How we lit the Olympic flame

Aug 8 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

As the biggest audience in world history anticipates the Olympics in Beijing, we remember the Liverpool origins of the modern Games. David Charters reports

THERE is always a Liverpudlian or two lurking in the mix when something big is in the offing. It’s an immutable law of nature, like the sun rising in the East or there being no seats left on the train.

“OK”, say the scoffers, strangers and Mancunians, with a low groan. “We have to accept that you are the European Capital of Culture, but you have never hosted the Olympic Games . . . have you?”

You can almost see the anxious expressions which follow that question, as the nation prepares for the greatest sporting event in the world.

But, before answering it, let’s canter back into pre-Liverpudlian history.

First, we should visit the gods making mischief on Mount Olympus in the north of Greece, before we set off to Olympia, down in the south of the country, for a peek at those magnificently-sculpted chaps posing in their birthday suits.

Imagine it now. Couples are wrestling, some are throwing spears, while others sprint or prance about to catch the eyes of the girls – and the boys, if the rumours are to be believed.

Of course, it was all done in the Corinthian spirit, until someone decided that the event had run its course. So the Olympic Games were ended, consigned to history, until this Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, suggested that they should be revived.

He believed, with rare passion, that sport could help young people meet in fellowship and goodwill, linking nation to nation. Surely, that would plant a greater understanding in the generations to come. Sadly, poisoned minds have always prevented that happening, but the dream was good. We should always remember that.

Anyway, the modern Olympics began in Athens in 1896. So far, you will have noticed that this saga has been dominated by the Greeks, if you overlook the French aristocrat.

Where were the Liverpudlians? At the front of the field. That’s where.

More than 30 years before the Olympic flame was relit in Athens, two gymnasiarchs (the posh name for gym bosses) had the same idea. One was John Hulley (1832-1875). He was a physical fitness expert, who had trained under Lewis Huguenin.

Huguenin encouraged a craze for healthy exercise and gymnastics among the professional and merchant classes in Liverpool. Gyms opened.

The most significant of these was the Rotunda, a former billiards hall in Bold Street, opened by Hulley in the late 1850s. It became headquarters of the Liverpool Athletic Club, which Hulley co-founded, bestowing on it the lofty motto of “Mens Sana in Corpore Sano” (A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body).

His partner was Charles Melly (1829-1888), an all-round good egg and a member of the Liverpool family which later produced George Melly, the satirist, surrealist, blues singer, raconteur and writer, who died last year.

Charles Melly’s interests embraced the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, the Working Men’s Improvement Society, “ragged schools”, the Unitarian Mission, the provision of infirmaries, public parks, playgrounds and drinking fountains for all, as well as the four open-air gyms he founded in Liverpool

Melly was in the style of many Victorian philanthropists, who felt that the benefits of physical education, fresh water and a decent diet should be enjoyed by all classes.

To this end, he and Hulley decided to host athletic events in Liverpool, which was then emerging as the second port of the British Empire. What they had in mind was a revival of the ideal of physical perfection, as represented in the ancient Olympic Games.

So they called their first meeting the Liverpool Olympic Festival. It was held on the military parade ground, Mount Vernon, on Saturday, June 14, 1862.

Crowds, estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000, gathered there. A programme of events was devised by Hulley and Melly, an old boy of Rugby, who had been imbued with the public school sporting ethos.

It included running (120 yards and 300 yards), walking (1.5 miles and four miles), high jump, long jump, pole leap, throwing the disc (discus) and the cricket ball, box- ing, wrestling and gymnastics.

The Daily Post had published a full-list of competitors the day before. It was generally agreed that the Olympic ambitions had been achieved in spirit, though no outstanding performances were recorded.

“That physical exercise is necessary to health is a lesson nature daily teaches,” opined the Daily Post. “Men, whose gymnasium is, as it were, the World – the soldier, the sailor, the open-air labourer – are those who, generally speaking, enjoy the luxury of good bodily condition, and upon whose manly power, the safety of a nation in times of emergency must mainly depend.”

Five gold, 22 silver and 23 bronze medals were awarded.

There had been some teething problems with crowd control and the recording of winners. But these were overcome at the following year’s much larger festival, which attracted some 15,000 spectators and competitors from much farther afield.

The festivals coincided with Muscular Christianity, a movement which played a significant part in the development of British football clubs, including Everton and Liverpool.

From Mount Vernon, the Hulley/Melly games moved to the Zoological Gardens on West Derby Road. By then, they were attended by “nefarious” commercial activities, including gambling and prostitution.

These were not part of the Olympic ideal and Melly and Hulley moved the fourth games to Llandudno. In November of that year, 1865, Hulley and Melly opened the Liverpool Gymnasium on Myrtle Street. It was here, with representatives from London and Berlin, that the National Olympian Association was founded with the motto Civium Vires Civitatis Vis (the power of the state lies with the strength of its citizens).

The Liverpool Games were held again in Llandudno, and then they were brought back to Liverpool for the last time in 1867. Using the gym, Shiel Park and the swimming pool in Wallasey, more than 300 athletes took part, some from France.

Financial problems were blamed for the end of the Games, but by then the ideas, which would start the modern Olympics, had been sown.

“Unfortunately, not many people know of Liverpool’s role in the founding of the modern Olympics,” says Ray Physick, 57, a sports researcher, who wrote the book, Played in Liverpool: Charting the Heritage of a City at Play. “The important thing about the Liverpool Olympic Festivals is that they were organised on the lines of the ancient Greek ones.”

In the coming weeks, our eyes will be leaping, darting and somersaulting to the non-stop action on the box, which is perhaps not the exercise that the founding fathers of the Liverpool Olympics intended. But when we shut those eyes, we can dream of hosting our Games again.

FOR more features on Liverpool history, visit www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/heritage

OLYMPICS PREVIEW: PAGE 27

davidcharters