Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's begin today's episode with a poem penned in
Speaker 1: the early part of the last century called Ode to Sport.
Speaker 1: It was written by a short French aristocrat with a
Speaker 1: mouth obscuringly large mustache and a deeply idiosyncratic view of antiquity,
Speaker 1: the creator of the modern Olympic Games, the Baron Pierre
Speaker 1: de Coubertain.
Speaker 2: Oh Sport, you are progress. To serve you, a man
Speaker 2: must improve himself, both physically and spiritually. You force him
Speaker 2: to abide by a greater discipline. You demand that he
Speaker 2: avoid all excess.
Speaker 1: I didn't say it was a good poem.
Speaker 2: You teach him wise rules which allow him to exert
Speaker 2: himself with the maximum of intensity without compromising his good health.
Speaker 1: Ot to sport is terrible, just awful. So of course
Speaker 1: we're going to be playing a lot of it. But
Speaker 1: the palm also matters, because it's a time capsule. De
Speaker 1: kouper Tank believed that the Olympics should be a kind
Speaker 1: of modern religion, embodying the aristocratic values of amateurism, no
Speaker 1: money for sport and internationalism.
Speaker 2: Oh Sport, you are peace. You promote happy relations between peoples,
Speaker 2: bringing them together in their shared devotion to a strength
Speaker 2: which is controlled, organized and self disciplined.
Speaker 1: The Martin Games got their start in eighteen ninety six
Speaker 1: in Athens. Of course, four years later in Paris, they'd
Speaker 1: included the most dignified upper crust of sports, such as
Speaker 1: pigeon shooting, croquet, and not to be forgotten, the horse
Speaker 1: long jump. But the earliest games fell short of the
Speaker 1: Baron's epic vision. Mainly they kept happening at world's fares,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to convey a deep connection to antiquity
Speaker 1: when you're handing out medals next to, say, the gigantic
Speaker 1: butter statue of Teddy Roosevelt riding a horse. But that
Speaker 1: all changed in nineteen twelve. Picture the opening day of
Speaker 1: the Stockholm Olympics. That year. Trumpets blared as members of
Speaker 1: the Swedish royal family paraded their way to their box.
Speaker 1: International Olympic Committee members in silk hats and frock coats
Speaker 1: processed in ornate facial hair abounded. Thousands of men and
Speaker 1: women athletes strode into the stadium to stand before the
Speaker 1: Swedish King. The Baron de Kubertan was there too, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't a butter statue in sight. These were the
Speaker 1: first games with athletes from every continent except for Antarctica,
Speaker 1: introduced epic sports like the decathlon, and per the Baron's wishes,
Speaker 1: there was an arts competition, which meant there was an
Speaker 1: Olympic gold medal for literature, one in nineteen twelve by
Speaker 1: a poem written under a pseudonym by the Baron himself,
Speaker 1: ode to sport.
Speaker 2: Yours is a prudent, well considered audacity.
Speaker 1: These games were a turning point. But for our purposes
Speaker 1: they mattered not because of the athletic or artistic triumphs,
Speaker 1: or the absence of carved butter. No, they mattered because
Speaker 1: of one young man in that mass of thousands of athletes,
Speaker 1: standing on the field, facing the King into kober Tan,
Speaker 1: a young man in round wire spectacles who had an
Speaker 1: appointment that day with faith, a fate that would later
Speaker 1: put him in the position to save the modern Olympics,
Speaker 1: and that would twenty four years later cost him his soul,
Speaker 1: a young man named Avery Brundage.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about things overlooked and misunderstood.
Speaker 3: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This is episode four of our series
Speaker 3: on the Berlin Olympics in nineteen thirty six Hitler's Olympics.
Speaker 3: Over the past two episodes, I introduced you to one
Speaker 3: of my all time favorite historical figures, Charles Hitchcock Cheryl,
Speaker 3: the patrician dufus who met Hitler and told the world, Hey,
Speaker 3: this guy's all right, let's play sports with him. But today,
Speaker 3: in the show by Colleague bend A, daph Haffrey brings
Speaker 3: us the story of the man who really made the
Speaker 3: games happen, and not only the nineteen thirty six Games,
Speaker 3: but the Olympics as we know them today. The one,
Speaker 3: the only Avery Brundage.
Speaker 1: We meet again, Yeah, to discuss yet another member of
Speaker 1: the International Olympic Committee.
Speaker 3: The most he is the most complet the most important,
Speaker 3: and when I say complicated, I mean that unlike Cheryl,
Speaker 3: he's not a dufus and he's not a cardboard villain.
Speaker 3: I feel like the mid century was full of men
Speaker 3: like this. Fiction was full of men like this. The
Speaker 3: architect in in Coward Runtad and I RAN's the Fountainhead.
Speaker 1: He's also just like an epic epic figure. I think
Speaker 1: we have to start, we have to begin in an
Speaker 1: epic register. Yes, honestly, it's best if he introduces himself, ladies.
Speaker 4: And gentlemen of the press. Usually I'm introduced as the
Speaker 4: last living amateur, something like the tattooed man.
Speaker 1: You know, that's every brandage late in life. Speaking to
Speaker 1: some reporters in Japan, a.
