The offical opening of the 1908 Olympic Games

 

The King watching the games

Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies

The official opening of the Games by H.R.H. King Edward VII was on 13 July 1908, and for the first time ever in an opening Olympic ceremony, the athletes marched into the stadium under their national flags. This momentous occasion, however, was not without its political controversies and disputes which reflected wider tensions within the global community.  

Protests

     The athletics team from Finland, upset at being under Russian rule, chose to march without a flag at all rather than under a Tsarist Russian one.   In an oversight the Swedish flag had not been displayed, so the members of the team decided not to take part in the ceremony.    The Irish team boycotted the ceremony in protest of Great Britain failing to grant them independence. Many Irish athletes refused to compete as subjects of the British crown and were absent from the Games.  

‘This flag dips to no earthly King’

  The American flag bearer refused to dip the US flag to King Edward, the team captain proclaiming “This flag dips to no earthly King”, a practice which has continued to the present day. Consequently the organisers omitted to fly the Stars and Stripes besides the flags of other competing nations in the main stadium. Another school of thought was that they were protesting at Britain’s refusal to give Ireland its independence. Others say that they refused to dip the flag because their national flag was not displayed.  

Recording the games

  Inevitably, the Olympic Games aroused a great deal of public interest. The Illustrated London News dedicated one of their illustrators, Max Cowper, to recording the events in the stadium. A detail from one of his drawings can be seen here.