The 1952 Summer Olympics (, ), officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad (, ) and commonly known as Helsinki 1952, were an international multi-sport event held from 19 July to 3 August 1952 in Helsinki, Finland.
After Japan declared in 1938 that it would be unable to host the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo due to the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War, Helsinki had been selected to host the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were then cancelled due to World War II. Tokyo eventually hosted the games in 1964. Helsinki is the northernmost city at which a summer Olympic Games have been held. With London hosting the 1948 Olympics, 1952 is the most recent time when two consecutive summer Olympic Games were held entirely in Europe. The 1952 Summer Olympics was the last of the two consecutive Olympics to be held in Northern Europe, following the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway.
They were also the Olympic Games at which the most world records were broken until they were surpassed by the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. The Bahamas, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands Antilles, Nigeria, the People's Republic of China, Saarland, the Soviet Union, Thailand, and Vietnam made their Olympic debuts at the 1952 Games. The United States won the most gold and overall medals at these Olympics.
Background and preparation of the Games Host city selection
Inspired by the success of the Swedish 1912 Olympics, Finnish sports fans began to arouse the idea of their own Olympic Games: for example, Erik von Frenckell publicly presented his dreams of the Finnish Olympic Games at the opening of the 1915 Töölön Pallokenttä.
As the Olympic success continued in the 1920s, enthusiasm for one's own Olympics grew, and after the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, Finnish sports leaders began planning to build a stadium in Helsinki in 1920. Finland's main sports organizations and the City of Helsinki founded the Stadion Foundation in 1927 to get the stadium to Helsinki. In the same year, Ernst Edvard Krogius, who represented Finland on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announced Finland's willingness to host the competition.
In 1930, preparations for the 1936 Games, which was accelerated by the launch of a design project for the Olympic Stadium. However, Helsinki was not a candidate in the first round in 1931, and Berlin won the competition, but Helsinki immediately registered as a candidate for the 1940 Games. Those games were awarded to Tokyo in 1936, and two years later with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War Japan announced they were giving up the 1940 games, and four days later the IOC offered the Games to Helsinki, which agreed to take over, although there was little time left to prepare for the Games.
World War II broke out on 1 September 1939, with the German–Soviet invasion of Poland, which also drew Britain and France to war. Despite the aggression, the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games continued to be optimistic about the preparations for the Games. However, the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, halted planning for the games. After the Winter War, the Organizing Committee decided to abandon the Games on 20 March 1940 due to the hostilities across Europe, the suspension of preparations caused by the Winter War, and the deplorable economic situation. At the meeting of the Finnish Olympic Committee on 20 April 1940, the Olympic Games in Finland were officially canceled. In the meantime, World War II had already expanded, with Germany occupying Denmark and fighting in Norway. Instead of the Olympic Games, Finland held a who died in the Winter War against the Soviet Union, at the opening of which actor Eino Kaipainen recited the poem Silent Winners written by . The memorial competitions were held on the initiative of the sports journalist .
At the end of World War II, London was awarded the 1948 Summer Olympics after the city was originally granted the 1944 Games, which were canceled due to the war. Helsinki continued its attempt to have the Games organized and registered as candidates for the 1952 Games. At the IOC Congress in Stockholm on 21 June 1947, Helsinki was chosen as the host city, leaving behind the bids of Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia. Helsinki's strengths included the fairly completed venues built for the 1940 Games.
Bidding results + 1952 Summer Olympics bidding results City Country Round 1 2Helsinki 1415 Minneapolis 4 5 Los Angeles 4 5 Amsterdam 3 3 Detroit 2 — Chicago 1 — Philadelphia 0 —
Organizing Committee After confirmation that Helsinki would host the Games, the "XV Olympia Helsinki 1952" was established as the organizing committee of the Games on 8 September 1947. Its members were the Finnish Olympic Committee, the Finnish State, the City of Helsinki and 26 various sports organizations. The mayor of Helsinki Erik von Frenckell was elected chairman of the committee, who at the time also chaired Finnish Football Association. , and Armas-Eino Martola were elected Vice-Chairs. Among them, Kaskela and Suvanto were elected on political grounds as representatives of the bourgeois (SVUL) and the leftist Finnish Workers' Sports Federation (TUL), Martola, on the other hand, got a former officer to lead the organization of the practical arrangements.
Other members of the Organizing Committee were , , Urho Kekkonen, Ernst Krogius, William Lehtinen, , Eino Pekkala, Väinö Salovaara and Erik Åström. In 1948–1949, Karikoski, Kekkonen, Krogius and Lehtinen resigned from the committee, and , and Yrjö Valkama were elected to replace them. In the spring of 1952, Ente was replaced by and as completely new members by Mauno Pekkala and Aaro Tynell.