Speaker 4: Journalist friend of mine in Chicago, one of the most
Speaker 4: sophisticated and cynical columnists there, visited Olympia not so long ago,
Speaker 4: and I was amazed to pick up the paper in
Speaker 4: Chicago shortly thereafter and see a headline Brundage may be right.
Speaker 4: After all, this man was so impressed by the atmosphere
Speaker 4: at ancient Olympia that he was almost converted. I don't
Speaker 4: know how long it lasted, but for the moment he
Speaker 4: was converted to the Olympic spirit.
Speaker 1: Conversion to the Olympic Spirit was Avery, Brundage's great obsession.
Speaker 1: The Olympic religion never had a better evangelist. But our
Speaker 1: series isn't only concerned with the Olympic Games. The bigger
Speaker 1: question here is why do some people see evil for
Speaker 1: what it is when others can't or won't. Dorothy Thompson
Speaker 1: could see the dangers of Nazism because she was born
Speaker 1: to a marginalized group herself. She was a woman poor
Speaker 1: Charles Cheryl loved Hitler. He was born upper crust and
Speaker 1: only cared to stay that way. Brundage, though, looks a
Speaker 1: lot more like Thompson than Cheryl. At first. He starts
Speaker 1: out as an underdog, and you're gonna want to root
Speaker 1: for him, but in the end, well, we'll get there.
Speaker 1: Avery Brundage grew up poor in Chicago around the turn
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. It was the classic gloomy first
Speaker 1: act of an American dream, waking up in the dark
Speaker 1: to work as a paper boy, commuting seven miles each
Speaker 1: way to school. Father who leaves when he's five and
Speaker 1: dies alone, the victim as the newspaper reads of business reverses.
Speaker 1: Brundage was brilliant and maybe a little haunted by failure.
Speaker 1: He was always top of his class, winning national prizes,
Speaker 1: and always passionate about sports. Crucially sports you could play alone,
Speaker 1: like track and field. But poor kid remembers his school
Speaker 1: didn't have sports facilities. He made his own discus out
Speaker 1: of an iron washer, he used a rock for shot put,
Speaker 1: and he practiced long jumping in an abandoned lot. When
Speaker 1: I imagine Avery Brandage's early life. I picture him from
Speaker 1: a distance, a little boy in glasses, alone on an
Speaker 1: empty parcel of land, jumping again and again into the
Speaker 1: same hole, trying to beat himself.
Speaker 2: Oh, sport, you are joy to the sorrowful. You can
Speaker 2: even bring salutary diversion from their distress.
Speaker 1: He studied engineering in college, and he was a track star.
Speaker 1: Not because he was amazing at any event in particular,
Speaker 1: but because he was so relentless in training that he
Speaker 1: was pretty good at them all. Mainly though he did
Speaker 1: a million extracurriculars, he just wants to be in the club,
Speaker 1: better yet to lead the club. He's like the kid
Speaker 1: in that movie Rushmore yearbook board member, fraternity member, literary
Speaker 1: magazine editor in chief, chairman of the sea, your stag dance.
Speaker 1: Same deal with sports. He's all about sports organizations. It's
Speaker 1: not enough for him to be on the track team.
Speaker 1: He's got to be on the governing body so he
Speaker 1: can pass the rule that students who aren't on varsity
Speaker 1: teams can't wear the school of colors. So if you're
Speaker 1: a student at the University of Illinois in Brundage's time,
Speaker 1: and you're not a track star. He doesn't want you
Speaker 1: wearing orange and blue. This, I think is a good
Speaker 1: illustration of the first rule of Avery Brundage's universe. There
Speaker 1: must be rules, even with food. Like when he's older,
Speaker 1: he only eats one lunch every day, and it's an
Speaker 1: egg sandwich with bacon, a side of tomato, and a
Speaker 1: baked apple, which is like the most Midwestern thing I've
Speaker 1: ever heard. The world of Avery Brandage is rule bound,
Speaker 1: and a rule bound world is a world of task.
Speaker 1: If Charles Cheryl is the classic International Olympic Committee member
Speaker 1: born at the top of the pyramid, Avery Brundage is
Speaker 1: born just a bit above the bottom. He knows it,
Speaker 1: and he knows what it's going to take to get
Speaker 1: to the top.
Speaker 3: In all of the interviews I've read with him, he
Speaker 3: always made a point of talking about how unpopular he was.
Speaker 1: Malcolm and I have spent hours psychoanalyzing this man.
Speaker 3: There's a version of that where the person owns it.
Speaker 3: But it's not that it's this kind of grim determination that,
Speaker 3: of course all of the weaklings out there don't understand
Speaker 3: what I'm doing. That's why I'm who I am, That's
Speaker 3: why I'm special.
Speaker 1: I found a typewritten note from Brendage that kind of
Speaker 1: backs this up. It's in his archive, part of some
Speaker 1: ideas he had for an autobiography he never published. He
Speaker 1: reads one summer vacation, when in college, had a political
Speaker 1: job in an office containing two hundred or three hundred appointees.
