West Bengal’s connect to the modern Olympics

Aug 02, 2024 09:19 PM IST

The founder of the modern Olympics movement, Baron Pierre de Courbetin, was against women competing at the Olympics, and the first Olympics of the modern era at Athens in 1896 had no sportswomen among the 241 competitors from 14 nations. However, he relented when the Olympics were held for the second time, this time in his birthplace. Here, 22 women competed in five sports — tennis, golf, sailing, equestrian, and croquet. The exact number of participants is not conclusively known but is thought to be upwards of 1,200 from an estimated 28 nations.

Bengal has a unique connect to the Olympics, dating back to the first modern episode of the games at Athens, where the Olympics movement was revived a few millennia after the times of ancient Greece.

Charles Henry Stuart Gmellin took part in the very first athletics event in the modern Olympics, the first heat of the 100 metres (m) race where he came third and failed to qualify for the final. However, his bronze in the 400m race makes him the first-ever medalist from Great Britain. Gmellin was born in 1872 in Krishnanagar, Nadia district of Bengal, where his father was a missionary. And just three years later, Norman Gilbert Pritchard, India’s first Olympic medallist, was born in Calcutta.

This remarkable trio of sportspersons, all born in Bengal in the 1870s, were followed by sprinter Purma Bannerjee (born in Calcutta, 1897), who took part in the 100m race when India first sent a contingent to the Olympics (Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920) and was the first flag bearer for India in the march-past. Another sprinter who was part of the official Indian contingent to Paris in 1924, James Stanton Hall, was born in 1903 in the Bengal capital and competed in the 100m, 200m, and 400m races. He also competed in the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics but sadly died of typhoid just a year later in Calcutta.

Gmellin left India when young and, like his father, became a missionary, dying in Oxford in 1950. This was unlike Pritchard, whose family had deep roots in Bengal, going back to the 1780s and extending to the 1940s, before his descendants settled in England, where they are still living.

Pritchard received his education at St. Xavier’s, Calcutta, and was a brilliant all-round sportsman, excelling in athletics, football (scorer of the first hat-trick in an Indian tournament), rowing, rugby (represented England against Scotland in an expatriate match at Eden Gardens, Calcutta in 1897), tennis, and golf. He was one of the leading sprinters and hurdlers in the world, and travelled to Paris in 1900 after competing in numerous athletics events in England.

At Paris, he competed in five track events, winning silver in the 200m dash and 200m hurdles (since discontinued). He also participated in the 60m, 100m (failed to qualify for finals), and 110m hurdles, where he reached the final but failed to finish the race after a bad start. After leaving India for good in 1905, Pritchard made a name for himself in the theatre in England and then in silent movies in Hollywood under the screen name of Norman Trevor. He died in California in 1929. His descendants keep his memory alive, with most male relatives named Norman, Gilbert, or Trevor.

At least Pritchard knew all his adult life he was an Olympian and a medallist at that. That’s more than can be said for Margaret Abbott (later Margaret Dunne), who remained unaware of her place in sporting history till her death in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1955. And she was not the only one. Many 1900 Olympians went to their graves unaware that the competitions they took part in were part of the second modern Olympics.

The Paris Olympics were very poorly organised, stretched to six months, without an opening and closing ceremony, and were held concurrently with the Paris World’s Fair or Exposition Universelle, which added to the confusion. Further, the majority of winners were not even presented medals — Margaret herself was given a porcelain bowl for finishing first, carding a score of 47 over nine holes, with her mother, Mary, finishing seventh out of the nine golfers.

The family moved back to Chicago after Margaret’s father’s death in Calcutta in 1879 when she was just a year old. She was studying art in Paris when she decided to enter the golf event, a sport she had learned at the Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton, Illinois.

Margaret’s own family — all accomplished writers — and the greater Olympic family worldwide were ignorant of her place in sporting history till 80 years later when research by professor Paula Welch at the University of Florida unearthed the fact and ensured she gained her rightful place as the first in a glorious line of American women Olympic champions.

Gulu Ezekiel is the author of 17 sports books, including Great Indian Olympians (with K Arumugam).The views expressed are personal