It’s the final episode of our series on Chamonix 1924! Alison explores the controversial curling event, which had teams that didn’t show up, players on multiple teams, and the designation of not being an official Olympic event–or was it?
Plus, we look back at our year of Chamonix stories and the legacy that these Games had on the region. That legacy has lasted 100 years–and we’ll likely see some of these sites again at the French Alps 2030 Winter Olympics!
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
TRANSCRIPT
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Chamonix 1924-Curling
Jill Jaracz: Olympics and Paralympics fans, and welcome to Keep the Flame Alive’s Games History Moment, where we look at the past editions of the Games. All year long, we’re looking at Chamonix 1924, which is billed as the first Winter Olympic Games. It’s celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2024, so we’re taking a look at it all year long.
I’m your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co host, Alison Brown. Alison, hello. How are you?
Alison Brown: I’m great. Hello, and it’s our last Shamanese story. It is, and that’s, it’s bittersweet. You’ve done a great job with these all year long, getting to dive in and take a look at it. I have been having a little too much fun.
I plan to break out the champagne and slide down a bobsled. Possibly, you know, break out my wooden skates. See what I can do. Go cross country skiing for six hours and see if I’m still alive.
Jill Jaracz: Hope the pond freezes over for all of your, your skating needs.
Alison Brown: You know, let the, let the, let the Storm dumps six feet of snow a week before the Olympics.
The flu epidemic sweeping through the village. You know, all these really wild things. And honestly, I think we may be finishing on my favorite story of all.
Jill Jaracz: Oh, yes. What are we looking at today?
Alison Brown: We are looking at curling, and I have a question for you.
Jill Jaracz: Okay.
Alison Brown: How do you win a silver medal and a gold medal in the same event, but not really win an Olympic medal at all?
Jill Jaracz: I have no idea.
Alison Brown: I’m going to answer that. Curling, well, one of our favorite winter Olympic sports now, it was not the most hotly contested event in Chamonix 1924. Only four teams were entered into the event and Switzerland didn’t show up. so this is kind of like the hockey tournament.
Jill Jaracz: Right. Yes,
Alison Brown: where you’ve got limited number of teams, but this, if you show up.
You’re guaranteed a medal. But there is a great deal of argument about whether curling was an official event in 1924 or a demonstration sport. So games were played on the same giant ice rink also used for figure skating, speed skating, and hockey. So unlike today, there was not special curling ice. And based on the official scorecards, games appear to have been 18 Ns, which is much more than the 10 Ns that are used in today’s Olympic curling.
Teams brought their own stones. Which would have made for some very heavy, you know, uh, trunks to get to the, tournament. This also caused some problems when they got to French customs, because customs officers deemed the curling stones to be precious stones, like jewelry. And you can’t bring that much jewelry because obviously they weigh many pounds and they had many stones into the country.
And even if you can bring one or two stones, the customs duties are outrageous.
Jill Jaracz: so part of me is like, that sounds like a big problem, but then part of me is like, well, we’re dealing with. People of a certain means for the most part. So, is this anything?
Alison Brown: It ended up being nothing because it was particularly a problem for the British team.
So, British officials stepped in. May have made a few payments to some customs officials. Ooh, that is questionable. And the sourcing on that is a little questionable. So something was done and the stones were allowed in after some discussion with the Brits.
But on the British team were four Scotsmen from the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in Perth. They. In the first game, defeated Sweden, 38 to 7, then went on to defeat France, 46 to 4, and captured the title. Sweden defeated France to take second place, and despite winning no matches, France placed third.
British skip Willie Jackson, his son Lawrence, and teammates Robin Welsh and Tom Murray, reportedly marched in the opening ceremony with their brooms on their shoulders, Like rifles. And they were chanting ballet, ballet, which is broom, broom in French,
Jill Jaracz: which I particularly love
Alison Brown: the idea of.
Jill Jaracz: They were the fun ones at the ceremony.
Alison Brown: Clearly. And I think there may have been some waving the brooms around. The photos are great because clearly these four Scotsmans are having way too much fun with the brooms in the opening ceremony. But here’s the real question.
Were they Olympic medalists? So as we talked about in the first shamany show back last January, the international Olympic committee retroactively declared shamany the first winter Olympics. However, the IOC also decided that the curling competition was a demonstration sport. Not an official Olympic event.
So in the old days, some of our older Olympic fans will remember demonstration sports. Olympics would include demonstration sports to try out new events before they were officially included in the Olympic program. And Olympic historians have long argued how demonstration sports should be regarded. Do these medals count?
Are these athletes really Olympians? It was a lot of confusion and that’s one of the reasons, along with now we do other things to test out sports, that the IOC eliminated demonstration sports after 1992. Curling came back to the Olympics in 1998 and that reignited the argument about the 1924 medalists.
So, were the 1998 Canadian women the first Olympic champions when they won the first curling gold medal in 98? Or should that honor go to the British men from 1924?
Jill Jaracz: That is a very good question. And I think it’s interesting that there’s this argument over whether or not curling should be an Olympic sport when the Olympic title was bestowed on Chamonix after the fact.