Speaker 1: Became very unpopular because, in order to keep busy, I
Speaker 1: did not only all my own work, but all the
Speaker 1: work of the score of others. The boss began to
Speaker 1: think that if I stayed there much longer, there would
Speaker 1: be no work left. When I took a day off
Speaker 1: to go to the ballpark because I had nothing to do,
Speaker 1: I got fired. So this sounds ridiculu us, but I
Speaker 1: actually believe it. And more importantly, I don't think he
Speaker 1: realizes how unlikable this story makes him sound. But it
Speaker 1: illustrates another one of his rules. If you're the best,
Speaker 1: you'll be hated by the rest. That's just the fact.
Speaker 1: But after college, our man discovered that the real world
Speaker 1: didn't play by his rules. He worked as a construction superintendent,
Speaker 1: which was a really bad industry for a man of principle.
Speaker 1: Right away, he was inspecting materials for an architect's new building,
Speaker 1: the first shipment of stone had major flaws. He tried
Speaker 1: to send it back and the supplier said, better think twice.
Speaker 1: This stuff comes from their architect's nephew. Things did not
Speaker 1: improve from there.
Speaker 4: It was a criticism of the climate which exists in
Speaker 4: the world today, and it is, as I say, a
Speaker 4: very sad commentary on our so called civilization.
Speaker 1: To quote from his unpublished autobiography, Like most young men
Speaker 1: who think about it, I was disturbed by the gross
Speaker 1: social and economic injustices in the imperfect world in which
Speaker 1: we live, and all the inequity, trouble and misery caused
Speaker 1: by the cupidity, the ignorance, and the stupidity of the
Speaker 1: peculiar people occasionally thrown into power and authority, as his
Speaker 1: biographer Alan Gutman put it, from uneasy involvement in the
Speaker 1: imperfect world, Brundage found refuge in amateur athletics. While Brundage
Speaker 1: was making his way in business, he kept up his
Speaker 1: track and field training, discus shot put running. He got
Speaker 1: so good that in nineteen twelve he got the telegram
Speaker 1: that would change his life, an invitation from the US
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee.
Speaker 4: I was a member of the United States team in
Speaker 4: nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: At this point, Avery Brundage was still living with his mom.
Speaker 1: Illinois was the center of his universe. But as soon
Speaker 1: as he got that telegram, he quit his job and
Speaker 1: headed to New York. Then he climbed aboard the glamorous
Speaker 1: SS Finland with all the other athletes for ten days
Speaker 1: of all you can eat meals underneath the ornate, filigreed
Speaker 1: sunroof of the dining saloon. This was more like it
Speaker 1: when he arrived at the Games in Stockholm in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: It was a world away from Chicago. In that unpublished autobiography,
Speaker 1: he wrote, I shall never forget. As the steamer picked
Speaker 1: its way cautiously through the alluring archipelago to the anchorage,
Speaker 1: it was approximately ten o'clock in the evening, and the
Speaker 1: sun was about to set behind us. The myriad of
Speaker 1: beautiful pine clad islands with neat and well cared for
Speaker 1: homes with flower gardens, the winding channels containing scores of
Speaker 1: boats of all shapes and sizes, and the rosy glow
Speaker 1: of the setting sun presented a picture of fairyland. I
Speaker 1: shall always remember. I've read a lot of Avery Brundage,
Speaker 1: and let me tell you, fairyland is not the kind
Speaker 1: of word he uses. The man was in love. It
Speaker 1: was midsummer in Stockholm, and the days were surreal and long,
Speaker 1: with only an hour or two of darkness. Flags fluttered
Speaker 1: in streets, flanked by balconies bursting with flowers. Avery was
Speaker 1: swept up in a whirl of Olympic parties, banquets, balls,
Speaker 1: garden parties, concerts, receptions and entertainments. He rubbed shoulders with
Speaker 1: royalty for a few days. He wasn't the poor kid
Speaker 1: from corrupt Chicago anymore. He was an Olympian.
Speaker 3: Well, the dime store psychological reading of this.
Speaker 1: Can't we at least upgrade ourselves to like dollar dollar
Speaker 1: store dollars our dollar general psychoanalysis? You know, all right,
Speaker 1: he is.
Speaker 3: He's the hic from Chicago, right, grows up without a
Speaker 3: dad in some you know, cold water flat somewhere in Chicago,
Speaker 3: makes his own way in the world. He's not really,
Speaker 3: he's not worldly. When he goes to the nineteen twelve Olympic,
Speaker 3: I think it's the first time he's left the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Cheryl crosses the Atlantic eighty two times in the course
Speaker 3: of his life, and you know, he some part of
Speaker 3: him desperately wants to be He just gets a glimpse
Speaker 3: of this, this kind of the fabulous life these other
Speaker 3: people are leading, and I just think he some part
Speaker 3: of just like I want that.
Speaker 1: He wanted this perfect world of sport because of how
Speaker 1: angry he was about the corruption in the real world,
Speaker 1: for bribes and the nepotism. The Olympic religion said, sports
Speaker 1: are the opposite. They're objective, they're fair, they're meritocratic. And
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like a lot, but if you
Speaker 1: don't believe me, then let's consult that gold medal winning
Speaker 1: poem by the founder of the modern Olympics.
Speaker 2: Oh sport, The perfect equity for which men strive in
Speaker 2: vain in their social institutions is your constant companion. No
Speaker 2: one can jump a centimeter higher than the height he
Speaker 2: can jump, nor run a minute longer than the length
Speaker 2: he can run. The limits of his success are determined
Speaker 2: solely by his own physical and moral strength.
