By Professor Ian Stone
Today, UK Sport invests in supporting and developing British high-performance athletes and programmes to achieve medal success, using sports science to enhance performance through the UK Sports Institute. Team GB and Paralympic GB athletes at the 2024 Games in Paris will not want for specialist advice and support. The contrast with situation a century ago, at the first Paris Olympics, could not be greater. For most of the twentieth century, it was British practice to leave athletes largely to their own devices – to their increasing disadvantage in international competition, especially for those with limited resources. Thus in 1924, the AAA, pursuing its notion of “amateurism”, adopted a minimalist approach to supporting the Olympic team. This included declining to involve professional coaches, in stark contrast to the practice followed in competitor nations.
Among those affected by this stance was professional coach, Alec Nelson, ‘rediscovered’ as Britain’s leading inter-war athletics coach in my recent book*. As a prominent amateur (three-quarter mile champion/record holder) and professional runner (undefeated half-mile world champion), Nelson accumulated the practical knowledge that was to underpin his success during 1908-1939 as professional coach for Cambridge University AC (CUAC), as well as London AC, the Achilles Club, the Army, and the British, Canadian and Irish Olympics teams.
In this era, the Cambridge and Oxford University teams were prominent within British athletics, reflecting the origins and sport’s class-based structure, and performances of Nelson’s team at the Varsity Sports brought him to national attention.
Image courtesy of author’s family.
Though a professional, Nelson subscribed to amateur codes around the sport and in 1912 the British athletic authorities, concerned about declining British competitiveness, appointed him national trainer for the Stockholm Olympics. His role included supervising preparatory training at a network of regional training centres. The timing of such arrangements however, prevented his working with promising young athletes, and funding restrictions limited his time with the established ones. Moreover, the coaching team (of four) sent to Stockholm had just a matter of days to work with some 70 athletes, and then frequently found their advice contradicted by interfering officials.
Disappointing results at Stockholm against “unfair competition”, led to a debate on whether to withdraw from future Olympics, or choose to enhance support given to athletes. Nelson, who had been placed in an impossible position at Stockholm, added his voice to criticisms of Britain’s ‘muddling through’ approach. He argued for a properly funded system of ongoing support for athletes, delivered through a nationwide structure of professional training under a head coach.
Image courtesy of author’s family.
Such arguments struck home. Professional coaching, within a more organised framework operating over the Olympic cycle, was accepted and the AAA set about raising funds for the appointment of a professional head coach and assistants to operate through regionally based structures. Fully two years before the Berlin Games, scheduled for 1916, appointments were in place. However, it was a Canadian, Walter Knox, who was installed as national head coach, rather than the popular choice, Nelson – possibly reflecting the latter’s outspokenness but also the allure of a “foreign” coach.
After the Berlin Games fell victim to the 1914-18 war, the 1920 Antwerp Games went ahead despite objections that European nations had hardly recovered from warfare. Financial stresses and limited lead-time encouraged retrenchment and no official trainers accompanied the British team. Nelson however did attend, but only unofficially, as trainer to the nine British representatives from the Oxbridge spin-off, the Achilles Club, where he coached. Those athletes, in fact, delivered two of Britain’s four gold and three of the four silver medals.
By 1924, the funding context had improved somewhat and, two years in advance of Paris, an Olympic Training Scheme was launched for promising athletes. Nelson, Sam Mussabini and Laurie Edwards were among the professional trainers contracted for its delivery. However, these signs of a revival of pre-war thinking on actively supporting athletes was followed, six months before the Games, by a sudden shift in sentiment within the sport’s administration in favour of primary reliance upon honorary (i.e. amateur) trainers to advise the athletes, within a structure overseen by amateur officials. Despite a quarter of the prospective team for Paris consisting of his Cambridge athletes, Nelson was not one of the small number of trainers – including one or two professionals – travelling with the team.
This stance set the mould for the remaining inter-war Games. Nelson thus never had the chance to deploy on behalf of his country his proven skills as a coach of both individuals and teams. Other nations were quick to take advantage, however, and he supported Canada’s runners in achieving their unexpected achievements at Amsterdam in 1928, and then had success as the Irish head coach, both at the 1932 Los Angeles Games and in terms of developing the sport in Ireland more broadly.
At Paris, Britain’s 65 athletes won three gold among a total of eleven medals, trailing well behind the USA (32 medals) and Finland (17). Harold Abrahams, who had been trained by Nelson during his undergraduate years, was famously accompanied by his own coach, Mussabini, who was critical in helping the runner overcome psychological pressures to win the 100m gold and silver in the 4x100m relay. Other successful runners coached by Nelson were Douglas Lowe (gold, 800m) and Guy Butler (bronze, 400m and 4x400m), while Henry Stallard won a bronze in the 1,500m, despite running with a stress fracture of the metatarsal sustained in coming fourth in the 800m. Eric Liddell, winner of the 400m, also benefited from having his own trainer, Tom McKerchar, at Paris, but had also gained from Nelson’s advice on regular visits to train with CUAC.
Clockwise from top left: Harold Abrahams, athletics 100m. Eric Liddell, athletics 400m. Douglas Lowe, athletics 800m. Henry Mitchell, boxing light heavy weight. Jack Beresford, rowing single sculls. Harry Mallin, boxing middle weight. Centre: Lucy Morton, swimming 200m breaststroke. The other golds came from the men’s coxless four, and the shooting team.
Image courtesy of the National Union of Track Statisticians Archive.
Overall, however, the team’s performance, according to Athletic News, was “a fiasco”. The small band of advisers chosen for Paris were unfamiliar with most of the athletes, rendering their last-minute suggestions possibly harmful. Despite this, the stewards of the sport in Britain ignored media protests and calls for a more organised approach. Protecting amateur athletic traditions implied to them a “hands-off” stance. British athletes were on their own, to the disadvantage especially of those from less privileged backgrounds.
Ian Stone is a professor emeritus at Durham University. His recently published book, Alec Nelson and British Athletics prior to World War II: A Professional amongst Gentlemen can be ordered from Cambridge Scholar Publishing.