the lever of nationalism. That is what happened at the 1906 intercalary Games in Athens.
Olympian Dissent in 1906
After the debacle in St. Louis, the Olympics verged on imminent fizzle. Coubertin’s control of the Olympics was slipping, and it wasn’t entirely clear who was running the show.
According to the Baron’s original vision, the Games would rotate through the major cities of the world, touching down every four years in a new location to spread the Olympic gospel. But Greek boosters and their German allies had other plans, which they hatched at the 1901 IOC meeting in Paris. They proposed holding the Olympics every two years, alternating between Athens and “other large cities of the civilized countries.”136 This would ensure that the Olympics landed in the Greek capital every four years, beginning in 1906.
Coubertin’s grip on the Games was far from ironclad. Many Olympics boosters in Greece saw him as a trespasser stealing their historical birthright. The American James Sullivan undermined his authority at every opportunity. The IOC was wracked with internal turbulence as members threatened to defect.137 Under these circumstances, Coubertin grudgingly pledged the IOC’s support for the 1906 Athens Olympics, which eventually became known as the “intercalary” Games.138 However, the Baron refused to attend the 1906 Games, and later did everything he could to undercut their historical importance, stopping just short of plugging his ears with his index fingers and ululating, la-la-la-la-la, whenever someone broached the topic.139
The 1906 Games opened with a grand procession of the aristocracy. More than 60,000 raucous spectators watched the arrival of a carriage chock full of royalty, including King George of Greece, his sister Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, King Edward VII of Britain, Queen Olga of Greece, the Prince of Wales and his spouse, Princess Mary. The royal box seats were packed with delegates from various European courts as well as members of the Greek royal family, including the Duke and Duchess of Sparta.140 Sullivan, then US commissioner to the Olympics, described the scene: “Flags were waved in a frantic manner. The fringe of soldiers around the top row of seats stood saluting, the naval officers stood back of the throne in salute. The cheers grew louder and louder—not only the people in the Stadium were cheering, but all Athens was cheering.”141
But the most memorable moment from the 1906 Olympics was not the regal cavalcade at the opening ceremony but the audacious act of dissent carried out by the son of an Irish shipbuilder: track athlete Peter O’Connor. O’Connor was not only one of the most accomplished Irish tracksters in history, but also an ardent Irish nationalist who abhorred the idea of having to compete as a British athlete. The English Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) tried to induce O’Connor and his fellow Irishman Con Leahy to compete for Great Britain at the Athens Games. At 34, O’Connor was nearing the twilight of a successful career, but the British felt he and Leahy were capable of boosting their medal tally. However, O’Connor and Leahy were determined to go out in a blaze of Irish green competing for the small Olympic contingent from Ireland heading to the Games.142
O’Connor traveled to Athens with Con Leahy and two other Irish athletes, John Daly and John McGough. Everyday Irish men and women keen to see Ireland represented at the Olympics had raised money for the athletes’ passage to Athens. In correspondence with Olympic officials, the Irish athletes had made it clear they wished to represent Ireland. But to their great dismay, upon their arrival they learned—by reading souvenir programs, no less—that they were listed with the British delegation.143 The 1906 Athens Games were the first in which athletes had to be affiliated with a National Olympic Committee (NOC) to compete. Ireland was still governed from Westminster at the time and had not yet formed an NOC.144 O’Connor—a working-class clerk for a Waterford solicitor—wrote an appeal and submitted it to the Olympic organizers. He was summarily denied.145 But, as O’Connor’s granddaughter Rosemarie O’Connor Quinn told me: “He was a fiery man. He was not a man to be crossing.”146
For the first time ever the Olympics held an opening ceremony that resembled the flag-waving parades of today’s Games. At this first “March of Nations” the Irish athletes offered a foretaste of the protests to come, sporting bright green blazers embossed with golden shamrocks on the left breast and ornate golden braids along the cuffs and collars.147 They also donned identical green caps emblazoned with a shamrock. The athletes lagged behind the rest of the British contingent, conspicuously distancing themselves from the pack and ignoring the English AAA’s demand that they feature Union Jacks on their sport coats.148
The plot thickened once the athletics competition finally began. In the long jump, O’Connor alleged that Olympic official Matthew Halpin—who doubled as event judge and the manager of the US squad—engaged in biased officiating. According to O’Connor and others at the scene, Halpin allowed US long jumper Myer Prinstein to leapfrog ahead in the jumping order, thereby allowing him to run on a smoother, faster track. Halpin also called O’Connor for fouls on two of his jumps.149 O’Connor later railed to the Limerick Leader: “I was enraged … If my wife had not been present looking on at this contest, which restrained me, I would have beaten Halpin to a pulp as I was half insane over the injustice.”150 On the spot, O’Connor submitted a written appeal, but he was gaining a reputation as a troublemaker and was again denied. He was forced to settle for the silver.151
O’Connor was determined to have the last word on the matter. During the medal ceremony, when the Union Jack was hoisted up the flagpole in honor of his silver-medal performance, O’Connor scampered over to the pole and swiftly shimmied up it. He unfurled a large green flag bearing a golden harp and the words Erin Go Bragh, or Ireland Forever. Below, his teammate Con Leahy waved a similar flag and fended off the Greek police, giving O’Connor more time atop the pole.152 O’Connor later reminisced: “When I climbed a pole about 20 feet in height and remained aloft for some time, waving my large flag and Con waving his from the ground underneath the pole, it caused a great sensation … I was an accomplished gymnast in my youth and my active climbing of the post excited the spectators who had observed my violent protest to Halpin being sole judge and declaring my best jumps foul.”153 O’Connor’s great grandson Mark Quinn later wrote, “The Irishman’s points might well be accredited to Great Britain, but the flying of the Irish flag left none in doubt as to where O’Connor’s true allegiances lay.”154 Quinn told me: “Events dictated that he become political. To not become political would be to submit to British authority.”155 As Rosemarie O’Connor Quinn put it, “Over 800 years of repression and dominance of a colonial power certainly inspired Peter O’Connor to pull down the British flag.”156
Not everyone championed this act of dissent. After describing the incident, the Daily Mail noted, “The question of the flags was the subject of considerable comment both in the Stadium and in the city, the Irishmen’s attitude being universally disapproved.”157 More broadly, O’Connor and Leahy were a vital precursor for future acts of athlete activism at the Olympic Games. They also showed how nationalism could be used as a political lever against colonial oppression in the context of sport.
Although Olympic officials were displeased with O’Connor’s act of political dissent, they did not expel him from the Games. He went on the win gold in the “hop, step, and jump” event, known today as the triple jump. When Leahy won a gold medal in the high jump he repeated his flag-waving protest, this time from the ground.158 In 1956 O’Connor remarked, “The British failed miserably in their efforts to annex any credit for the Irish successes and the flag incident received wide publicity in the world’s press and turned the spotlight very much on the Irish political situation at a period when very few dared to raise a protest against the British domination of our country.”159 Athletes were in the vanguard of political dissent.
There is disagreement among Olympic mavens over whether the 1906 intercalary Games qualify as an official
