The story of the British bobsleigh gold

Looking into the history of the Winter Olympics, my attention was drawn to the events of the bobsleigh in 1964. There was plenty of booze. There was some highly impressive sportsmanship. And, of course, there was a British gold medal…

Back then, the Winter Olympics – the ninth holding of the winter games – were held at Innsbruck in Austria. 1091 athletes from 36 nations took part (compare that, if you will, with the statistics for the 2018 games which tell us that 2952 athletes from 92 countries are participating). From a British perspective, 1964 was the first time the BBC opted to televise the Winter Olympics (improvements in TV technology presumably combining with the fact that the nation’s sporting schedules had been decimated the year before in the Big Freeze of ’63). Prior to the games, there were concerns about an unseasonal lack of snow, which resulted in the Austrian Army being called on to carry snow from the higher ground to the ski slopes. Sadly, tragedy struck before the games had even started, with two athletes – an Australian skier and a British luger – being killed on practice runs before the opening ceremony. The latter was a Polish-born ex-RAF pilot called Kazimierz Kay-Skrzyppecki; according to Wikipedia, he was in his fifties at the time. 

Then as now, particular attention was paid by the Beeb to any event in which the British might stand a chance of winning a medal (something that hadn’t been done by Great Britain at the Winter Olympics since 1952). Just one such event stood out – the bobsleigh, especially the two-man event in which Tony Nash and Robin Dixon had finished third at the previous year’s World Championships.

Bobsleigh, which had not featured at the 1960 Winter Olympics for the first and only time, was dominated in the Sixties by European nations, most notably Italy and Germany (there were two Germanies then, but prior to 1968 they competed jointly in the Olympics as the ‘United Team of Germany’), although the Austrian and Swiss teams were also much-fancied, as were those of Canada and the USA. Going into the 1964 games, the Italians were the reigning World Champions in both the two-man and four-man events (women’s bobsleigh would not become a Winter Olympic sport until 2002).

Both of the British bobsleighers had got into the sport via the British Army, albeit in very different ways. Amersham-born Nash had taken it up while doing his National Service and had kept involved afterwards, receiving financial backing from his father – he worked for his family’s brewing company – as part of a deal whereby he wouldn’t take up motor racing which Nash senior reckoned to be far too dangerous. Dixon, meanwhile, was an Old Etonian Grenadier Guards officer who had got into bobsleigh in 1957 following a chat about winter sports with his cousin, John Bingham, while on an Army skiing holiday in St Moritz. He had a go, and was hooked (both cousins, by the way, were sons of peers who would go on to inherit their fathers’ titles; Dixon as the third Baron Glentoran, Bingham as the seventh Earl of Lucan; yes, that one). They were originally part of a four-man team, but things changed in 1961 when the team’s pilot, Henry Taylor, was injured in an accident at the British Grand Prix (he was also a Formula One driver, although following said crash he went into rallying instead). From then on, Nash took over the piloting duties despite his short-sightedness which required him to wear glasses or contact lenses while competing, and they started to compete together in the two-man event while also making up half of the British four-man team.

This was a changing time for bobsleigh. Thanks largely to the Italians, the bobsleighs themselves were becoming more technologically advanced and, although it was still an amateur sport, it was beginning to get more professionally organised. There was also a conscious effort on the part of the Italians to get some of the non-alpine countries more involved; then as now, friendships developed among competitors, and in particular Nash’s growing friendship with the Italian pilot, Eugenio Monti, paid dividends. “In 1963, the Italians had built a new run in Cervinia very similar to the Olympic run in Innsbruck, with three very big S-curves,” Dixon later recalled. “Tony and I were in St Moritz and they invited us over to open the run with them ... a very good start to the season.” 1963 saw the British pair come third in the World Championship at Igls; the Italians took first and second. 

At the Innsbruck Winter Olympics, Dixon and Nash – part of a British contingent that consisted of 27 men and nine women – shared a room at the Olympic Village. They spent the evening before the first day of the bobsleigh competition listening to records and drinking whisky; different times, the Sixties.