Speaker 1: Obviously, I think this poem is hilarious, but it's basically
Speaker 1: the worldview that Avery Brandage adopted at the Games in
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve.
Speaker 2: Oh Sport Pleasure of the Gods essence of life. You
Speaker 2: appeared suddenly in the midst of the.
Speaker 5: Gray clearing, which writhes with the drudgery of modern existence,
Speaker 5: like the radiant messenger of a past age, when mankind
Speaker 5: still smiled.
Speaker 2: And the glimmer of dawn lit up the mountaintops, and
Speaker 2: flecks of light dotted the ground in the gloomy forests.
Speaker 1: Brandage had come from the gray clearing, which writh with
Speaker 1: the drudgery of modern existence. A radiant messenger of a
Speaker 1: past age has send him a telegraph, beckoning him out
Speaker 1: to where the glimmer of dawn lit up the mountaintops.
Speaker 1: The Olympics were above money in politics. At the Games,
Speaker 1: Avery Brundage's exceptionalism, his hard work might finally be recognized.
Speaker 1: Maybe there'd be medals, but already there was prestige, respect access.
Speaker 1: I want you to picture in your mind again the
Speaker 1: opening day at Stockholm, young Avery Brandage, bespectacled, glowing in
Speaker 1: the heart of modern Olympia. His world has just gotten
Speaker 1: ten times bigger. He's under the gaze of the King
Speaker 1: of Sweden. Somewhere in the stands is the Baron to
Speaker 1: Cooper ten He's caught the Olympic religion, and now he's
Speaker 1: going to run with it.
Speaker 3: The trick I think to understanding every bondage is imagine
Speaker 3: you're in you're in Chicago and it's nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's the Roaring twenties, and you meet
Speaker 3: this guy in his penthouse apartment on you know, you know,
Speaker 3: it's Lakeshore Drive, and he looks out the window and
Speaker 3: he says, I built that, and I built that, and
Speaker 3: I built that, and I built that, and you know
Speaker 3: where I grew up And he points way way way
Speaker 3: off into the furthest end of Chicago in a place
Speaker 3: you can barely make out. And then you think to yourself,
Speaker 3: you know, oh my god, like he did this. You
Speaker 3: have to get yourself in that kind of place to
Speaker 3: appreciate every bondage.
Speaker 1: Early last spring, I headed to Chicago to meet up
Speaker 1: with Liz Patterson and Julia Backrock.
Speaker 6: So I'm just getting back on the main drive. You
Speaker 6: that makes sense, Yes, yes, we need to head south.
Speaker 1: So they're both architectural historians, and they've done a lot
Speaker 1: of work studying the buildings Avery Brundage built when he
Speaker 1: was back from those games, creating his construction empire in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 6: Fourteen forty eight and fifteen forty at Lower Lake Shore Rio.
Speaker 2: We won.
Speaker 1: We just passed. Yeah, we pretty much just spent a
Speaker 1: day driving around Chicago. I a New Yorker living in
Speaker 1: a shoe box, kept being like a three bedroom costs what,
Speaker 1: and they every few minutes would be like Brundage built that, Oh,
Speaker 1: and that, and also that.
Speaker 6: Julia I realized that we drove right by a couple
Speaker 6: of the other Brandage building's in there. I think that's
Speaker 6: gonna have to be okay, Yeah, rather.
Speaker 1: Every down Avery Brandage didn't win a medal at the
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve Olympics, but he did find his life's calling.
Speaker 1: He glimpsed the world held up by two pillars sport
Speaker 1: and wealth. He wanted both, so when he got back
Speaker 1: from the Games, he got to work first the money.
Speaker 1: Took his engineering decree and built buildings for Illinois Life
Speaker 1: Insurance Company Public Life Insurance Company. He built the Canada
Speaker 1: dry ginger Ale plant and the gigantic Chicago Ford Motor
Speaker 1: Company plant on the banks of the River. And he
Speaker 1: did it all by working harder and smarter than his competition.
Speaker 6: So the concrete work I think people were starting to
Speaker 6: use a lot of they're called salamanders, but heaters inside
Speaker 6: to get as much out of the winter months as
Speaker 6: they could. But he found ways to position them better
Speaker 6: so that everything kept warmer, and then the concrete could
Speaker 6: be poured and cured more quickly.
Speaker 1: And Brndage was honest. When he finished a project under budget,
Speaker 1: he returned the extra money the jobs just like the
Speaker 1: concrete came pouring in. He built the twenty third Street Viaduct,
Speaker 1: the glamorous Shoreland Hotel, and a huge number of luxury
Speaker 1: apartments on Lake Shore Drive, Chicago's most desirable address.
Speaker 6: He definitely got a lot of all the work that
Speaker 6: was going on during that period.
Speaker 1: How much of Chicago was built in that period.
Speaker 6: Oh, thousands and thousands of building permits were issued in
Speaker 6: the twenties.
Speaker 1: But he was also a bit of a local celebrity
Speaker 1: if you search him in local papers.
Speaker 6: He was definitely a known commodity in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Every Rundage made of fortune, but the fame and the
Speaker 1: wealth were a means to an end. Rundage was trying
Speaker 1: to buy a ticket back to Olympia, to Fairyland. He
Speaker 1: became a leader in amateur sport, like to Kubertin, an
Speaker 1: evangelist for the Olympic cause, but with a harder edge.