Erik von Frenckell was the chairman of the organizing committee and the other members were Armas-Eino Martola (competition director), Yrjö Valkama (sports director), Olavi Suvanto (maintenance director), Akseli Kaskela, Aarne K. Leskinen and . In addition, the head of the central office and the head of information were involved in the competition organization.
Political situation The international political atmosphere was tense when the Helsinki Olympics were held. When the IOC held its meeting in Vienna in 1951, many difficult topics were on the agenda. The Cold War was under way, and the situation between Israel and Arab countries, divided Germany had to be addressed as a team, and the Chinese Civil War, with the Chinese Communist Party winning, forming the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China government exiled to Taiwan.
Four years earlier, Japan was not invited to the London Olympics from the losing states of the Second World War. The Olympic Committee of Israel had not yet been recognized, and a successor to the German Olympic Committee, which had been dissolved during World War II, had not yet been established, but all these countries already participated in the Helsinki Games, as did Saarland.
The Cold War affected the participation of both the United States and the Soviet Union in the Games. The participation of the United States in the Games was decided only after the country had received an assessment of the political situation in Finland from its embassy in Helsinki. The Soviet Union was accepted as a member of the IOC in May 1951, and in December of the same year the country accepted the invitation to the competition, as the country's athletes were in medal condition. Although the Soviet leadership had previously considered the Games a bourgeois event, the Helsinki Games held propaganda value. In the Soviet Union, billions of rubles were spent on coaching athletes in just one year. The Soviet Union planned to fly its athletes every day between Leningrad and Helsinki. Another option was for Soviet athletes to stay in the Soviet Porkkalanniemi garrison. However, Finland required that all competitors stay in the Olympic village. As a compromise solution for the Eastern Bloc athletes, a second Olympic village was established in Espoo, Otaniemi as Soviet leaders wanted them to avoid contact with Western athletes. Joseph Stalin allowed Soviet athletes to enter the 1952 Summer Olympics because he was sure that they would win the most medals. However, American athletes secured more gold and total medals and Stalin afforded more resources for the advancement of elite athletes in the Soviet Union in the build-up to the 1956 Summer Olympics.
The 1952 Games were also threatened with cancellation due to the deteriorating world situation. The Korean War had begun in 1950, which also caused concern in the organizing committee. At Von Frenckell's suggestion, the organizing committee decided to take out Lloyd's of London war insurance.
Construction work
Most of the venues for the competitions were completed prior to the 1940s in anticipation of successful bid attempts, but some expansion and refurbishment work was needed, including the construction of additional stands at the Olympic and Swimming Stadium. A residential area, Kisakylä (Olympic Village) was built south of Käpylä's Koskelantie to accommodate competitors. The area, which was built close to the 1940 Olympics, was already the residence of the people of Helsinki at that time. Just below the opening, the competition area was completed for the use of visitors Kumpula Outdoor Swimming Pool. Female athletes got their own race village from the Nursing College in Meilahti. The athletes of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc stayed in the Teekkarikylä in Otaniemi. The Finnish team lived on the premises of the Santahamina Army School (later the Cadet School, now the National Defence University).
The City of Helsinki prepared for the Olympics by building a new airport in Seutula (now Helsinki-Vantaan lentoasema), 11-story Hotelli Palace, and the Olympic Pier in South Harbor. A large electric scoreboard was procured. It attracted international attention because it represented the top of its time in the scoreboard field both in terms of its system and its technology. OMEGA debuted the OMEGA Time Recorder in Helsinki. This all-new quartz clock not only timed the events but also printed out the results. This breakthrough technology allowed official Olympic times to be accurate to 1/100 of a second. As a result, the company received the prestigious Croix du Mérite Olympique award for their efforts. In 1950 cable television was tried for the first time in Finland, in the 1952 Olympics people could watch TV sending from the stadium through coaxial cable to Stockmann department store window.
Helsinki paved tens of kilometers of roads, and a myriad of houses were painted. The city's first traffic lights were installed at the intersection of Aleksanterinkatu and Mikonkatu in October 1951. The Palace Hotel and among others, were completed for the needs of the guests. However, due to the relatively low number of hotels in the city, tent villages were built for tourists in Lauttasaari and Seurasaari, among others. However, the preparations for accommodation turned out to be considerably oversized; at its best, the occupancy rate of the 6,000-seat tent village in Lauttasaari had an occupancy of only 8 per cent. With the support of the Olympia 1952 committee, Finland's first mini golf courses were completed to entertain guests.
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