Day one saw the first two runs, after which the British pair found themselves in the lead; they had not done the fastest run – Monti and his partner Sergio Siorpaes had done that – but it was the total time over all of the runs that counted. The final two runs would be held the following day, and it looked as though everyone was going to be slightly slower as there was a fresh fall of snow over the course overnight (“we didn’t drink too much whisky that night, I can tell you,” Dixon later admitted). After their first run on the second day, disaster loomed as they discovered that a rear axle bolt had sheared off; they didn’t have a spare, and if they couldn’t find one they wouldn’t be able to do their fourth run. It looked like their Olympic effort would end there and then, but salvation appeared in the unlikely form of one of their competitors – Nash’s friend, Eugenio Monti of Italy, offered to take the bolt from his bobsleigh after he’d competed his run and give it to them.

“Eugenio was on the line about to do his run," Dixon later recalled, “but he came across and said: 'Don't worry. Send an Englishman down to meet me and you can have mine'." Monti's lending of a vital component to a serious competitor would go down in legend as one of the most selfless acts in Winter Olympic, indeed in sporting, history. However, it was not until many years later that it became known that Monti's bolt was not actually used on the British bobsleigh; after finishing his run he did indeed remove it from his own bobsleigh and send it up to the start for Dixon and Nash to use, but by the time it got there they had managed to find another one.

By this time, the snow that had fallen on the course was turning to slush and the British pair were unhappy with their final descent. Convinced that they'd blown their chances, the did what any self-respecting amateur sportsmen (and quite a few professional sportsmen for that matter) would do and went off to drown their sorrows. "We went to a hut near the finish and had a coffee and schnapps and thought, 'well played, but not well played'," recalled Dixon. "Then various people found us to say the world's press were looking for us. The race track had softened and nobody could overtake us." Over the four runs, they'd been 0.12 of a second faster than their nearest competitors, the Italian 'second' team of Sergio Zardini and Romano Bonagura. Monti and Siorpaes were third. The British pair duly switched from schapps to champagne.

That evening, there were a couple of final hurdles for them - getting interviewed by a characteristically overly-excited David Coleman, and getting into the medal presentation ceremony. As far as the latter was concerned, security was tight and they couldn't find a way in. Then they saw someone they knew - Lord Exeter, at the time the Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee (back in the 1928 summer games, he'd won gold for Great Britain in the men's 400-metre hurdles). "Don't worry, chaps," he assured them. "They can't start without us. You're getting the medals, and I'm giving them to you."

Having collected his bronze medal, Monti faced heavy criticism from the Italian press for his sportsmanship; his response was very much in keeping with his actions: "Nash didn't win because I gave him the bolt. He won because he had the fastest run." His generosity on this occasion was by no means a one-off. In the four-man event, he and his mechanics helped to fix a damaged axle on the Canadian bobsleigh; the Canadians went on to win gold in that event, with Monti and his team taking the bronze (the British four-man team, which included Nash and Dixon, came in twelfth). Monti's sportsmanship did not go unrecognised by the IOC, for in addition to his medals at the 1964 games he was also awarded the then newly-inaugurated Pierre de Coubertin Medal for those whose sportsmanship exemplifies the Olympic ideal. He was the first living person to be so honoured. 

Dixon and Nash, who like all British gold medal-winning Olympians were subsequently awarded MBEs as well, would go on to win the World Championship the following year at St Moritz. They also competed at the 1968 Winter Olympics, finishing fifth with Monti getting the gold (after four runs it was actually a dead heat between the Italians and the West Germans for first place; initially it was decided to give both teams the gold, as would later happen in 1998 and as has happened in 2018, but this was later changed, with the Italians being given first place on the grounds that they’d done the quickest single run). Eugenio Monti, who died in 2003, is now remembered not just as a true sportsman but as one of the most successful bobsleighers ever, with six Olympic medals (two of each colour) and nine World Championship wins to his name.

Sources: BBC, Wikipedia

What are those things that are given to Olympic medallists?

While enjoying watching the Olympics, a thought crossed my mind during one of the medal presentations; one of the cycling ones to be precise. The British had won the gold but my attention was drawn to the Canadians receiving the bronze, who appeared to be having a conversation among themselves along the lines of ‘what’s this?’ when they were presented with that colourful paperweight-like object that they got with their medals.

