2024-07-22 19:00:52
The Games of the 33rd Olympiad improved by 116 kilometers the absolute record for the greatest distance from one venue to another in which competitions are held.
From Paris to Tahiti, where surfing starts, the distance is exactly 15,705 kilometers, taking into account the shape of the Earth.
The previous record was between Melbourne and Stockholm in 1956. Then the equestrian competitors had to go to Sweden, because Australia has the strictest restrictions on importing animals. Then the distance was 15,589 kilometers between the two cities. Or a difference of 116 kilometers.
Sailing at the Paris Games will be in Marseille, but surfing has broken all records
Tahiti is located in the central part of the South Pacific between Australia and California. Its area is about 1000 square kilometers and it is smaller than Hong Kong.
It is part of French Polynesia, a semi-autonomous territory that has been French since 1842 and consists of 118 islands and atolls. The flight there is over 20 hours, since there is no direct flight from Paris to the capital Papaye.
Interestingly, 68 years ago we have a competitor who is separate from our delegation. This is the legendary Krum Lekarski, who with his horse participated in the individual dressage with his horse Edgar. It ranks 36th there.
Lekarski at the Melbourne Olympics is 58 years old, and these are his third games. His first ones were exactly in Paris a century ago, when he was in the company of another legend in his native sport – the future general Vladimir Stoychev. They are together in Amsterdam 4 years later.
Lekarski’s participation in Melbourne (as the Olympics are officially held) is not his last. He also competed in Rome 4 years later when he was 62 years and 123 days old. To this day, this is the record for the oldest Bulgarian competitor at the Olympics.
Melbourne is a historic Olympics for Bulgaria. On it, we won our first title after the triumph of Nikola Stanchev in freestyle wrestling. Silver medals were won by Dimitar Dobrev and Petko Sirakov (the father of the owner of “Levski” Nasko Sirakov) in the classical style and Yusein Mehmedov in the freestyle. And our football team, led by captain Stefan Bozhkov, returns with bronze medals. The lineup includes quite legendary names such as Todor Diev, Georgi Dimitrov-Chervenia, Milcho Goranov, Ivan Kolev-Vaneto, Nikola Kovachev, Manol Manolov, Dimitar Milanov-Pijo, Georgi Naydenov, Panayot Panayotov-Gatso, Kiril Rakarov, Gavril Stoyanov, Krum Yanev and Yosif Yosifov.
Our team can also play in the final, but they lose in overtime to the USSR with 1:2 in the 1/2-final.
Matches London’s feat
Paris also equals London’s achievement as the city that has hosted the Summer Games three times.
The first ones were in 1900, and they went down in history as the longest. The competitions are from May 14 to October 28 because they are held with the world fair. These games were also the only ones to be held in a non-leap year, apart from those in Tokyo, which were postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic and held in 2021.
This Olympics was supposed to be the first in history, but the members of the IOC decided that it could not wait six whole years after deciding to resume them, so they gave the debut to Athens.
In 1900, women participated in the Olympics for the first time. Countess Hélène de Portale (born in New York) competed in sailing with her husband and was officially named the first female Olympic champion in history.
A 124-year-old mystery
There is also a mystery from the first Olympics in Paris that has not been solved to this day.
In the breaststroke pairs, the Dutch representatives (Minerva Club, Amsterdam) François Brand and Roelof Klein decided that their coxswain Hermanus Brockman was too heavy and took a child from the audience to guide them. However, no one asks him his name. Thus he becomes unknown, and according to some, he must be the youngest champion in history, because he looks like a 7-8 year old. Researchers from Tbilisi claim that it is Georgi Nikolaidze, who attended the games with his father, a Russian count. However, there is no such confirmation. And the IOC still considers Brockman a champion in this discipline.
We are making an Olympic committee
For the second games in Paris a century ago, we are doing a total reorganization of our native sport. The Bulgarian Olympic Committee and the Bulgarian National Sports Federation (BNSF) appear. At that time, the BNSF acted like the sports ministry at the moment.
Thus, along with everything, the national football team was born, which quietly turned 100 years old, without anyone from the BFS noting this fact.