Dominic Sutherland's documentary combines archive footage and new interviews with the amateur athletes who took part in the 1948 Olympics. The London Games brought hope to a world emerging from the darkness of war, but the 'Blitz Spirit' was still required to ensure their success.
Director Interview: Dominic Sutherland
BBC Four: What surprised you most about the 1948 Olympics?
Dominic Sutherland: My favourite story was about an assistant coach for the men's gymnastics
team who had been a German POW. He had come along to see the gymnastic display and while he was there, in prisoner of war uniform, he'd introduced himself to the British gymnastic team and jumped on to the bars to go through the Olympic routine. When they saw this and found out he had beaten the 1936 German Olympics champion they asked him to help them. There's a photograph of him in the film with the rest of the gymnastic team. They're all wearing blazers but he doesn't have a flag on his blazer because Germany weren't invited to the games as the war was still so fresh in everybody's mind.
BBC Four: What was public opinion like towards the games?
Dominic Sutherland: Not everyone was behind them. The Evening Standard was calling for the games to be cancelled, to withdraw invitations because at that time rationing was even more severe than it had been in the war and there were many people who felt we couldn't really justify spending money on the Olympics. It was also seen to be inappropriate because it would bring up jingoism and some of the things that people were trying to get away from. But in another sense, there was still a Blitz spirit, that we could do it.
BBC Four: How did the background of austerity, rationing etc affect the 1948 Olympics?
Dominic Sutherland: They certainly weren't going to be able to purpose build something which had been done in 1932 in Los Angeles and 1936 in Berlin. Instead they converted Wembley Stadium, which had been a dog-racing track up until three weeks before the Games, into the main stadium. For the Olympic swimming pool at Wembley Arena, they had to scrape the black-out paint off the glass. Herne Hill, where the cycling was held, had been a barrack balloon site during the war. So it was really like dusting everything off to get things ready and it worked out, against the odds. They couldn't find any accommodation for the athletes; they considered Prisoner of War camps at one point
People training for the Olympics were on rations. The government decided prior to the Olympics to give food parcels to those athletes who were on the probable list for making the Olympics: to give them a chance to get fit. There's one lovely story, the winner of the bronze light-weight for weight lifting had been a POW on the Siam death railway. He came back and he was only six-and-a-half stone and within two-and-a-half years he'd captained the Olympic team and got a bronze medal. This guy would train in a room at night having worked in a power station shoveling coal in the day. I love the notion that the female athletes had to make their own running uniform, that was the state of austerity in the country. It also captures the spirit of the time.
BBC Four: Another interesting thing in the film was the different perception the Brits had of Britain to those from the rest of the world, especially the Americans...
Dominic Sutherland: Yes, the British participants I interviewed were used to rationing and to seeing London covered in rubble. Dorothy Manley, who won the silver for Britain in the 100 metres, lived in Woodford in Essex, which had been very heavily bombed. It actually took the Americans, with their fresh perspective, coming over to see Britain for what it really was. They couldn't believe the state London was in - the rubble hadn't gone in 1948, it had been brushed into piles. The Americans brought their own food with them, on a daily basis they flew in bread from Los Angeles because they found toad-in-the-hole and spam fritters laughable. There weren't enough calories for them to get by on.
BBC Four: How did these quite elderly interviewees find recalling the Olympics?
Dominic Sutherland: A lot of them celebrated the fact that in 1948 they didn't feel it was necessary to have a lot of razzmatazz. They called it the "Austere Games". Things were quite straightforward, there was a march in, there wasn't a great display of any sort and most of them felt there was a great purity to those Games. They were all amateurs so they really were doing it for the love of the sport. They all had other jobs: the winner of the silver medal in the 200 metres was a shorthand typing secretary from the Suez Canal Company. The weight lifter worked shovelling coal in a power station. The French chap who came silver in the 10,000 metres was a waiter in a cafe in the Bois de Boulogne. The notion of training professionally is quite alien to them.
BBC Four: What do you think the film tells us about the broader context of the era?
Dominic Sutherland: Organising an event like that becomes a microcosm of what's happening in the country. The British wanted something positive to look forward to and a lot of the people I spoke to said this was the time to grow up and the time to put aside differences and be men and to find a sense of common unity. So it really does fit into that post-war period, where people were really looking for something positive to celebrate against the back drop of what was a very tough, austere time.
You will need RealPlayer to access the clips. Visit
WebWise for help downloading RealPlayer
