The First London Olympics 1908

In 1908, a group of volunteers took just 18 months to transform a 140-acre site of scrubland in West London into the White City, which housed the first ever Olympic Games in London. Though the differences between today’s games and those a century ago are many, as this delightful social and sporting history shows, just as today the sport was overshadowed by doping scandals and international uproar. The ferocious competitiveness of a US team dominated by New York Irish Americans led to a succession of scandals culminating in the historic marathon when Italian runner Dorando Pietri’s heroic efforts at the limits of exhaustion so entranced on-lookers that track officials helped him across the finish line. Illustrated with more than 70 contemporary images this is a thought-provoking look at one of history’s most raucous sporting events.