary of the British Olympic Association, and Chief de mission for Great Britain; Lord Aberdare, the other British member of the IOC; Sir Noel Curtis-Bennett; Alderman H.E. Fern; E.J. Holt; J. Emrys Lloyd, who became the committee's legal advisor; C.B. Cowley of the London Press and Advertising; R.B. Studdert, managing director of the Army & Navy Stores; A.E. Porritt, a member of the IOC for New Zealand who resided in London; S.F. Rous, Secretary of The Football Association; and Jack Beresford.Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad London 1948(1951), p. 18
Olympic pictograms were introduced for the first time. There were twenty of them—one for each Olympic sport and three separate pictograms for the arts competition, the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony. They were called "Olympic symbols" and intended for use on tickets. The background of each pictogram resembled an escutcheon.Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad London 1948(1951), pp. 131, 135Two sample tickets from 1948 Summer Olympics at the Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Olympic pictograms appeared again 16 years later, and were used at all subsequent Summer Olympics.
At the time of the Games, food, petrol and building were still subject to the rationing imposed during the war in Britain; because of this the 1948 Olympics came to be known as the "Austerity Games". Athletes were given the same increased rations as dockers and miners, 5,467 calories a day instead of the normal 2,600. Building an Olympic Village was deemed too expensive, and athletes were housed in existing accommodation. Male competitors stayed at RAF camps in Uxbridge and West Drayton, and an Army camp in Richmond Park; female competitors in London colleges. Lord Burghley unfurled the Olympic Flag at the Richmond Park camp at an opening ceremony in July as Minister of Works, Charles Key, declared the camp open.
These were the first games to be held following the death of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, in 1937. They were also the last to include an arts competition, which took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Torch relay
Nicknamed "relay of peace" due to crossing through several countries in Europe to represent their union after the Second World War, the torch relay for these games took place from 17 to 29 July 1948, over a distance of and 1,416 torchbearers.
The torch was designed by Ralph Lavers. There were three types of torches: the standard one made of aluminium and powered by solid fuel, a special one powered by butane gas (used aboard ) and a third one used in Wembley Stadium, made of stainless steel and powered by a magnesium candle.
The journey began with the lighting of the flame in Olympia. Due to the civil war taking place in Greece, the Greek part of the relay went directly to Corfu, where HMS Whitesand Bay picked up the flame to transport it to Bari. From there, the flame crossed Italy, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Belgium. After a boat trip from Calais to Dover (aboard ), the flame travelled to several towns in South East England until its arrival at Wembley for the opening ceremony.
The cities and towns visited by the Olympic flame were as follows:
Nation Cities and towns Olympia, Katakolon, Corfu. Bari, Foggia, Pescara, Ancona, Rimini, Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Milan, Domodossola, the Simplon Pass. Brig, Martigny, Montreux, Lausanne, Geneva, Perly. St. Julien en Genevois, Belgarde, Nantua, Lons-le-Saulnier, Poligny, Besançon, Vesoul, Épinal, Nancy, Metz, Thionville, Évrange. Frisange, Esch, Luxembourg City, Ettelbruck, Wiltz. Bras, Bastogne, Marche, Namur, Brussels, Renaix, Tournai, Hertain. Lille, Armentières, St. Omer, Calais. , Dover, Canterbury, Charing, Maidstone, Westerham, Redhill, Reigate, Dorking, Guildford, Bagshot, Ascot, Windsor, Slough, Uxbridge, London.
Opening ceremony
The Games opened on 29 July. Army bands began playing at 2 pm for the 85,000 spectators in Empire Stadium at Wembley Park. The international and national organisers arrived at 2.35 pm and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, with Queen Mary and other members of the Royal Family, at 2.45 pm. Fifteen minutes later the competitors entered the stadium in a procession that took 50 minutes. The last team was that of the United Kingdom. When it had passed the saluting base, Lord Burghley began his welcome:
Your Majesty: The hour has struck. A visionary dream has today become a glorious reality. At the end of the worldwide struggle in 1945, many institutions and associations were found to have withered and only the strongest had survived. How, many wondered, had the great Olympic Movement prospered?
After welcoming the athletes to two weeks of "keen but friendly rivalry", he said London represented a "warm flame of hope for a better understanding in the world which has burned so low."Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad London 1948(1951), p. 221
At 4 pm, the time shown on the clock tower on the London Games symbol, the King declared the Games open, 2,500 pigeons were set free and the Olympic Flag raised to its flagpole at the end of the stadium. The Royal Horse Artillery sounded a 21-gun salute to welcome the last runner in the Torch Relay: John Mark, a British track and field sprinter and student at the University of Cambridge with impressive Olympian good looks. Mark ran a lap of the track – created with cinders from the domestic coal fires of Leicester – and climbed the steps to the Olympic cauldron. After saluting the crowd, he turned and lit the flame. After more speeches, Donald Finlay of the British team (given his RAF rank of Wing Commander) took the Olympic Oath on behalf of all competitors. The National Anthem was sung and the massed athletes turned and marched out of the stadium, led by Greece, tailed by Britain.
The 580-page official report concluded:
Thus were launched the Olympic Games of London, under the most happy auspices. The smooth-running Ceremony, which profoundly moved not only all who saw it but also the millions who were listening-in on the radio throughout the world, and the glorious weather in which it took place, combined to give birth to a spirit which was to permeate the whole of the following two weeks of thrilling and intensive sport.Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad London 1948(1951), p. 225
Television coverage The opening ceremony and over 60 hours of Games coverage was broadcast live on BBC television, which was then officially available only in the London area. However, the BBC's transmissions could be received much further away in the right conditions, and some of the Games were watched by at least one viewer in the Channel Islands. The BBC's official report on the coverage estimated that an average of half a million viewers watched each of their Olympic broadcasts. The BBC paid £1,000 for the broadcasting rights.