A look back at the last Paris Olympics, 100 years ago
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00:00 Well, Paris is preparing to hold the Olympics this summer, but you might not know that the
00:04 last time the French capital hosted the Games was exactly 100 years ago. Much has been forgotten
00:11 about the 1924 Olympics, but Claire Paquelin joins me on set now to tell us all about it.
00:16 Claire, you and Stéphanie Twiare have put together a short documentary called the Paris
00:21 Olympics Then and Now. So what were the Olympics like in 1924?
00:25 They were a really big deal in France. So the founder of the modern era of Olympics,
00:30 Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was French. And in 1924, he was the president of the International
00:36 Olympic Committee. And there was a really strong desire to show the world that France had moved on
00:43 from the First World War, that had ended only six years earlier. And France wanted to show that it
00:48 was stronger and it was modernized. And the Games were a way to do this internationally. And there
00:52 were a lot of firsts. The first ever Athletes' Village was built in Paris in 1924. It no longer
00:58 exists because it was just a series of wooden huts. But there were shared toilets, but there
01:04 was running water. And there were restaurants, there was a hairdresser. The first ever Athletes'
01:09 Village was built in the Paris Olympics 100 years ago. And there were stadiums which were built.
01:14 And the first ever 50-meter Olympic pool was built in the north of Paris. And we can watch now
01:19 a little extract from that documentary which should give you an idea of what the Games were like in
01:23 1924.
01:24 Paris is preparing to hold the Olympics, exactly 100 years since the French capital last hosted
01:48 the Games. Much has been forgotten of the 1924 Olympics. But records were broken,
02:02 champions were made, and more women athletes took part than ever before.
02:17 So what's left of the 1924 stadiums? And will any of them be used again in the 2024 Games?
02:25 That looks so great, that documentary by Claire Paquelin, who's with me on the set.
02:34 Claire, how do you go about making that kind of a documentary? What did you do?
02:37 Well, the first thing we did is we tried to find out which of the 1924 buildings are still
02:41 standing today. And honestly, there's not much left. But there's a little. First of all,
02:45 the Coulombe Stadium is still standing. And you can see there, we visited it with a group
02:50 of high school students, local high school students who actually knew nothing of the history.
02:55 And it's the only stadium which will be used again. So it's going to be used later this year.
03:00 The field hockey matches are going to take place there. And that's where back in 1924,
03:05 that really was the big stadium. The opening ceremony took place there. Athletics was there,
03:10 football, rugby. There was a huge fight at the end of the final rugby match, which became known
03:16 as the Bagarre Général. So a lot took place at the Coulombe Stadium and a lot's going to happen
03:21 this summer as well. There was also the beautiful velodrome. It's called La Cipale. It's in the
03:28 Bois-de-Vincennes on the eastern edge of Paris. Absolutely stunning. The stands, there it is,
03:34 the stands are still there and they were actually designed by Gustave Eiffel. So of the Eiffel Tower,
03:40 we say the Tour Eiffel in French. He designed those beautiful stands that you can see there.
03:44 And they're still there today. And honestly, this was a real find because it's empty half the time.
03:49 We saw some local school children who were doing a kind of cycling proficiency lesson there. There
03:55 was a very kind elderly gentleman. There's a veterans club there, an 89 year old called Raymond.
04:00 He showed us around. But it's basically, it's not being used in the games this year because it's too
04:03 old. It doesn't meet the standards necessary. But it's this beautiful find in the middle of the wood
04:11 in the edge of Paris where no one really goes. And it's still standing. And the fun part that
04:16 I enjoyed the most was Stephanie Trouillard was looking at the archive footage. So Pate,
04:20 French film company, they film many of the events, including the opening ceremony at the Stade de
04:26 Coulombe, the Coulombe Stadium. And we use some of the documentary images in our documentary,
04:31 but I can't actually show you these videos now because we don't have the rights. The rights we
04:35 have over them are very restricted. So if you want to see the actual moving footage, the video
04:39 from 1924, you'll need to either watch the show, which is on in an hour and a half's time,
04:44 3.15 Paris time, or it's already on our website on the France in Focus webpage.
04:49 That's what I call a good teaser, Clare. Thank you for that. Now, another thing that's interesting
04:53 is more women actually took part in the 1924 Olympics than in any ones before that. What
04:58 kind of events did they compete in? So they had tennis, fencing and swimming. In swimming,
05:04 women competed in the 400 metre freestyle event for the first time. That was the longest that
05:08 had been in previous Olympics. They've been allowed to swim in freestyle, but shorter
05:12 races, 300 metres, 200 metres. Three Americans won gold. This here, this is Sybil Bauer. She
05:18 actually won. She came first in the backstroke event. That was the first time that women were
05:23 allowed to swim anything other than freestyle. So it was the first backstroke event in Olympic
05:27 history for women. She won 20, well, she actually set 23 world records in women's swimming. She was
05:34 an absolute champion, but she died very, very young. She died when she was 23 of cancer. The
05:40 three there you can see in the picture, the ones we just saw, those were the three Americans who
05:44 won gold, silver and bronze in that 400 metre freestyle. And there they are, the pioneers of
05:50 women's swimming in the 1924 Paris Olympics. And the pool actually, where the swimming events took
05:56 place still exists. There it is. It's being renovated right now. It's going to be a training
06:00 pool in the 1924 Games. So it won't actually be used for any of the events. 2024. 2024.
06:06 And so it will be used again, but only for training because it doesn't quite meet modern
06:13 Olympic standards for it to be actually used as a race pool. But it will be used again. So the
06:19 memory of the 1924 Olympics is definitely living on.