Speaker 1: He once wrote, not to develop the latent possibilities of
Speaker 1: the human body as a crime, since it certainly violates
Speaker 1: the law of nature. Once again, rules and laws. If
Speaker 1: Charles Hitchcock Cheryl is the prototypical member of the IOC,
Speaker 1: cheerfully enjoying life at the top of the pyramid, I
Speaker 1: just never quite has the ease of being born to privilege.
Speaker 1: He's all about striving and self discipline and the discipline
Speaker 1: of others to shore up his position. By nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: Brundage was president of the American Olympic Committee, and given
Speaker 1: everything that was to happen next, I have to believe
Speaker 1: he'd already set his sights on the International Olympic Committee,
Speaker 1: the IOC.
Speaker 3: So this is the great paradox of Brundage. So here's
Speaker 3: a guy who was resolutely not of the world of
Speaker 3: the IOC. The OC is a bunch of pampered aristocrats
Speaker 3: whose best days are behind them. He's from Chicago, He's
Speaker 3: made millions building big buildings. He has a mixture of
Speaker 3: envy and a desire to join this crowd, but at
Speaker 3: the same time he must have contempt for them everything
Speaker 3: he aspises.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think he does. I think some of it
Speaker 1: is a some of it is just he understands that
Speaker 1: they have something that he lacks, and he wants the
Speaker 1: psychological security of being, you know, one of the as
Speaker 1: kuber Tack calls them, trusted men. He wants to know
Speaker 1: that within a very strict hierarchy he is at the top.
Speaker 1: But I think the more complicated thing about him is
Speaker 1: I also believe that he probably hates these people. It's like,
Speaker 1: like you said, he probably knows that he can kind
Speaker 1: of eat them for lunch.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this in the context the transition
Speaker 3: from Ryl to Brundage is a transition from the nineteenth
Speaker 3: to the twentieth century. The nineteenth century is the you know,
Speaker 3: the world of the aristocrats who are fundamentally unimpressive at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, and who who you know,
Speaker 3: are in power just by virtue of the fact that
Speaker 3: they were born into some landed gentry family. And that
Speaker 3: is the world of the IOC. He's like, he's the
Speaker 3: twentieth century guy. He is and he is everything that
Speaker 3: is in some ways fantastic about the twentieth century. It's
Speaker 3: a self made, driven, ambitious visionary who just gets stuff done.
Speaker 3: The man built half the Scotland of Chicago. But he's like,
Speaker 3: there's something real here.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also like a faith in a meritocracy, like you
Speaker 1: have this, like all of these structures of the meritocracy
Speaker 1: of like, well, we actually want to find the best
Speaker 1: people and elevate them. We don't just want to accept
Speaker 1: whoever's been born to the highest class. And I feel
Speaker 1: like he is. He believes that there's a pathway through
Speaker 1: his brains to power and glory. But he's also maybe
Speaker 1: he's still obsessed enough with the sort of nineteenth century
Speaker 1: aristocratic idea where he knows these guys still have some
Speaker 1: ineffable thing that he does not, and he wants it.
Speaker 1: Here's a man who has everything, millions, a construction empire,
Speaker 1: gorgeous lake front housing, but I think he's still dreaming
Speaker 1: of the IOC. The problem is he, in so many
Speaker 1: ways does not fit in there. And obviously Malcolm and
Speaker 1: I are obsessed with one of those ways. In particular,
Speaker 1: here we have a photo of the IOC in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty and what do we got we got mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache, mustache,
Speaker 1: be and beard. They all have these very luxuriant mustaches.
Speaker 1: And Avery Brandage crucially does not.
Speaker 7: Have the mustache, and wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But Avery Brandage wants into the club, mustache or not.
Speaker 1: He wants it intensely, and I think he wants it
Speaker 1: so badly, not just because he's running towards the Olympics,
Speaker 1: but because he's running away from his shame, shame about
Speaker 1: his origins, but also shame about what happened on the
Speaker 1: field in the Stockholm Olympics in nineteen twelve. I never
Speaker 1: actually told you about that, did I. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back In later years. An Olympic evangelist, Avery Brendage was
Speaker 1: particularly fond of a quote from the Baron Pierre de
Speaker 1: coubertin the French Founder of the modern Olympics. Forgive me,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do his accent now. The important thing in
Speaker 1: life is not triumph, but the struggle. The inessential thing
Speaker 1: is not to have conquered, but to have thought well.
Speaker 1: And no event is so full of struggle as Avery
Speaker 1: Brandage's main event in the nineteen twelve Olympics the decathlon.
Speaker 3: It is in lore, the most difficult event in the Olympics, right,
Speaker 3: It's everyone else is doing one event. The decathlete must
Speaker 3: do ten at all of the events. Nine of the
Speaker 3: ten events are all events that are require speed and strength. Right,
Speaker 3: So you open with one hundred meters a sprint, You
Speaker 3: do the long jump, the shop quote, the high jump,
Speaker 3: the forward of meters. That's the first day. Those are
Speaker 3: all events that suit one kind of athlete, the you know,
Speaker 3: think about a fast twitch yeah, the football linebacker. We
Speaker 3: kill those first five, right, and then day two starts.