You
Alison Brown: know,
Jill Jaracz: there’s a lot of So, why was that one?
Alison Brown: There’s a lot of people who agree with you. So, in 2005, Doug Gillen, a reporter for the Glasgow Herald, proud Scotsman, began investigating the 1924 curling competition. At the time, the IOC’s official stance was that curling and chamonix was a demonstration sport, not an official sport.
So Gillen looked at contemporary reports, files and programs and everything that he found indicated that both curling officials and Olympic officials at the time did not view the curling competition any differently than the other sports competed in chamonix. So, in a surprise announcement only days prior to the start of Torino 2006, the IOC recognized the curlers of Chamonix as official Olympic medalists.
Curling had been an official sport, not, as had been previously said, a demonstration sport.
Jill Jaracz: Wow. Thrilled
Alison Brown: the entire country of Scotland, to say the least, because this changed all kinds of British Olympic history. Prior to the announcement, history recorded that Britain had won its first gold medal in the Winter Olympics in ice hockey in 1936.
Oh, and now it wasn’t. It was 1924 in curling, and Robert Welsh, at age 55 in 1924, became Britain’s oldest gold medalist, surpassing 1936 ice hockey player Carl Earhart by over 16 years. So, he’s the oldest gold medalist by a lot. And the Jacksons are the only British father and son duo to medal together.
Jill Jaracz: And you love stuff like that. That’s a good comeback. I do love,
Alison Brown: I do love that. It didn’t end though. We still have issues. In the official IOC records of 1924, Major Delavelle G. Astley is listed as a reserve member of the British team. Most historians believe Astley never took the ice for the British team, but others claim he may have played a few points.
He did play for the Swedes against France. We don’t know why. Thus, he would be eligible for both a gold medal with Britain And a silver medal with Sweden.
Jill Jaracz: Wow. Hey, we need an extra player.
Alison Brown: But according to official IOC records, Astley is listed as part of the British team. So he is considered a gold medalist, despite probably never having thrown a stone for the Brits.
Jill Jaracz: Interesting. But then today you have alternates on some teams that do get gold medals for being part of the team but never necessarily playing or competing for the team.
Alison Brown: I love these sort of random military guys who show up in Chamonix and just do stuff or don’t do stuff and they still get a medal. So since this is our last show, I want to talk a little bit about.
What the legacy is for the first Winter Olympics. for Chamonix, it was huge. It became an incredibly popular tourism destination, and it still welcomes over 8 million guests every year. The Stade Olympique de Chamonix and Le Mans ski jump are still in use, and since 1924, at least one Chamonix native has competed at each Winter Olympics.
Jill Jaracz: That is a really cool fun fact.
Alison Brown: I would love to look that up for other host, cities, like maybe Lake Placid could do that, but I can’t imagine too many of the others. Could say that.
Jill Jaracz: Well, it’d be interesting to see, like, yeah, once you host, do you keep sending people because now you’re a hub.
Alison Brown: So the organizers of shamany 1924 could not foresee, of course, the growth of their little international winter festival into the winter Olympics that we have today.
So we’re going to have. 2, 900 athletes in Milan Cortina from 93 countries in 16 disciplines, competing for 195 medals. Little different than what we had in Chamonix. And You got to start somewhere. The biggest difference being 45, 47 percent of those in 2026 will be women. We had 13 women in Chamonix.
Jill Jaracz: It’s amazing they had any women at all. Really?
Alison Brown: Well, they wanted pretty women on ice skates and cute little dresses. There you go. one of the things I have learned in this year is obviously a lot has changed in the winter Olympics. But so much has not changed in the Winter Olympics.
There’s always crazy stories. They’re always amazing competitors. There’s always controversy over, judging and rules and people make things up, but man, the competition is still so, so special.
Jill Jaracz: Excellent.
Alison Brown: So, references for our last story, olympics. com, thecurlingnews, nbcsports. com, teamgb, olympicworldlibrary, worldcurling, and theherald. thank you to All the sources that we’ve used all year, it has been a deep dive into some wild, wild Olympic history, and I hope everyone’s had some fun with it going back 100 years to stuff none of us remembers.
Jill Jaracz: I do too. I appreciate that the listeners chose this one. It’s been interesting to hear about the very first Winter Olympic Games and dive in and see how. different they are and appreciate what we have today in the evolution of the games. Thank you for doing all the heavy lifting on this and coming up with excellent stories every month.
Alison Brown: And 2025! is right around the corner. So we will be looking at Sydney 2000.
Jill Jaracz: I am looking forward to that. The show is going to be similar to this. It will be its own separate show. We’re going to do two stories because obviously Sydney much bigger than Chamonix.
So each of us will take a turn with a story again, but, uh, we will have more details about that as 2025 comes closer, but get ready to go back down under cause it’s going to be a good games to remember. So thank you all for, being part of this Chamonix 1924 series, it’s been a lot of fun and I am kind of sad to say au revoir to it.
Au revoir. Let’s go have some champagne. That sounds good.