Along with questions like ‘why are all those seats empty?’, ‘why has the diving pool turned green?’ and ‘who comes up with the ideas for some of these events?’ (admittedly a question at every Olympics, that last one), this has puzzled me no end. Frankly, I’m surprised that the BBC hasn’t educated/informed us as to what these objects are, or maybe I missed that amid the celebration of all things Team GB.

In search of enlightenment, I turned to the Internet. It turns out that the little figurines are in fact 3-D representations of the Olympic logo – which for this games shows three human-like figures linked together to look like the Sugarloaf Mountain (or maybe spell out the word ‘Rio’; perhaps both). It’s the first time an Olympic logo has been done in 3-D form, apparently.

There’s also a reason why they are being presented to the medallists, and it ties in very neatly with the idea of this being a sustainable Olympics – as also seen with the smaller-than-usual flame and indeed the medals themselves; the gold ones are made from gold extracted without the use of mercury, while the ribbons are apparently made from recycled plastic bottles. In previous years, those athletes who’ve made it to the podium have received a bunch of flowers as well as their medals; the flowers usually get thrown away but the figurines – which some sources say can be used as holders for the medals – are of a more permanent nature.  

Now that I’ve learned this, I can’t help but wonder how soon it will be before some of the figurines start to appear on eBay.

When Britain won at ice hockey

Great Britain has competed in every Winter Olympics since they started in 1924, and much as though I enjoy watching it I would be the first to admit that we’re not the most successful of winter sports nations. You could, of course, argue that given the relative lack of world-class winter sports facilities in the British Isles (even the annual British skiing championships have to be held in the French Alps), Team GB has actually been punching above its weight, with the last time we failed to win any medals at all being in 1992.

A particular national success has been the skeleton (or, as I call it, the going-down-the-ice-head-first-on-a-tea-tray event), in which the British have won a medal every time this has been an Olympic sport; thanks to Lizzie Yarnold, that record is safe for another four years. This is rather appropriate, as skeleton has its origins in the famous Cresta Run in St Morritz, which was built in the 1880s in order to stop British guests in the town from sledging (or, if you prefer, tobogganing) in the streets. Unlike everyone else, the British preferred to go head-first – the point at which skeleton and luge diverged.

Other winter sports in which Great Britain has tended to do well are curling (in which the Scottish team competes under the Union Jack), figure skating and the bobsleigh. In fact, prior to Jenny Jones’s bronze medal in the snowboarding, all of Team GB’s Winter Olympic medals had been won on ice (prior to 2014, the closest the British had ever come to a medal on snow was Gina Hathorn’s fourth in the women’s slalom in 1968, although there was also the matter of Alain Baxter’s controversial disqualification in the men’s slalom in 2002).

There is, though, an unusual entry on Britain’s modest list of Winter Olympic successes. It’s from 1936, and concerns the matter of a gold medal in ice hockey.

Nowadays, Great Britain tends not to qualify for the Winter Olympic ice hockey tournament. Team GB – and unlike in football and rugby, it really is Team GB for this sport – is currently ranked 22^nd in the world, and with 12 countries taking part you can see how the numbers don’t add up. If we’re going to be honest, and we might as well be, Team GB got through the pre-qualifying for Sochi 2014 but lost out in the final qualifying tournament in Riga last year; specifically, we lost to Latvia (who qualified), France and Kazakhstan (6-0, that last one).

Back in 1936, though, things were different. The Bavarian skiing resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen hosted the games, and although the controversy associated with Nazi Germany hosting the Olympics is usually attached to the summer games of that year, which were held in Berlin, there was a fair amount of that at Garmisch-Partenkirchen as well. Perhaps the most noteworthy story concerns ice hockey, with the inclusion of Rudi Ball in the German team. He’d played for Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s but as he was Jewish he’d been dropped after the Nazis had come to power. However, he was considered to be one of the best ice hockey players in Europe, and amid much controversy – including threats from his team-mates to refuse to play if Ball didn’t play – he was reinstated, apparently striking a deal whereby his family could leave Germany if he played.

Canada were the favourites to win the ice hockey (not everything was different), and the tournament itself had what would seem today to be an odd structure, with the semi-finals and the final being group stages. Confused? Me too! Of the 15 teams that entered, eight progressed to the semi-finals (which were played as two groups of four), with four making it to the final which was a round-robin in which the scores from games played in previous stages between teams who’d made it that far were counted. This particular rule would become apparent as a result of the Canada-Great Britain game in the semi-finals.

