The Gold in the Rings: The People and Events That Transformed the Olympic Games
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The Gold in the Rings: The People and Events That Transformed the Olympic Games
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Overview
Entertaining and expert, The Gold in the Rings maps the Olympics' course from paragon of purity to billion-dollar profits.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252051531 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 01/30/2020 |
| Series: | Sport and Society |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 551,832 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Paul Helms versus Avery Brundage
Understanding the Relationship between the Olympics and Money Matters
For a period encompassing the first three decades of modern Olympic history, expanding public interest in the Games was satisfied almost solely by mass communication's fundamental instruments — the printing industry's newspaper and magazine publications. In the late 1920s, radio broadcasts added a further means of mass communication. Commencing in the 1940s, the landmark development of television (some years earlier) substantively altered the landscape, as did the coming of cyberspace later in the century. The financial underpinnings for the existence of mechanisms for print and electronic mass communication depend greatly on what might be called a circulation population, or readers, listeners, and viewers. They form a consumer corpus that in turn attracts the efforts of producers of goods and services to market their goods through advertising.
In exceedingly simplistic terms, for the past 150 years global society has demonstrated overwhelming progress in production of goods and services; distribution of those goods and services until well into the twentieth century (and its relatively contemporary era of globalization) failed to keep pace. The eminent Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, in his classic The Affluent Society, informs us that the exercise of consumption/distribution depends on the creation of a need, perceived or real, for a product or service. Enter, then, advertising, the mechanism that drives the need and desire for the fruits of production. Into the world of Olympic matters sprang a fundamental element of market capitalism, the advertisement of goods and services to meet the needs of production and consumption. The greater the attention given to Olympic Games by vehicles of mass communication, the greater the zeal of business and commerce to link with and capitalize on such exposure to the consumer world.
But exposure is one thing; image is quite another. Image is created and perpetuated over time. In order to be attractive to commercial initiatives, the Olympic Movement not only had to demonstrate that it offered the prospect of wide exposure to a consumer marketplace, but it also had to reflect an acceptable image — indeed, one embraced by public norms. When the noble qualities of the Olympic Movement rose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — peace, brotherhood, altruism, tolerance, goodwill, health and fitness for youth, and virtuous amateur sport participation — all set in a resplendent atmosphere of high ceremony and ritual combined with an ever-expanding international audience through newspapers, magazines, and radio, the die was cast. The "Olympic consumer world" became the target audience. Opportunities for companies to market their products broadened with the arrival of television and the internet. Make no mistake, without the advertising industry, there would be no modern Olympic Games, at least as we have come to know them in our times.
Wedding Rings: A Marriage Made in Heaven
In the euphoria surrounding the closing of the Games of the Vth Olympiad celebrated in Stockholm in 1912, one thing was certain: the Baron Pierre de Coubertin–inspired reincarnation in modern times of Western civilization's ancient Olympic festival had "come of age." Indelibly apparent were many of those qualities that long ago characterized and distinguished the ancient world's most illustrious sporting legacy left to future generations: athletic performance par excellence, ritual ceremonies cast in religious-like tones, resplendent facilities, and onsite spectator masses that gave every indication that a cultural awareness of the Olympic showcase penetrated to more distant environs than simply the stadium.
One prop, however, was missing — the presence of a symbol, a mark, an icon that would identify in bold graphic consequence the Modern Olympic Movement. Coubertin, unwilling to entrust this critical issue to anyone other than himself, took the matter in hand. He already had a model in mind: ironically, "wedding rings." In 1892 he was heavily involved in the merger of two French organizations — his own Comité Jules Simon, and the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Courses à Pied — to form the premier French sports-governing body of the period, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA). To mark that historic occasion, a simple logo of two interlocked rings (circles) was established to consummate the marriage and thenceforth identify the organization's athletes in their sporting endeavors. In the year following the 1912 Olympics, a new symbol, five interlocked rings, now recognized in every corner of the modern world, began to appear on Coubertin's personal letterhead. He had no inkling of the power that "his" symbol would attain in a global context. Nevertheless, as he surveyed the some fifty Olympic flags adorned with the five rings at the opening of the Modern Olympic Movement's twentieth anniversary celebrations at the Sorbonne in June 1914, he could not help but be justly satisfied with the results of his labors. Indeed, similar to two rings signaling a marriage in 1892, Coubertin's five rings, created in 1913, consummated another union, one in which the Olympic bride betrothed herself to an international "five parts of the world" groom.
