Summer Olympiad (1956)

The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, celebrated in Melbourne, Australia, although the equestrian events could not be held in Australia due to unforeseen circumstances quarantine regulations. Therefore, those events were held five months earlier in Stockholm, Sweden, marking the second time that events of the same Olympics were held in different countries. The Melbourne Games were the first to be held in the southern hemisphere. Laszlo Papp of Hungary became the first boxer to win three gold medals. American Pat McCormick won both diving events, just as she had in 1952. Two athletes dominated the gymnastics competition. On the men’s side, Ukrainian Viktor Chukarin earned five medals, including three gold, to bring his career total to eleven medals, seven of them gold. Agnes Keleti of Hungary brought her career total to ten medals by winning four gold medals and two silver. The U.S. basketball team, led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, put on the most dominant performance in Olympic history, scoring more than twice as much as their opponents and winning each of their games by at least 30 points. U.S. weightlifter Paul Anderson weighed 137.9kg. In weightlifting, ties are broken by awarding the higher place to the athlete with the lower body weight. Incredibly, this worked to Anderson’s advantage when he tied for first with Humberto Selvetti of Argentina. Selvetti weighed 143.5kg. Prior to 1956, the athletes in the Closing Ceremony marched by nation, as they did in the Opening Ceremony. In Melbourne, following a suggestion by a young Australian named John Ian Wing, the athletes entered the stadium together during the Closing Ceremony, as a symbol of global unity.

Opening date: 22 November 1956

Closing date: 08 December 1956

Ceremonies

Official opening of the Games by: HRH the Duke of Edinburgh

Lighting the Olympic Flame by: Ron Clarke (athletics)

Olympic Oath by: John Landy (athletics)

Official Oath by: The first officials' oath was sworn at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

Participations

72 NOCs (Nations)
3 314 athletes (376 women, 2 938 men)
145 events

Country of the host city: Australia (AUS)

Candidate cities: Buenos Aires (ARG), Los Angeles (USA), Detroit (USA), Mexico (MEX), Chicago (USA), Minneapolis (USA), Philadelphie (USA) and San Francisco (USA)

Sports

• Aquatics
• Athletics
• Basketball
• Boxing
• Canoe / Kayak
• Cycling
• Equestrian
• Fencing
• Football
• Gymnastics
• Hockey
• Modern Pentathlon
• Rowing
• Sailing
• Shooting
• Weightlifting
• Wrestling

Demonstration sports

• Australian rules football
• Baseball

Highlights

• Elizabeth "Betty" Cuthbert (AUS-athletics) won two gold medals in the individual track sprints (100 and 200m) and a third in the 4x100m relay. The 18-year-old was instantly acclaimed as a national heroine by the home Australian crowd, and was nicknamed the "Golden Girl."

• Because Melbourne is in the southern hemisphere, the Olympics were held later in the year than former Olympics held in the northern hemisphere. The dates fitted the southern hemisphere season.

• The Summer Olympic Games 1956 were nicknamed "the Friendly Games."

• Murray Rose (AUS-swimming), 17 years old, won three gold medals. His first gold came as a member of Australia's world-record-setting 4x200m freestyle relay team. Next, he won the 400m freestyle and the 1,500m freestyle, twice defeating his Japanese opponent Tsuyoshi Yamanaka.

Facts

• It was the first time that the Games were held in Oceania.

• To allow for the equestrian sports to be held and avoid the problem of quarantine for horses entering Australia, the Games took place in two different cities (Stockholm and Melbourne), in two different countries (Sweden and Australia), on two different continents (Europe and Oceania) and in two different seasons (June and November). This is the only time in the Games' hundred-year existence that the unity of time and place, as stipulated in the Charter, has not been observed.

• The International Olympic Committee had a great political success in managing to bring together the two Germanys (East and West) within a combined team (EUA) competing under a black, red and yellow flag with the Olympic rings and with "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's IX Symphony as their anthem. This practice would take place for the following two editions of the Games.

• The Soviet invasion of Hungary provoked protests from numerous western countries and some of them, such as Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, withdrew from the Games. On another matter, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq refused to participate in protest of the Franco-British Suez intervention. In addition, the People's Republic of China refused to participate because of the presence of the Republic of China (Taiwan). This conflict would take 28 years to be resolved.

• The 1956 Games were also marked by an innovation in the Closing Ceremony. Upon the suggestion of John Ian Wing, a Chinese apprentice carpenter living in Australia, it was decided to let all the athletes parade together, rather than by country, as a symbol of world unity.

• In fencing, the electric foil was introduced and in swimming, the semi-automatic, digital-display timing device appeared.