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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM • JULY 2012 • ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETER OUMANSKI 25
GLOBETROTTING
MUCH WENLOCK, U.K.
KIRK HEYWOOD, proprietor
of the 17th-century Raven Hotel
in the quiet Shropshire hamlet of
Much Wenlock, carries a tray of
tea and scones to guests loung-
ing on lime-green Victorian-era
couches, past sepia photos of
tophatted gentlemen awarding
olive garlands to tough-looking
farmers. He nods toward some
chairs in the corner. “Brookes could
have been sitting right there,” he
says, “making the speech that
started the modern Olympics.”
In 1850, after studying 2,000-
year-old Greek Olympic artifacts
during his travels, Dr. William
Penny Brookes—a peripatetic yet
locally beloved teacher, physician
and magistrate—introduced an
Olympics-style competition to his
hometown to improve the “moral,
intellectual and physical qualities”
of its residents. At the time, “the
town had an unenviable reputation
for drunkenness,” says Catherine
Beale, historian and author of Born
Out of Wenlock. “When the teetotal-
ers came, the windows were broken
out of the building where they met.”
Thanks in part to rural Shrop-
shire’s lack of entertainment
options (along with the endorse-
ment of local nobleman Lord
Forester and his cousin, the future
Duke of Rutland, who provided a £1
This month, before the big names
compete in London, the 126th
Wenlock Olympian Games will
feature more than 1,300 amateur
athletes competing in track and field
events, as well as novelties like lawn
bowling and glider races. “Just don’t
expect to see a revival of the ‘Old
Woman’s Race for a Pound of Tea,’”
Heywood says, laughing. “Or the
contest to catch the greased piglet.”
note as a prize for a footrace), the
Wenlock Olympian Society Annual
Games caught on quickly. By the
late 1870s, crowds topped 10,000.
In 1890, France’s Baron Pierre
de Coubertin met Brookes at the
Raven, and was so inspired by what
the good doctor had created that
he mounted a campaign resulting
in the first international Olympic
Games in Athens six years later.
RING BEARERS
Revisiting the humble origins of the modern
Olympic movement BY BILL FINK