Guests for the morning Maziar Taravat, Sue Duras

 

Kevin Love will send an email around for orders for new T-shirts for club members for the conference next year. Members who already have a T-shirt need to send their size in as well as will be issued issuing two T-shirts per person. Members are encouraged to register early at the cheap discounted rate.

 

There are 308 registrations for the District Conference in 2017 so far.

 

President Justine thanked Marjorie and Bernie for their hard work in getting the new name badges organised.

 

Particular thanks to Warwick, Neville and Kevin who have pulled out all stops to get information for the community market together and keep the project on track.

 

Justine also thanked Roger for is exceptional hard work and pulling together the Garden Design Fest.

 

International report from Rob Hines.

The Fraternist Award for the most outstanding student selected by other students in International House at Melbourne University has been awarded. The award is worth $500 and will continue for the time being. Robert So has been awarded the prize. and the award has already been presented. Robert will be attending the club shortly to introduce himself.

 

The young boy, Nonh, from Laos, that we have generously sponsored for an operation, will be heading to Phnom Penh for surgery on November 27 and he will be here for four weeks. Nonh is being accompanied by his father Bounsy and interpreter Mr On. while in Phnom Penh, they will hosted by the RC Phnom Penh. The surgery will commence immediately the day after assessment, and hopefully he will be able to recover in Phnom Penh over the 4 weeks. Our project manager in Laos has assisted greatly in organizing the travel and arranged an interpreter to assist with the conversation in the medical setting at the hospital.

 

Cecily is offered to host a Chinese New Year celebration at her apartment in Southbank on the 28th of January 2017

 

 

 

The guest speaker for the morning was Peter Duras talking about some of the interesting aspects of the Olympic Games.

 

Peter has a long career as a sports physiotherapist and has been sports physiotherapist at several Olympics.

 

In view of the fact that this is an Olympic year at Rio and that in one week we will be celebrating exactly 60 years since the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne, Peter took us on the rocky road of some of the unknown and funny things that happen in the Olympics over the years. In 1956, the Olympic Torch commenced the journey in Brisbane on its way down to Melbourne.

 

Peter passed around the torch and fuel canister, which are very rare objects. [See photo of Peter and Sue Duras with the Olympic Torch below]

 

The start of the Olympics was about 3000 years ago and were held at Olympia for about 1200 years.

 There were three very important elements to the ancient Olympics. Primarily they were part of a religious festival as a tribute to Zeus, they were incredibly competitive. Everything the Greeks did whether it was in the arts or war or sports, everything was a struggle towards victory.

The end prize was fairly trivial, all you got was a wreath and and red bands tied around your arms and legs, but this gave you incredible prestige. This prestige was spread between yourself and the city that you came from.

The PanHellenic region stretched as far as Turkey and down to Italy and across to Egypt. There were constant tribal regional wars this time.

The area of Olympia was always an area of peace with weapons banned.

 

During the Olympics for one month after and two months prior to the games there were no wars throughout the whole PanHellenic region.

The 40,000 spectators, athletes and officials could travel from throughout the lands to Olympia in safety every four years.

 

The first Olympic games recorded with 776 BC. They were local games with one event and the games lasted only one day. The event was 190-meter sprint or basically the length of the arena.

There were 20 runners in a row in these races. Originally they stood on starting box but in order to make a fair race they came up with a gate system allowing runners to start at the same time. The starting official sat in a recess behind the runners and pulled a string allowing the gates to open at the same time allowing affair start start.

 

After about 15 games they started to add more events. They made longer races in which the athletes ran up and back the arena. There was however no marathon, that was not part of the ancient Olympics.

 

One of the events was running with amour, which consisted of a large shield a helmet and two shin guards. They also developed a pentathlon, which had three events for speed with the long jump and the sprint.

There were also two events for strength. The discus, which weighed three times the current discus(6kg) and finished the event with wrestling.

In the long jump they ran with hand weights to give them additional momentum and links in their job. However it’s not certain exactly how they used the hand weights to achieve the length and momentum.

 

The second nastiest event introduced was boxing. They started off with their hands wrapped within bands of leather but overtime size of these bands and thickness of the leather increased. Once the Romans took over the Olympics things got a little nasty and they added studs to the gloves.

 

The nastiest event was the Pankration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration) and was a free for all. It was not uncommon for people to die during this event.

 

All the athletes had to arrive one month in advance of the event to train under the eyes of the officials. They had to learn the whole philosophy of the games and the rules. If they cheated they were then forced to pay full are fine. The fine was used to direct a statue to Zeus, which was erected at the entry to the stadium, and on the statue, was placed their name and a misdemeanor.

 

 Milo of Crete (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_of_Croton ) was a super athlete and an extremely intelligent man by all accounts. He won seven events at seven Olympics in a row. He wrote several mathematical papers and was a student of Pythagoras. He won many events at many games over the years and was considered a super athlete of his day.

 

Nero bought in horse racing and particularly chariot racing, 10 horse chariot racing. In 67 A.D. Emperor Nero won the 10 horse race. Due to intimidation by the soldiers Nero was actually the only entrant in the heats and went through to the finals.

 

In the ancient Olympics all athletes competed in the nude and the reason is that all this is always incredibly hot in Greece and was far more comfortable for the athletes to compete naked.

Only males were allowed to compete at the Olympics, and any females found in the audience for anywhere in the vicinity were thrown out of the arena. There was one notable exception, and that was Calapart (a lady) was in trainers box, her son was competing, he won an event, she jumped up and her clothes fell off.

