A Time to Remember

85 years ago today -- July 13, 1924 -- the track and field competition at the 8th Olympiad in Paris, France concluded. These were the first Games to feature an Olympic Village and the last one organized under the presidency of modern Olympics founder, Pierre de Coubertin. These games also saw the introduction of the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). With the number of participating nations growing from 29 in the 1920 Antwerp games to 44 in Paris (along with the presence of 1,000 journalists), . . .

The first Golden Age of Sport in America occurred during the 1920’s when larger than life figures captivated the nation’s attention with exploits in their respective sporting venues: Babe Ruth (baseball), Jack Dempsey (boxing), Red Grange, (football) Bobby Jones (golf), Suzanne Lenglen (tennis), Jack Kelly (rowing), Bill Tilden (tennis), and Man o’ War (horse racing). Public interest was similarly focused upon the finest athletes participating in the sporting events once commonly referred to as “Athletics,” and today better known as Track and Field.



The opening ceremony of the 1924 games and track and field events took place
in the Olympic Stadium of Colombes (capacity of 45,000)

85 years ago today -- July 13, 1924 -- the track and field competition at the 8th Olympiad in Paris, France concluded. These were the first Games to feature an Olympic Village and the last one organized under the presidency of modern Olympics founder, Pierre de Coubertin. These games also saw the introduction of the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger). With the number of participating nations growing from 29 in the 1920 Antwerp games to 44 in Paris (along with the presence of 1,000 journalists), the Olympics had finally begun to gain widespread acceptance as a major athletic spectacle.


Well beyond the recall memory of most persons alive today, the 1924 Olympics surely carry some of the most interesting story lines of any Olympic games:

• USA trackman William DeHart Hubbard became the first black athlete ever to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics; he triumphed in the long jump (then known as the running broad jump).

• The saga of British gold medalists Harold Abrahams in the 100 meters and Eric Liddell in the 400 were chronicled in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Liddell, a devout Christian, opted out of his best event as well as two relays because the preliminaries were held on a Sunday. Nevertheless, he got his gold and a bronze in other events.

• USA swimmer Johnny Weissmuller burst on the scene, winning two individual gold medals and a single team relay gold. He added a bronze as a member of the water polo team. He would later become even better known for his prolific role in Hollywood as Tarzan.

• USA swimmer Gertrude Ederle earned a relay gold and two individual bronze medals. Two years later, she caused a sensation by becoming the first woman to swim across the English Channel -- and in a time almost two hours faster than any man had ever achieved.

• USA gold medal winning crew was comprised of the entire Yale rowing squad, led by captain Stillman Rockefeller, who would go on to head The First National City Bank of New York (later CitiBank) for 17 years. In the boat with him was Benjamin Spock, who would later become a well-known expert on child-care).

• In gymnastics, 24 men scored a perfect 10. Twenty-three of them scored it in the now discontinued event of rope climbing.

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Georgetown played a large role in these games, sending five Hoyas to compete in Paris, its most ever at one Olympics in the sport of track & field. The Hoya contingent that year : Emerson Norton (decathlon), Jimmy Connolly (3,000m team race), James Burgess (4x400m relay), William Dowding (long jump), and Bob LeGendre '22 (pentathlon). While Norton captured a silver medal, it is the story of Bob LeGendre that merits reciting here.

Robert Lucien LeGendre arrived on the Hilltop from Lewiston, Maine in the fall of 1918. The youngest of 13 children, he was an athletic prodigy, playing scholastic football, basketball and baseball. His blazing speed and size on the gridiron soon caught the eye of GU coach John O’Reilly, who quickly put him on the track team. With his natural athleticism, Bob began to compete in the pentathlon, a multi-event contest that included the long jump, javelin, 200 meter run, discus, and the 1500 meter run.

Following his freshman year, Bob earned a spot on the U.S. team competing at the Inter-Allied Games in Paris, where he captured the gold medal in the pentathlon. One year later, he tied for third place in the pentathlon at the Olympic Games in Antwerp. He lost the tie-breaker for the bronze through a secondary point scoring system.

By the time he graduated from Georgetown, Bob was crowned national pentathlon champion three times and widely acknowledged to be the most outstanding athlete ever to wear the blue and gray. He was not finished with world-class competition though.

In the 1924 Olympics, Bob shattered the world record in the long jump (25’ 5.5”). However, since the jump was part of the pentathlon competition, his effort contributed to winning a bronze medal in the pentathlon and did not earn him the gold. Because he had not competed in the long jump at the U.S. trials, Bob was not eligible to jump in that individual event. As it turned out, his world record jump ended up exceeding DeHart Hubbard’s gold medal-winning mark in the individual long jump event by more than one foot.

Blessed with movie star good looks and a magnificent physique, Bob actually signed a Hollywood contract, but never pursued an acting career. Instead, he earned a second degree from Georgetown in dentistry and served as an officer in the dental corps of the U.S. Navy. Sadly, Bob succumbed to bronchial pneumonia in 1931 at age 34.

We are left to wonder forever, "What if?" Still, what he achieved during his brief life brought great honor and glory to his family, his Alma Mater and his country.

Hoya, Hoya Saxa!
Hoya, Hoya Georgetown!
Hoya LeGendre! LeGendre! LeGendre!