Speaker 3: Now you wake up on day two, you're exhausted and
Speaker 3: you're sore. You've just done five times what a normal
Speaker 3: athlete does in the Olympics. So now you have to
Speaker 3: go back to the track, and then you do the
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten meter hurdles again speed and strength.
Speaker 3: The discus throw speed and strength, the pole vault speed
Speaker 3: and strength, the javelin throws speed and strength. We've done
Speaker 3: nine events now, and now we get to the fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred meters, which is not speed and it's not strength.
Speaker 3: It's middle distance. It requires a completely different set of
Speaker 3: physical gifts. Right, So all decathletes have this crisis, which
Speaker 3: is they're almost all linebacker types. Who are you have
Speaker 3: to be? You got to master the first nine events,
Speaker 3: but then at the moment when you are most exhausted,
Speaker 3: at the end of the second day, you must do
Speaker 3: a sport, an event for which you are wholly unsuited. Right,
Speaker 3: You've got to be a distance runner. And you watch,
Speaker 3: if you watch it, what happens is you watch them
Speaker 3: all just die before your eyes. They're exhausted, they can't
Speaker 3: do this, they hate it, they're terrified of it. And
Speaker 3: you watch them lump, these big guys lumber around the track.
Speaker 3: It's the only event in the entire Olympics where people
Speaker 3: are doing something that they're not good at, right, the only.
Speaker 1: Event that's interesting. Yeah, And in nineteen twelve it was
Speaker 1: the most dramatic event.
Speaker 8: King Gustav of Sweden officiates at the opening of the
Speaker 8: newly built Olympic Stadium in Stockholm. It is the sixth
Speaker 8: revival of the modern Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: July thirteenth, nineteen twelve, seven days after the opening ceremony,
Speaker 1: and a twenty four year old Avery Brandage is on
Speaker 1: the field unsmiling.
Speaker 8: But decathlon was designed to epitomize the Olympic theme Sidius altius, fortius, swifter, stronger.
Speaker 1: Remember, Brundage had quit his job in Chicago to compete
Speaker 1: in these games. Over the past couple of weeks. He'd
Speaker 1: moved in a class of wealth and privilege he'd never
Speaker 1: even seen before, and were fully in the realm of
Speaker 1: my speculation here, But I think he wanted in permanently.
Speaker 1: So now the competition takes on a whole different meaning.
Speaker 1: Right on the field, all those aristocrats are about to
Speaker 1: see what he was made of. Maybe he thought he'd
Speaker 1: impress them, and maybe that all fell apart when he
Speaker 1: saw Jim Thorpe compete. Jim Thorpe is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest athletes of all time. A tall, Native American man
Speaker 1: with a singular ability in football, baseball, track and field.
Speaker 1: He was a natural choice for a decathlon, even though
Speaker 1: he wasn't even intocathlete. He was so green he didn't
Speaker 1: even know how to throw a javelin at the qualifying rounds,
Speaker 1: and yet in Stockholm, seven events in, he was already
Speaker 1: five hundred and seventy nine points ahead of everyone else.
Speaker 1: For three days, Brundage had strained to catch up to
Speaker 1: Thorpe through the pouring rain, in the hot sun, and
Speaker 1: on the last day of the contest, probably in the
Speaker 1: back of his mind he was thinking about the Olympic
Speaker 1: marathon runner who had died earlier that day from sunstroke.
Speaker 1: And out of the decathlon's ten events, the absolute worst
Speaker 1: was up ahead the fifteen hundred meter.
Speaker 3: So these huge guys are running as I'm a fifteen
Speaker 3: nine meter runner, the times they are running are they're
Speaker 3: absurdly slow, like absurdly slow, and they're just in such
Speaker 3: pain and agony and they can't wait to be over.
Speaker 3: And when they crossed the finish line, like it's this
Speaker 3: moment of like just it's just relief. It doesn't even
Speaker 3: matter if you win, you cross it, you just thank
Speaker 3: god it's over.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting then, because that it's it's embarrassing
Speaker 1: to do the fifteen hundred Oh, it's modifying and that
Speaker 1: is and what does Avery Brundage date above all.
Speaker 3: Is being embarrassed, right, Soage, if you look at the
Speaker 3: nineteen twelve De Catalon, he's actually doing really well events
Speaker 3: one through eight. He's a speed and strength guy. He's
Speaker 3: like comfortably in like seventh, eighth, ninth, place. He's in
Speaker 3: the thick of things. He's not gonna win, but he's
Speaker 3: in the thick of things. He gets to event number nine,
Speaker 3: the javelin doesn't do it. He drops out.
Speaker 1: Jim Thorpe was so far ahead of him that Avery
Speaker 1: Brandage in front of King Gustave and the Baron Pierre
Speaker 1: de Coubertin threw in the towel, or he threw in
Speaker 1: the javelin, or I mean he didn't throw the javelin.
Speaker 1: You get it.
Speaker 2: He quit now.
Speaker 3: He question is why did you drop out in the javelin?
Speaker 3: The javelin is not physically demanding, and the answer is
Speaker 3: he drops out of the javelin because he's terrified of
Speaker 3: the fifty note of Peters, the way they all are.