That, by the way, was the crucial game. If the Americans had their miracle on the ice in 1980, this was Britain’s.

But, before we get to that, just how British was the British ice hockey team of 1936?

It’s a good question, as whenever this particular gold medal gets brought up (which, to be honest, isn’t very often), the usual accusation is that the British simply recruited some Canadian expats to play under the Union Jack. Great Britain had entered the Winter Olympic ice hockey tournament before, winning the bronze medal in 1924, and the team then had indeed been composed almost entirely of Canadians – either military officers stationed in Britain or students studying at British universities, the Winter Olympics being an exclusively amateur affair back then. For 1936, though, the British Olympic Association decreed that every member of the British team had to be not just British subjects, but British-born.

Although it was never going to challenge football as the most popular winter spectator sport, ice hockey enjoyed something of a boom in Britain in the 1930s. The brains behind promoting the sport in this country was a man called J.F. ‘Bunny’ Ahearne, who in 1934 became the manager of the British national team. He recruited Percy Nicklin, who had moved to England in 1935 to coach the Richmond Hawks after a successful coaching career in his native Canada, to help him find players in Canada (the only obvious source of good players) who would meet the British-born requirement. As coach, Nicklin was to be the driving force behind the team he assembled.

The thirteen-strong team that Ahearne and Nicklin got together for the 1936 Winter Olympics varied in age from 39 (Carl Erhardt, the captain, who was actually older than Ahearne!) to 18 (Jack Kilpatrick). One of them, Archie Stinchcombe, could only see out of one eye as the result of a childhood accident. As it turned out, only one member of the team had actually been born in Canada – Gordon Dailley, who had moved to Britain in 1933, apparently by working his passage across the Atlantic on a cattle boat; he was deemed to have qualified by residence. Of the others, ten were British-born but Canadian-raised (sources do vary, though, with Wikipedia claiming that Gerry Davey was born in Canada, whereas the British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame has him as being born in Essex). Some had already moved back to England before Nicklin began to build his team; Jimmy Borland, for example, had been playing for the Great Britain team since 1934.

The story of Edgar Brenchley, though, was typical of the team; born in Kent, his family emigrated to Canada when he was a child and he was brought up in Niagara. A promising amateur player, he played for an American team before moving back to England in 1935, when he started playing under Nicklin for the Richmond Hawks at the same time as Johnny Coward (born in Ambleside, raised in Fort Frances, Ontario) and Jimmy Foster (born in Greenock, raised in Winnipeg).

Of the two with no Canadian connections, both were defencemen; Erhardt had learned how to play as a result of having been sent to school in Switzerland and had played for his country since 1931, while Bob Wyman – who for a time held the British half-mile record in speed-skating – had learned how to play in London, although funnily enough he played for a team called the Grosvenor House Canadians.

All of those selected for the British team played in what was then the newly-formed English National League in the 1935-36 season – representing teams like the Wembley Lions, the Harringay Greyhounds, the Brighton Tigers and the Richmond Hawks (the Grosvenor House Canadians had by that season become the Wembley Canadians, later to be renamed the Wembley Monarchs). None of these teams exist anymore; the fluctuating fortunes of ice hockey – a minority sport in Britain – meant that teams tended to fold when the leagues in which they competed did. Today, London doesn’t even have a team in what is currently the Elite Ice Hockey League.

The Canadian hockey authorities did not take Nicklin’s recruitment drive lying down, and things probably weren’t helped by the fact that the French team had had the same idea. As far as the British were concerned, though, the Canadian Olympic Committee only protested against the inclusion of two players, Jimmy Foster and Alex Archer. Both had been suspended by the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association in 1935 for leaving Canada in order to play ice hockey elsewhere, and they were subsequently banned by the International Ice Hockey Federation, only to be reinstated after the Canadians withdrew their protest shortly before the Winter Olympics began.