Tentative Steps in Commercial Relationships
Despite a repugnance toward anything commercial tainting his Olympic mission, it was Coubertin himself who constructed one of the first examples of a link to commerce. For the January 1901 issue of Olympic Review, the official publication of the IOC largely financed by the baron's personal wealth, he mounted a full-page, inside-cover advertisement for the products of a Parisian sporting-goods firm. He did the same for a Bénédictine liqueur ad in the October 1902 issue. No one has ever been able to document what the baron might have received in compensation for these acts. Coubertin invested most of his personal fortune, inherited from his father, in underwriting costs associated with his Olympic crusade. In fact, he spent much of his wife's considerably greater inheritance on Olympic matters, expenditures which left them both in modest circumstances in declining age and severely compromised their personal relationship as time wore on.
Other modest examples followed. Commensurate with the 1908 London Olympics, organizers pursued a campaign to generate revenue from the placement of ads in "schedules and announcements" print publications. Hence, messages such as those featuring Schweppes Soda Water and Dry Ginger Ale, Vaughton's Medals and Badges, and Wawkphar's Antiseptic Military Foot Powder joined legions of other firms bent on marketing their products and services to an Olympic audience. In Stockholm four years later, ten domestic companies were approved by Swedish organizers to vend their products on the Olympic grounds, including a photographic company and a manufacturer of weighing machines whose products were displayed for the use of patrons. Upon arrival at the first post–World War I Olympic Games, celebrated in Antwerp in 1920, Coubertin was confronted by a miniature World's Fair atmosphere featuring exhibits, booths, kiosks, and shops. In his opening address, Coubertin, who was clearly discomfited by the scene, challenged the assembled spectators and officials to "keep away the opportunities that are advanced [by profit-motivated people] whose only dream is to use someone else's muscles to build upon his own political fortune or to make his own business prosper."
Four years later in Paris for the 1924 Olympics, Coubertin's last as IOC president, it became obvious that his message enunciated in Antwerp had fallen on deaf ears. Of the 320 pages in the Guide to the Games published by the Organizing Committee, 256 contained ads for such products as Mercier Champagne, Spalding Sporting Goods, and Grand Marnier liqueurs. More alarming was that athletes performed in the Olympic stadium itself before a backdrop of prominent signboards featuring Cinzano, Dubonnet, Ovalmaltine, and Chevine Niger, parfum sublime. The presence in the Paris Olympic stadium of prominently placed advertising signs prompted Olympic officials, led by Coubertin's successor, Belgium's Henri Baillet-Latour, to decree that henceforth Olympic competition venues would not be "disfigured by signs and posters advertising business products." That succinct dictum and its resulting free-from-advertising atmosphere remains in place today.
Be that as it may, the Amsterdam organizers of the 1928 Games awarded "rights packages" to several "concessionaires," including a brewery that operated beer garden restaurants on grounds next to the Olympic stadium. The Amsterdam gathering also presented to the world what would become the longest-standing corporate relationship in Olympic history, the marriage with a popular soft drink known simply as "Coke." The Coca-Cola Company, formed in Atlanta in 1881, first expanded its product into international markets early in the 1920s. In Amsterdam it made its Olympic debut; hundreds of posters outside the stadium announced its presence. By 1929 the company's flagship publication, Red Barrell, proudly announced to its employees and shareholders that "Coca-Cola is now found within the bull fight arenas of sunny Spain and Mexico, at the Olympic Games Stadium below the dykes of Holland, atop the Eiffel Tower above 'Gay Paree,' on the holy pagoda in distant Burma, and beside the Coliseum of historic Rome."
In all of the aforementioned agreements between Olympic organizers and commercial firms for "rights," "presence," or "permission," there has never been a scintilla of evidence confirming that these acts demanded a fee paid to the organizers. Rather, the evidence suggests that such arrangements were formed with the purpose of providing needed services for the comfort and convenience of spectators onsite. For organizers, this factor alone was enough.
The First Great Test: Brundage versus Helms — Exploitation versus Protection
As the value of association with the image and exposure offered by the Olympic Games rose exponentially throughout the 1920s, two conflicting issues resulted: the increasing zeal and initiative of commercial enterprise to capitalize on such an attractive association and, conversely, the determination of Olympic officials to protect their enterprise from unauthorized use. The most important precedent-setting episode in the history of protecting the Modern Olympic Movement's prized assets — image and exposure — is reflected in the strident confrontation between Paul H. Helms, an American baker who was an exemplar of shrewd business acumen as well as someone supremely committed to Olympic ideals, and Avery Brundage, a former Olympic athlete and self-made, affluent construction magnate, one who ruled American Olympic matters with an iron hand.
Paul Helms has been largely forgotten in Olympic history, while Avery Brundage captured much if not more media attention in his time than any other president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), including Coubertin, as well as the more contemporary driver of the IOC's "rags to riches" financial story, Juan Antonio Samaranch. In some ways Paul Helms and Avery Brundage were alike. They were born in the Gilded Age; only two years separated their birth in the late 1880s. Both came from families of modest economic circumstance. Each was deprived of a parent early in their lives, Helms his mother, Brundage his father. Both became highly successful businessmen as adults. But there their similarities ended. Helms was diminutive; Brundage was a formidable physical specimen. Helms exuded a pleasing personal demeanor; Brundage was distant, often gruff and abrasive, a man with few close friends, even though he could name legions of acquaintances. Helms displayed qualities of friendliness, compatibility, and compromise on difficult issues; Brundage personified power and uncompromising persuasion in his dealings.