Speaker 3: He can't face it. It's haunting him. He's on event
Speaker 3: number nine and he knows Event number ten is the
Speaker 3: thing where he will be humiliated before a stadium full
Speaker 3: of spectators. He's exhausted, he's cold, he's tired whatever.
Speaker 1: All those royals he's just met over the last something.
Speaker 3: They're watching and he he's just like, I can't do it.
Speaker 3: And he you know, this man who has sworn to
Speaker 3: uphold an ethic of competition of putting you know, uh,
Speaker 3: effort and courage first and questions of your own ego second.
Speaker 3: That's the Olympus, The whole Olympic model of competition, right,
Speaker 3: the game is that the participation is everything right, the spirit.
Speaker 3: He just betrays it all. He's like, effort, I can't
Speaker 3: do it, and and he just sort of SLINKs away,
Speaker 3: and it's it is It's really impossible to communicate. I
Speaker 3: think how deeply humiliating that is. Because it's your it's
Speaker 3: your ultimate test. Everything is building towards that final moment,
Speaker 3: and he just he just quits.
Speaker 1: Avery Rendage is out of the race. Jim Thorpe goes
Speaker 1: on to win the gold.
Speaker 8: Jim Thorpe was so pre the second place finisher was
Speaker 8: more than eight hundred points behind the greatest margin in
Speaker 8: Olympic the Catalan history.
Speaker 1: But for Brandage, the story doesn't end when he leaves
Speaker 1: the field.
Speaker 9: It's my judgment, after studying his whole career, that I
Speaker 9: think he probably was haunted by it and that it
Speaker 9: had a definite impact on how he dealt with Jim
Speaker 9: Thorpe the greater athlete.
Speaker 1: That's David Marinis, Washington Post editor and author of a
Speaker 1: great biography of Jim Thorpe called Path Lit by Lightning.
Speaker 1: We called him up to talk about Brandage and Thorpe
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 9: He clearly was jealous of Thorpe, but he also maintained
Speaker 9: throughout his career this definition of amateurism as something that
Speaker 9: was pure and cannot be tainted in any way. So
Speaker 9: from them throughout the decades, he made that his mission
Speaker 9: to make sure that the money didn't get involved in
Speaker 9: it too much, nationalism wasn't involved in it, that these
Speaker 9: athletes were competing simply for the joy of sport.
Speaker 1: Remember Brundage in Japan at the top of this episode
Speaker 1: making that joke about being the last living amateur.
Speaker 4: Something like the tattooed man.
Speaker 1: You know all that it's a joke with a deeper truth.
Speaker 1: Brundage used to love to point out that the word
Speaker 1: amateur doesn't mean what we think it means beginner or hobbyist. Etymologically,
Speaker 1: it derives from the Latin amatore, which means one who loves.
Speaker 1: It's ironic for such a grim guy, but he believed
Speaker 1: so intensely that sport was for the love of the game,
Speaker 1: not money. It was an Olympic principal a rule, and
Speaker 1: we know how Brundage loved rules. Practically speaking, it meant
Speaker 1: that athletes couldn't compete in the Olympics if they made
Speaker 1: money for their sport.
Speaker 9: That's why when Jim tharb was found playing bush league
Speaker 9: baseball for two seasons, making about a dollar a game,
Speaker 9: the sport that he didn't compete in the Olympics, he
Speaker 9: lost his medals.
Speaker 1: Thorpe had won gold medals for the decathlon and the
Speaker 1: pentathlon in Stockholm, but he didn't get to keep them.
Speaker 1: If you look at the official report from the nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve Olympics, everyone ranks one spot higher in the decathlon
Speaker 1: than they ought to because Thorpe got erased from the records. Instead,
Speaker 1: there's this note at the beginning of the results list.
Speaker 1: Mister Thorpe is deserving of the severest condemnation for concealing
Speaker 1: the fact that he had professionalized himself by receiving money
Speaker 1: for playing baseball. The Amateur Athletic Union regrets that it
Speaker 1: permitted mister Thorpe to compete in amateur contests and will
Speaker 1: do everything in its power to secure the return of
Speaker 1: prizes and the readjustment of points won by him and
Speaker 1: will immediately eliminate his records from the books. And decades later,
Speaker 1: when avery Brandage was in control of the Olympic movement,
Speaker 1: it was only his pleasure to enforce that role.
Speaker 9: There were many many attempt to get Thorpe's metals restored,
Speaker 9: and Brundage constantly rejected them and was so jealous of
Speaker 9: Jim Thorpe for decades thereafter that he unjustly refused to
Speaker 9: give back Thorpe's medals after they were taken away.
Speaker 1: So this is the crucial bit about nineteen twelve in Stockholm,
Speaker 1: avery Brandage discovered Olympia a perfect land where he could
Speaker 1: have respect and access and achievement, and there, to his
Speaker 1: enduring shame, in front of everyone who mattered, he violated
Speaker 1: one of its most sacred principles. That quote from the
Speaker 1: Baron de Koper teh struggle over triumph play for the
Speaker 1: love of the game.