In the event, Foster – Nicklin’s first choice as goaltender – played a crucial role in Great Britain’s success at the Winter Olympics, only letting in three goals and recording four shutouts, an impressive feat in a tournament that averaged over four goals per game (in total, of the 31 games he played for Great Britain, 16 were shutouts). His ever-presence in the side meant that the reserve goalie, Arthur Child, didn’t play a game and therefore wasn’t eligible for a medal. Archer, a right-winger and a former two-times Manitoban All Star, also played in all seven games, scoring two goals.

The Canadian selection policy back in those amateur days was to have the country be represented at the Winter Olympics by the previous year’s Allan Cup winners (to this day, the Allan Cup is the trophy awarded to the national amateur men’s champions of Canada). For the 1936 Winter Olympics, though, the 1935 Allan Cup winners were unavailable, so Canada was represented by the runners-up, the Port Arthur Bearcats. This did not stop them from being tipped to win gold.

In the first round, GB beat Sweden (1-0) and Japan (3-0) to progress to the next stage. Elsewhere, Italy recorded a surprise win over the USA while Canada swept all before them, scoring 24 goals in their three first-round matches. The pre-tournament favourites were living up to expectations.

The two met on 11^th February in the semi-final group stage. Great Britain went ahead in the first minute thanks to Gerry Davey, who had fallen ill but had got out of his sick bed to play. Canada soon equalised but GB’s defence, especially Foster in goal, prevented the favourites from adding to their considerable goal tally. The score remained at 1-1 until well into the third period, when with 90 seconds left on the clock, Edgar Brenchley scored to make it 2-1 to the British.

Subsequently, a 1-1 tie against Germany and a victory over Hungary (5-1, compared to Canada’s 15-0 thrashing of the same side) saw Britain make it to the final.

Once in the final group, GB didn’t have to play Canada again as the semi-final result was taken forward. This has been cited by some as evidence of British skulduggery, but those were the tournament rules (similarly, the USA didn’t have to play Czechoslovakia again) and the Olympic authorities stuck to them despite Canadian protests.

Having defeated Czechoslovakia 5-0, GB tied 0-0 against the USA in a game that went through six periods before a tie was declared (this being the days before sudden death and shoot-outs). This assured GB of at least a silver medal. All that stood between them and the gold was the USA, who could win the gold themselves if they beat Canada by at least five goals. Exhausted by the six-period game against the British, though, they lost 1-0, this result meaning that Canada won the silver and the Americans the bronze.

As the Winter Olympics doubled as the World Championships, this meant that for the first (and only) time, Great Britain were the world ice hockey champions.

Carl Erhardt retired from playing after the Winter Olympics. At 39, he remains the oldest person ever to have won a gold medal in this event. Most of the team played in the World Championships the following year, when GB (the hosts) won the silver medal, a feat they would repeat in 1938; both times, Canada won.

After that, some of the gold-winning players continued to play in Britain while others returned to North America – Brenchley found himself playing for the Atlantic City Seagulls in 1939. Most of them would serve in the Second World War. Jimmy Chappell took part in the D-Day Landings. Bob Wyman became a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy. Johnny Coward, whose 1936 sweater can be seen today in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, served in the Royal Military Police and went back to Canada, and a job in a paper mill, after the war. Gordon Dailley went on to serve in the Korean War as well, and rose to the rank of colonel in the Canadian Army; later, he founded Canada’s first drive-through safari park. Jimmy Foster went back to Canada to work in an aircraft factory. Alex Archer, who scored 82 goals in five seasons for the Wembley Lions, carried on playing until 1945, when he fractured his skull in an international against Sweden; he then went into coaching. Erhardt, considered by many to be a fine all-round sportsman, went on to establish the British Water Ski Federation. Ahearne would become the president of the International Ice Hockey Federation. Three players – Gerry Davey, Archie Stinchcombe and Jimmy Chappell – played for Great Britain at the next Winter Olympics, in 1948.

That was the last time a British ice hockey team qualified for the Winter Olympics.

Sources:

British Ice Hockey Hall of Fame

Greatest Hockey Legends

BBC: “British skate to victory”

Various entries on Wikipedia

Back on my bike

Last weekend I had a couple of errands to run that took me to Highgate. I went on my bike, mainly because I hadn’t cycled for a while and felt that I should get into some sort of exercise routine. I own a hybrid bike – the type that combines elements from road bikes and mountain bikes and is designed for commuting; I originally brought it with this in mind but the combination of an accident back in January and a subsequent reluctance to cycle in bad weather meant that I have been using public transport to get to work more often than not in recent months.