Events surrounding the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics brought Helms and Brundage together. Those events detailed a saga that established a foundation upon which the Modern Olympic Movement and its constituent United States Olympic Committee (USOC) eventually built the superstructure that supports their multibillion dollar endeavors. As the great festival's opening approached in the summer of 1932 (by then, the Olympic Games were just that, a great festival) the city of Los Angeles was transformed into an elaborate party setting. Signs glorifying the competitions were everywhere; banners adorned businesses and public buildings, and pennants hung from street-side lampposts. The economic depression that gripped the world, including California, did not prevent an enormous last-minute rush of ticket buyers from engulfing sales outlets in downtown Los Angeles. On the afternoon of July 30 almost 105,000 spectators, by far a new record, crowded into the Memorial Coliseum to view the opening ceremonies. President Herbert Hoover was not present to officially open the Games; Vice President Charles Curtis represented the White House. For a two-week period almost two thousand athletes representing thirty-nine nations vied in the various competitions. Daily attendance figures ranged from 45,170 on July 31 to 110,410 on August 10. Spectators witnessed sixteen world-record and thirty-three Olympic-record performances, among them the swimming successes of the Japanese men and women and the startling track and field performances of Mildred "Babe" Didrikson, perhaps the most notable hero of the Games in the eyes of Americans. In the face of the economic headwinds, which included a last-minute 10 percent tax (ordered by the U.S. Congress) on Olympic tickets, Los Angeles organizers ultimately reported a $1.5 million surplus.
The 1932 Los Angeles Games introduced a new feature for Olympic athletes: a residential village, at least for men (women competitors were housed at the Chapman Park Hotel in suburban Beverley Hills). Built in Baldwin Hills, a relatively short bus ride from the Coliseum, the Olympic Village was a marvel of planning and execution. A chain-link fence surrounded the premises; twenty-five thousand geraniums, five thousand shrubs, and eight hundred six-foot palm trees beautified the landscape; ten miles of drainage pipe carried waste materials away; refrigeration was provided by ice; cooking fuel arrived in the form of bottled propane gas. Some five hundred pink-and-white two-room bungalows provided accommodation, interspersed lavatories called "comfort stations" took care of toilet needs, and forty kitchen–dining-room facilities satisfied food-service requirements. Delivered to the Olympic Village kitchens each morning were 2,750 pounds of string beans, eighteen hundred pounds of fresh peas, fifty sacks of potatoes, 450 gallons of ice cream, and hundreds of loaves of bread — but not just any bread: rather, Helms Olympic Bread, the flagship product of Helms Bakeries. Its owner, Paul Hoy Helms, was a well-known, well-intentioned, and socially well-connected and public-spirited Los Angeles citizen.
Paul Helms was born in Ottawa, Franklin County, Kansas, on September 19, 1889, to Reverend Elmer Ellsworth Helms, a Methodist minister, and his wife, Ora Ella Hoy Helms. When he was three years old, his mother's premature death split the family. Young Paul was sent to Ohio to be raised on his uncle's dairy farm in the Township of Mount Healthy (near Cincinnati). Paul's "surrogate parents" were his mother's brother, William E. Hoy, and his wife, Anna Marie, each a deaf mute. Together with the Hoys' six natural children, young Helms exhibited a sunny disposition and a bent for the hard work and responsibility demanded by "farm life." He was raised, too, in an atmosphere that encouraged sport. His "Uncle Bill" was a major-league professional baseball player, a centerfielder of distinction. Known as "Dummy" Hoy, he debuted with the Washington Nationals in 1888 and closed his career with the Cincinnati Reds in 1902.6 Paul Helms was college educated, a graduate of Syracuse University (1912). Of small stature, he was a coxswain on one of the Orangemen's varsity crews. Service in World War I was followed by a stint selling insurance in Pennsylvania and his marriage to Pearl Ellis.
Following a move to New York City in the early 1920s, Helms opened a small bakery with but one home-delivery route. By 1926, at which time chronically poor health forced his temporary retirement, he had built the business to embrace two hundred delivery routes. In 1928 he shifted his family to the more healthful climate of southern California. Once settled in Los Angeles and "itching to get back to work," in 1931 he established Helms Bakeries at the corner of Venice and Washington Streets in Culver City, an area of greater Los Angeles not far from both Baldwin Hills and the Memorial Coliseum. His products, a variety of breads, rolls, buns, donuts, and sponge cakes, were sold solely in his own store and to homes along eleven routes delivered in colorful two-tone blue-and-yellow vans.
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