The Summer Games in Stockholm became the very last Olympics in which the Russian Empire participated. Next time, already like the Soviet Union, athletes would be forty years later!
The history of the Olympic movement in the Russian Empire is quite short and predictably ends with the dissolution of the empire itself. The country had only competed in three Olympic Games. After skipping the very first games in modern history in Athens, 1900, Russia participated for the first time in the other games in Paris.
Then the Russian athletes joined the 1908 Games in London, where figure skater Nikolai Panin won Russia his very first and only Olympic medal.
Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin, the first person from Russia to win a gold medal for the Olympics (pictured at the 1908 London Games)
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And finally, Russia participated in the Stockholm Games in 1912, which turned out to be its very last. Here are some pictures of Team Russia at the Olympics that happened 110 years ago.
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On July 6, 1912, the opening ceremony was held at Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium, which was built especially for the Games. The Swedish royal family participated in the event and saw all national teams marching through the stadium.
Russian athletes at the opening ceremony
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The Russian team included 181 male athletes, many of whom originally came from St. Petersburg. Petersburg, as well as Estonia and the Baltic Sea region of Livonia, then part of the Russian Empire. At the same time, Finland, which is also part of Russia, participated separately in the Games.
The inauguration ceremony
Library of Congress
The team was led by the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, cousin of Nicholas II. The prince himself participated in riding competitions at the games, both individual and team jumping. (Later he would be notorious for being a co-conspirator in The assassination of Grigory Rasputin).
Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich of Russia, circa 1911
Library of Congress
Team Russia did not perform very well at the Games and won only five silver and bronze medals, but not a single gold. By the way, the masters of figure skating at the London Games, Nikolai Panin, participated as a shooter this time and took only an 8th place.
The Estonian rower Mart Kuusik took bronze in a singles scull, the Latvian sports shooter Haralds Blaus won bronze in trap shooting (he also competed in the games as a track runner). In addition, he won a bronze medal by a group of seven Russian sailors (Esper Beloselsky, Ernest Brasche, Karl Lindholm, Nikolay Pushnitsky, Aleksandr Rodionov, Iosif Shomaker and Philipp Strauch). They came third in sailing on a ten meter long yacht and only released to Sweden and Finland.
A silver medal was also won by a team of four Russian athletes (Amos Kash, Nikolai Melnitsky, Grigori Panteleimonov and Pavel Voyloshnikov) for 30-meter rapid-fire pistol shooting.
The Russian football team (football) (pictured below) ended up in 6th place and finished the competition after losing 2: 1 against Finland in the quarterfinals. After that, in the so-called “consolation tournament”, the Russian football team Russia suffered its worst defeat ever in history and lost 0:16 against Germany.
The Russian football team
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But an episode of Team Russia at the 1912 Olympics was really worth it! An Estonian wrestler named Martin Klein won a silver medal after enduring the longest wrestling match ever recorded. He fought against the reigning world champion, Finnish Alfred Asikainen, for a total of 11 hours and 40 minutes!
Martin Klein (in white suit) against Alfred Asikainen
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After such an exhausting performance, he could not compete well the next day and lost the potential gold. Unlike other athletes in the Russian Empire, he retained his Olympic history: in 1919 he became a wrestling coach and prepared Estonian wrestlers for the 1920 Olympics.
The poor performance of the Russian athletes did not satisfy Prince Dmitry and he had planned to hold annual national competitions to prepare for future Olympic Games … And two internal Russian Olympic Games were held the following two years, in 1913 in Kyiv and in 1914 in Riga, both part of the Russian Empire then.
Grand Duke Dmitry emigrated from Russia after the 1917 revolution. Pictured right at the Polo de Beyris Coupe Carlton competition on August 5, 1928.
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Then came the First World War, which hampered all sporting events. The next Olympic Games were held in Antwerp in 1920, but Russia, captured in the Revolution and the Civil War, was not invited because the world did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks. The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 and in turn decided not to participate in the “capitalist” sports competitions and arranged its own “Spartakiade” for international workers and communists. The first time the Soviet Union participated in the Olympic Games was after World War II – in 1952, Soviet athletes went to the Helsinki Games.
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Source: sn.dk