It was immediately obvious she was not a male. She was disciplined, however she was let off because her father two brothers and her son were all champions. From then on all competitors and officials had to attend the games in the need to make sure no women were present.

 

They were however women's games on the alternatives they were called the Heraanian  games in difference to the goddess Hera. http://ancientolympicgames.org/women/

 

In 393 A.D., the Romans had succumbed to Christianity and the Emperor Theodosius and pray the DCS regarded the games and many other festivals as pagan festivals. He subsequently banned them. Then to Muddy Waters, the Huns invaded the site and flattened the lot. Then there were two floods and an earthquake, which just completed the leveling, followed by a couple of floods, which covered the whole site.

 

In 1776 a British engineer manage to locate the site but there were no excavations until about the mid 1850s.

 

Ernst Curtius a distinguished German archaeologist started to peel back the layers of Olympia, which generated a great deal of interest throughout Europe.

 

About this time there were attempts in the Cotswold’s to revive the Olympics and games were held at a local level. They were also attempts in Poland and other areas around the world but these games were always considered as local, regional based games. The main driving force to revive the Olympics was William Penny Brooks a man interested in social revival with an incredible ability and drive.

 

The Cotswold games were initiated near Birmingham in a town called Much Wenlock, Shropshire, by a gentleman called William Penny Brooks. He started the local Olympic Games in 1850. still held today. He wrote to people all over the world expelled in the idea of reviving the Olympics. He wrote to a millionaire called Zapus in Greece, they corresponded for some time and Brooks sent a prize to Olympia for the first games held over there. The games grew in England and one of the early participants was WG Grace.

WG was playing cricket at Lords at the time and took the day off to go and participate in Olympics. He won the 440 hurdles, then went back to Lords and made 244 runs in his first innings.

 

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was the man who got the game is going on an international scale eventually. He had the time skills and money to pull the whole event back together.

In 1890 he had long discussions with William Penny Brooks on the shape that the games may take. In 1894 he went to the Sojourned and spoke various interested parties and formed the first international Olympic Committee of the modern error. In 1896 the first modern games took place in Athens in one of the ancient U-shaped stadiums.

 

Australia is one of the few countries that has been represented at every Olympic Games

Our first competitor was Edwin Flack, from, Berwick, Victoria. Flak was sent by his father to Europe to get additional training.

Flack snuck off from his training camp in England, and went to Athens to the games in the hope that he may be able to enter an event.

He played doubles tennis, singles tennis, he won the 800 m, and he won the 1500 m and unfortunately during the marathon collapsed at the 32 km mark. The upside was that the local great competitor won the event that gave Greece its first moment of glory in the Olympic games.

 

The other two countries that are competed in every games are Greece and Great Britain.

 

The next two games were a shambles. In 1900 they were held as part of the world exposition.

Some very strange events took place. Donald Mackintosh won the live pigeon shooting. This event was never held again surprisingly. He actually did not get his gold medal until he died and the IOC awarded it posthumously.

 

Freddie Lane from Sydney won the 200 m freestyle in the Sine river. In the early swimming events in Athens you were taken out to your distance in the Mediterranean Sea and then you had to swim back in. The first pool was constructed in England at Wimble for the games there.

 

Stan Roley was our most successful sprinter. He won the 60 m, 200 m and 100 m. However when he finished these events the British cross-country team approached him. Distance running was not his big thing so he walked the event and eventually was told to finish up but still got a medal because the British team won the event.

Ray Dear was also another great competitor winning the long jump high jump and triple jump. He did the same at the next games and in his final game is still one of the two medals. He was a polio victim and took up athletics in order to overcome his weaknesses. He held an incredible record of eight gold medals over three Olympics.

 

1904 the Olympics moved to Saint Louis in America. The Americans dominated these games with only about 10% of athletes coming from overseas.

 

Some of the events dropped from the games were cricket, motorboat racing, 10-ton yacht racing.

In 1904 George Isa a German American won four gold, two silver and several bronze in gymnastics. He did all this with an artificial leg.

The winner of the marathon caught a lift in a tuck for about half the distance on the and was lined up for the gold medal when the spectators brought the circumstances of his achievement to the in a notice of the officials.

The second place getter was Tom Hicks who took the gold medal on the disqualification but was also taking strychnine has a supplement.

 

1908 the games went to London, the first well organised games. The British built their facilities with only two years notice mainly around Wimble Stadium and were run again in the same stadium in 1948. The English also formulated rules for every event. This was the first time there was controls on every sport. These games were held over a period of around six months.

 

Snowy Baker participated in these games. Possibly the greatest athlete that Australia ever produced. He represented Australia and five events. As diverse as water polo and rugby. Andy represented new South wales and 29 events. He was a fencer, a horse rider, a, diver swimmer, you name it snowy had a crack at it.

Frank Beaurepaire. also participated in these games and went on to compete for several years at a very high level.

He came back to Australia and established his business and in the early late 1940s early 1950s sell the idea of having the Olympics in Melbourne to the eye see.

 

Fanny Durack was the first Australian woman to swim at the games

Bobby Pearce represented Australia in 1928 and 1932 in rowing in the single skulls. He was way ahead of anybody else in the world at that stage. In the 1928 games as he was coming in the final a flock of ducks passed in front of his skull and he stopped rowing and let them past then went on to win the event by a handy margin.

 

American Fay Gibson won the javelin and hurdles and equaled the world record height and the high jump after the game she became a golfer and won 17 titles including the British and American opens.

 

John Ilott thanked Peter Duras for his talk.