I ended up at Parliament Hill Fields, which meant that I had two options for getting back to East Finchley. Both involved cycling up a very steep hill to get to Highgate Village. I chose Swains Lane, a street which goes up to the entrance to Highgate Cemetery before climbing steeply to get to the village itself. It seemed a bit daunting but I reckoned I could do it. How hard, I thought to myself, could it be?

In a word: Very.

The first part – getting up to the cemetery entrance – was harder than I thought, and it wasn’t long before I had the bike in the lowest possible gear. I was gasping for breath as I reached the cemetery gates, where the road levels out for a few yards before the really hard part starts. This is where the road narrows and climbs steeply up to the village. It was a hot morning, but luckily there was some shade from the overhanging trees.

There is an expression that cycling commentators on the TV use to describe what happens when a cyclist has done all he can and has nothing left to give – “he’s got nothing left in the tank”. Well I truly had nothing left in the tank on that second part of the climb. I don’t know how I did it but made it to the top without stopping, although by the end I was reduced to a crawl, my pulse was racing and the muscles in my legs were burning. At the top, I had to stop and get my breath back – it took at least twenty minutes for my breathing to get somewhere close to normal.

When I got home, I Googled Swains Lane out of curiosity and found that it is listed on cycling websites as one of the great road climbs of London. The graph showing the height gain makes it look particularly fearsome, especially the part after the cemetery where the gradient reaches 18%. Apparently, climbing Swains Lane 24 times is equivalent to one ascent of the infamous Mount Ventoux, and there are people – probably those guys who can be seen on proper racing bikes and decked out in brightly-coloured lycra every Sunday morning – who regard six goes at it as an adequate work-out! Once was enough for me.

Cycling has been on my mind a lot these past weeks, as like many others I followed the Tour de France. I usually enjoy watching the nightly highlights of this most gruelling of sporting events from the comfort of an armchair, although I’ll happily admit that there are certain things about it that I just don’t get, most notably some of the team tactics and the fact that there would appear to be a tradition of not challenging the leader on the last day. This year I was thrilled by Bradley Wiggins’s fantastic victory; I am sure I am not alone in stating that I never thought I would see a Briton win Le Tour. What a performance!

I must admit to being surprised to learn that the likes of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish were planning to take part in the men’s road race at the Olympics, which was due to take place less than a week after they’d completed Le Tour. Surely Cav, who had once again triumphed in the Paris stage of Le Tour, couldn’t pull off a win in this as well?

Even without the prospect of a Team GB medal hope, I was very keen to go and see part of the men’s road race as I hadn’t managed to get tickets for any of the Olympic events that I’d applied for, and the cycling road races were billed as events where anyone could come and line the route and cheer on the cyclists. Some online research showed that it was due to cross the Thames at Putney Bridge, so that was where I found myself at 9AM yesterday morning.

Crowds were already gathering, many of them with large flags (not just Union Jacks by any means) and quite a few people appeared to have cycled down. The atmosphere built up as the start time approached – the word was that they cyclists would reach Putney Bridge around ten minutes after starting on the Mall. The route had been fenced off, although that didn’t stop one guy from cycling along it, no hands on the handlebars and taking pictures of the crowd with his phone. He certainly didn’t look like an official Olympics person, and everyone seemed to find this hilarious.

As the big moment approached, police bikes started to appear on the route, with some of the riders obviously having the time of their lives, waving at and even trying to high-five the crowd. Helicopters hovered overhead and support vehicles also passed by, and then a roar of the crowd on the route prior to the bridge told us that the main event was about to arrive.

The peloton passed in a matter of seconds, and for those seconds the atmosphere was electric. Here was one of the few parts of the Olympics where anyone could turn up on the day and line the route to watch the race, and according to the BBC over a million people took that opportunity. Even though things did not work out for Mark Cavendish, it was still a fantastic experience for those of us who went to watch a little piece of sporting history.

And me? Well I was inspired this morning to get back on my bike and go for a ride in the City, coming home via the challenging Swains Lane.  I’m sure Wiggo and Cav would approve!