Joe
George Patton – Olympian
February 20, 2010 12:00 AM
In 1912, Stockholm hosted the fifth installment of the modern Olympics. Of course those games were somewhat different than today’s multi-national media circus with their huge crowds, big budgets, and super-star athletes. Perhaps, they were a bit more pure.
The United States sent a small team of athletes over on a boat and in the end won an incredible 63 medals (25 of them gold). Perhaps the biggest story of the games was the performance by the Native American Jim Thorpe, who became the only Olympian to ever win gold in both the Decathlon and Pentathlon (a feat not likely to be ever repeated). Thorpe would later be stripped of his medals for violating the Olympics ‘amateur’ policy, only to have them re-instated after his death.
The games also saw the introduction of a completely new contest – the Modern Pentathlon the consisted of pistol-shooting, fencing, swimming, horse riding, and running. The United States had only one entry, George S. Patton.
The first event was pistol-shooting, Patton’s best event – but he finished a dismal 21st. However, controversy surrounds his score. In the second round, eight of Patton’s shots were right on target; the other two could not be found. While the judges ruled those two shots had missed the target completely, Patton and several other competitors argued that the missing shots had gone through the holes left by the previous shots.
He quickly laid aside the argument and carried on with the competition. He placed 7th in swimming, 4th in fencing, 6th in riding, and 3rd in running. In the end he finished 5th overall, behind a quartet of Swedes.
Thus ended the short, but remarkable organized athletic career of George Patton, however, he was a man destined for a little more than fifteen minutes of fame.
COMMENTS
It's worth noting that this version of the modern pentathlon was supposed to represent the efforts of a dispatch rider to carry a message through a battlefield. It mimicked what had been done by dispatch riders from the dawn of gunpowder through the end of the nineteenth century. This was one reason Patton participated - it was viewed as an extension of the duties of a junior officer, who might be called upon to carry a message under fire.
Of course, aircraft, the machine gun, and motor vehicles would reduce the military utility of the sport just a few years later. . .
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