Olympic firsts
The Paris 1924 Olympic Games were notable for several significant firsts, introducing the flag protocol at the Closing Ceremony and the creating the first Olympic Village.
The Closing Ceremony of the Olympic Games features several protocol elements, including the flag protocol. This includes the lowering of the Olympic flag and the raising of the flags of the current host country and the next host country. The mayor of the current host city hands the Olympic flag to the IOC President, who in turn passes it to the mayor of the next host city, where it will be flown for the next four years.
The lowering and raising of these flags first took place at the Paris 1924 Closing Ceremony, held on 27 July. During the ceremony, the flags of France and the Netherlands – whose largest city, Amsterdam, would host the Games in 1928 – were raised side by side.
In another first, a temporary Olympic Village was built to house athletes. Consisting of wooden huts, it was erected near the Olympic Stadium and was entirely dismantled once the Games were over.
The Children’s Games, another first-time event held as part of the 1924 Games, encouraged young people to engage in physical activity and raised public awareness of the Olympic values.
The 1924 Children’s Games were held at the initiative of the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games at the Stade Olympique de Colombes from 18 to 20 July. The event was organised by Paris’s Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), French scouting federations, Franco-American associations and other youth groups.
Only US and French youngsters – most of them from cities in the north of the country – took part in the competitions, which included volleyball, basketball and baseball. Recreational ball games and scout activities were also organised.
The International Sports Exhibition of Paris 1924 marked the beginning of the Olympic Games’ emergence as a platform for the growth of the sports industry and a showcase for new products and technologies.
The International Sports Exhibition was established under the patronage of the French government, and its organisation was placed under the authority of the Minister of Trade and Industry and supervised by a government delegate. The role of the Exhibition was to promote the emerging sports industry and foster connections between the sports world and other sectors of the economy. Held at a city-centre location from May to July that year, the event showcased sports products and services and featured a sport art salon, sports film screenings and talks given by athletes and experts on a range of sport-related topics.
Exhibitors at the event were organised across seven categories: A: sports clothing and equipment, and sport, tourism and education; B: camping, hunting, fishing, photography and travel; C: games for children and adults; D: sports federations and associations; E: tourism; F: tourist offices; and G: the hotel industry.
Although no attendance figures are available, the Official Report of the Olympic Games Paris 1924 describes the Exhibition as “the most interesting” of all the initiatives related to the Games.