Speaker 3: I mean imagine, you know, I think if we had
Speaker 3: to kind of choose one moment in his life as
Speaker 3: being the defining one, it really is that because a
Speaker 3: lot of what we've been talking about, his kind of
Speaker 3: anger and his vindictiveness, it does it's of the sort
Speaker 3: that makes you feel like it's being powered by some deep,
Speaker 3: unconscious shame. Oh yeah, And the first you know, in
Speaker 3: this fallen world that he finds himself in where nothing
Speaker 3: can live up to the Olympics, the first fallen person,
Speaker 3: the central fallen person, is himself, right, even he does
Speaker 3: not live up to the Olympic ideal.
Speaker 1: Years later, Avery branded wrote about that day, I committed
Speaker 1: an inexcusable error which I was to regret. Ever, after
Speaker 1: this failure to finish the competition was unforgivable.
Speaker 2: Oh sport, you are all the.
Speaker 1: So what did Avery Brendan do with that shame? He
Speaker 1: tries to earn his way back into Olympia. He goes
Speaker 1: home to Illinois, He trains harder than ever, he builds
Speaker 1: his empire, and he rises in the ranks of amateur
Speaker 1: sports until he's the president of the American Olympic Committee,
Speaker 1: one step below the International Olympic Committee. And then, finally,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty four, Avery Brundage got another life changing
Speaker 1: letter from a member of the IOC. It starts innocuously enough,
Speaker 1: grousing about Irish cyclists trips to Rome, questions of amateurism
Speaker 1: and then in the last paragraph of the last page,
Speaker 1: a surprise, if there is a candidacy from the IOC
Speaker 1: for the United States, the IOC member wrote, cannot I
Speaker 1: then propose you? You are the one who knows most
Speaker 1: of the sports in the US, and you certainly ought
Speaker 1: to be a member of the IOC. It was a
Speaker 1: dream come true. But at that exact moment, the very
Speaker 1: foundation of the Olympic faith that Brundage had taken as
Speaker 1: his own in Stockholm, that sport was a perfect world,
Speaker 1: removed from all the politics and corruption of the real one,
Speaker 1: was facing an existential threat.
Speaker 10: In the spring of nineteen thirty three, I had a
Speaker 10: letter from my sports club. You are no longer welcome
Speaker 10: here because you're Jewish Heil Hitler.
Speaker 1: Soon he would face the choice of whether to preserve
Speaker 1: their beauty and honor their principles. The Olympic Games had
Speaker 1: to pull out of Nazi Germany. Wouldn't it be a
Speaker 1: contradiction to have his fairyland, his Olympia there? Or maybe not?
Speaker 1: It depends how closely you read that gold medal winning.
Speaker 2: Poem, Oh sport, you are fecundity. You strive directly and
Speaker 2: nobly towards perfection of the race, destroying unhealthy seed and
Speaker 2: correcting the flaws which threaten its essential purity.
Speaker 1: Revisionist History is produced by me Ben Matta Haffrey, Tolly Emlin,
Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Arthur Gomperts and J. L. Goldfine. Original scoring
Speaker 1: by Luis Gara, Mastering by Flawn Williams, Sarah Briguer and
Speaker 1: Jake Gorski. Ode to Sport was read by Ethan Herschenfeld.
Speaker 1: Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Special thanks on this episode to Karen Chakerji and Stephen
Speaker 1: when I'm Ben, mattap Haffrey. Oh, before we go, one
Speaker 1: last thing. We couldn't find a home for it in
Speaker 1: this episode, but we really need to be on the
Speaker 1: record with our takes about the portrayal of Avery Brandage
Speaker 1: in the twenty sixteen film Race, specifically the question of
Speaker 1: playing him with a mustache.
Speaker 7: So you watch this movie, this movie, WHOA, This movie
Speaker 7: is so bad and we have most most importantly Jeremy
Speaker 7: Irons as Avery Broontage first off, but.
Speaker 1: One of the most fantastically miscasts. Yes, yes, yes he's Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do they do in in race? Jeremy Irons plays
Speaker 1: him with a mustache.
Speaker 3: It's just like, it's just there's violence to them. And
Speaker 3: he wouldn't Rundage wouldn't have a mustache because the mustache
Speaker 3: is the signifier for a certain kind of dandified elite. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and every Bondage is not dandified.
Speaker 1: If he had a mustache, he would call it a
Speaker 1: flavor saver.
Speaker 3: He's like a guy from the streets of Chicago.
Speaker 8: This.
Speaker 1: I also think part of it about Jeremy Irons is
Speaker 1: I want to like, he's a real weirdo and he's
Speaker 1: got these strange views about incest and gay marriage.
Speaker 3: I mean, taxwise is an interesting one because you see,
Speaker 3: could a father not marry his son?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: Will are laws against incest?
Speaker 2: It's not incest between men.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying the left turn into tax policy.
Speaker 7: He could be, he could be, he could be Sheryl
Speaker 7: not married.
Speaker 1: I just love I think all of that weirdness is
Speaker 1: present in his portrayal of Avery Brandage. Complicated man, but
Speaker 1: not a weird man.
Speaker 7: Not weird man.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, not weird in that way. Yeah. They always
Speaker 3: like it's funny how they get it, you know, and
Speaker 3: what's the Irons version of brandage is less interesting in
Speaker 3: the real brandage. And that's the that whenever Hollywood makes
Speaker 3: that mistake, that's where I lose patience with them.