Friday Flashback - The Handoff of the 1904 Olympic Games

By Karl Klockars in Miscellaneous on Oct 2, 2009 8:40PM

For anyone still bummed about Chicago's international "You've got a great personality, though" incident this morning, consider this: We had the games once - and we gave them away. Oh, yes. We first saw it posted on the ChicagoansForRio site (which has been updated in the past few hours, if you haven't visited lately) and checked it out - Chicago had been awarded the 1904 Games and passed them to St. Louis in order to prevent the country's smaller population from splitting the difference between the Games and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The exposition was held to celebrate the centennial of the Purchase, and introduced the world to the ice cream cone.

The amplification of the Games' impact throughout the years is highlighted by the fact that after searching the Historical Tribune Database, just one story could be tracked down from that tradeoff. From February 12th, 1903, in a byline-free piece, the Chicago Tribune reported:

The contests which were to be held in Chicago in 1904 will be held in St. Louis during the Louisiana Purchase exposition. Cablegrams were recieved yesterday in both Chicago and St. Louis from Michael La Grave, fair commissioner in Paris, saying: "Everything settled. St. Louis gets games."

H.J Furber, president of the Chicago Games association stated,"We did not oppose the transfer, which was earnestly solicited by the St. Louis exposition, in view of the fact that it is a national enterprise, and because we realized that the holding of the games in Chicago at the same time would seriously jeopardize the success of the exposition. We felt that an opportunity to show our good will to a sister city, thereby indicating our recognition of the solidarity of interests of the middle west, implied obligations that could not be ignored."

And with that, the Olympic dreams for Chicago were dashed a century-and-five ago. Except it seems that back then...no one really cared. So just remember, we passed on the opportunity once to bring events like the Tug-of-War and the Roque battles to Chicago, and did so with grace and a spirit of giving. Hopefully we'll see as gracious demonstrations of sportsmanship today as were shown back then.

1904 Expo/Olympic handbill from SandieHeaRealEstate.