One of the early concepts of the Olympic Games was to include "intercalated" Games every four years between the normal cycle, and to hold these Games in Athens, the ancestral home of the Olympics. In 1906 the first, and only one, of these games was held. Occurring only two years after the St. Louis Games of 1904 and two years before the London Games of 1908, the Athens Games were considered by many not to be "official"; social and political forces prevented continuation of the intercalation cycle in 1910 and later. Yet these Games were surprisingly successful and helped guarantee the survival of the modern Olympics. This book, fourth in the series on the early Olympics, presents all the data on 29 nation and city-state participants in more than a dozen events in the Athens Games. Scores and descriptions are provided, and many historical errors and omissions in other sources are corrected. Appendices include the published program for the Games, the actual schedule followed during the Games, and country-by country listings of all participating athletes....

The 1912 Olympic Games held in Stockholm, Sweden, were the most "modern" Olympic Games yet celebrated and the most successful of the Modern Era to that date. Much of the success is credited to the influence of Viktor Balck, who is remembered as "The Father of Swedish Sports." The 1912 Olympics also featured new innovations and events. A semiautomatic electrical timing device and a photo-finish camera were used, and the decathlon and modern pentathalon were new events. This work, the sixth in a series on the early Olympics, provides unusually extensive information on the sites, dates, competitors, and nations of the Stockholm games. Results for each event, including cycling, diving, fencing, rowing and sculling, shooting, tennis, water polo, and yachting, among others, are provided....

Until this volume was compiled, the results of the 1920 Olympics held in Antwerp, Belgium, have been far from complete. The Antwerp organizing committee typed up a report of the results almost as an afterthought because it was so financially strapped after the games. For some events only the medalists are listed, with little, if any, additional information. Very few copies were ever produced, and those few copies were in French. The seventh in a series on the early Olympics, this work fills a gap in the recording of early Olympics history by providing complete results for all competitors and all events (except for shooting, which has only partial information available). In virtually all cases, a 1920 source has been used in preference to a more modern source of information, and all details have been fully researched in contemporary newspapers, journals, and magazines and checked for accuracy by experts on various sports from all over the world....

The 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis were both unusual and controversial. One of the major problems for Olympic scholars has been to determine which of the events at these Games were truly of Olympic caliber. The Games were included as part of the World's Fair, and every athletic contest that took place under the Fair's auspices was deemed "Olympic." These activities included croquet and water polo, high school and college championships in football and basketball, as well as the "Anthropology Days" events in which members of "primitive" "tribes" competed against one another. The author demonstrates, after great deliberation, that 16 events of the 21 overall were truly Olympic sports and gives descriptions, scores, and analyses for each (as well as for the five non-Olympic events). Appendices include literature relating to these games, lists of noncompeting foreign entrants, and a guide to all competitors....