Sporting highlights
The first Olympic Winter Games gold medallist was US speed skater Charles Jewtraw, who won the 500m on 26 January, the opening day of competition. The Lake Placid native’s time of 44 seconds gave him the title ahead of Norway’s Oskar Olsen. Roald Larsen, another Norwegian, shared the bronze with Finland’s Clas Thunberg, the outstanding individual performer of the Games. Thunberg won a medal in each of the five speed skating events, three of them golds. His team-mate Julius Skutnabb collected three medals, one of each colour: gold in the 10,000m, silver in the 5,000m and bronze in the all-around.
The youngest competitor at Chamonix 1924 was the great Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie, who was 11 years and 295 days old when she placed last of eight in the women’s competition, which was won by Austria’s Helene Engelmann. Henie made more history at St Moritz four years later, winning figure skating gold at the age of just 15 to become the youngest Olympic champion at the time, a distinction she held for 66 years. She collected further golds at Lake Placid 1932 and Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936 and was crowned world champion ten times. Later inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame and the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame, she became a Hollywood star after hanging up her skates, appearing in 13 films.
Represented by the club team Toronto Granites, Canada powered their way to victory in what was the second Olympic ice hockey tournament, the first having taken place four years earlier in Antwerp, when the Canadians also won gold. The North Americans thrilled the Chamonix crowds, beating Switzerland 33-0, Czechoslovakia 30-0, Sweden 22-0 and Great Britain 19-2 before defeating their USA neighbours with a 6-1 victory in the final. Their goal difference over their five matches was +107. Canada dominated the early years of the Olympic ice hockey tournament, winning six of the first seven gold medals on offer. Nine-time Olympic men’s champions in all, their last title came at Sochi 2014.
Jacob Tullin Thams won one of Norway’s four gold medals in the ski jumping. Twelve years later Thams would complete a remarkable Olympic double, collecting a sailing silver in the eight-metre event to become only the second Olympian after the USA’s Eddie Eagan to win medals at the Olympic Summer and Winter Games. To this day only five athletes have ever achieved the feat.
Unlike today, athletes in 1924 only received their medals on the final day of the Games, shortly before the closing speech by Pierre de Coubertin. Some of them had already gone home by that time, however, with their team-mates stepping up to collect their medals on their behalf.
One athlete who had to wait even longer for his medal was Anders Haugen, the USA team captain. Haugen initially placed fourth in the ski jumping competition, behind Norway’s Thorleif Haug. Fifty years later, at the 50th reunion of the 1924 Norwegian team, a sports historian noticed an error in the calculation of Haug’s score and found that Haugen should have finished third, ahead of him. The IOC was notified, and arrangements were made for Haugen, who was 85 by this time, to receive his bronze medal from Haug’s daughter at a special ceremony held in Oslo.
The team sport of military patrol was on the programme at Chamonix 1924, its one and only official appearance at the Olympic Winter Games. Involving cross-country skiing, ski mountaineering and rifle shooting, it was a demonstration sport at St Moritz 1928, Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936 and St Moritz 1948 before disappearing completely from the programme. The sport was the forerunner of biathlon, which was recognised as an Olympic sport in 1955 and made its Winter Games debut at Olympic Winter Games 1960 in Lake Tahoe. Six four-athlete teams took part in the military patrol competition at Chamonix 1924, with Switzerland winning the gold.