On Monday November 22, the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) – managers of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) – join the Australian Olympic Committee to celebrate the 65-year anniversary of the 1956 Summer Olympic Games held in Melbourne.
The Games of the XVI Olympiad were the first Games to be staged in the Southern Hemisphere and Oceania, and the first to be held outside of Europe and North America.Australia enjoyed a successful Games with 13 Gold medals contributing to an overall medal haul of 35, and placing them third on the Medal count.
To celebrate the 65th anniversary of one of the most significant modern Summer Olympics, we take a look at top 10 moments of the Games that took place at the centerpiece venue of the 1956 Games – the MCG.
10. India make it six in a row in Field Hockey
The MCG was host not only to the track and field athletics program, but also the Finals for the Men’s Field hockey and Football events.The Indian national hockey team had a strangle hold on the Olympic tournaments, entering the 1956 Games having claimed the Gold medal in five straight games where field hockey had featured as an Olympic event, dating back to the Amsterdam Games in 1928.
With the group stage and qualification matches taking place on the playing fields in Olympic Park, India took all their opponents before them, defeating Afghanistan (14-0), the United States (16-0) and Singapore (6-0) in the group stage. They accounted for Germany 1-0 in semi-final, before defeating Pakistan 1-0 to claim the Gold medal.
The Final against Pakistan set the wheels in motion for one of the greatest rivalries in modern sport, let alone field hockey. The two nations have met each other 175 times, including in nine major tournament finals, which has seen Pakistan win seven Gold medals to India’s two – including the 1956 Olympics!
9. All eyes on Melbourne at the Opening Ceremony
On November 22, 1956, Melbourne took centre stage as the rest of the world looked on, with the 1956 Games were the first Summer Olympics to broadcast events live on television. At 3pm the day before the opening ceremony, people began to line up outside the MCG gates.The MCG had been largely rebuilt for the Games, including construction of the Olympic Stand, and on the day itself 103,000 people filled it to capacity.
With the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in attendance to open the games, the honour of carrying the Olympic Torch and lighting the cauldron to complete the formalities, was handed to distance runner, Ron Clarke.
It wouldn’t be smooth sailing for Clarke as he made his way through the stadium, when the torch spluttered and sparked, showering Clarke with hot magnesium and burned holes in his shirt. When he dipped the torch into the cauldron it burst into flame singeing him further.
In the centre of the ground, John Landy, the fastest miler in the world, took the Olympic oath and sculler Merv Wood carried the Australian flag.
8. Mimoun runs first Marathon, wins first Marathon
Alain Mimoun of France was not expected to feature prominently when he lined up on the start line of the Marathon event at the 1956 Olympic Games, on the athletics track of the MCG.Mainly for the reason that this was to be the first Marathon that Mimoun had ever run!
Conditions for the ultimate endurance event of the athletics program couldn’t have been less favourable, with temperatures hovering around 38-degrees Celsius in the shade. Yet the Frenchman had been buoyed by a telegram from his wife, Germaine, back in France telling him of the birth of their first child the previous night, a daughter called Olympe.
From the 25km-mark of the race, Mimoun had opened up a 50-second gap and was never headed. He would re-enter the MCG – in front of 110,000 fans – and cross the finish line before any other runner. His time of an even two hours and 25 minutes, was one minute and 32 seconds ahead of runner-up Franjo Mihalić of Yugoslavia and Croatia.
The Marathon Gold was a breakthrough for Mimoun, who had claimed Silver medals in the 10,000m at the 1948 London Games, as well as the 5,000m and 10,000m events at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Mimoun returned to the MCG in 2006 to join in the 50-year celebrations of the 1956 Games.
7. Charlie Dumas holds off Chilla Porta to claim high jump Olympic Record
There was a collective jitter among the MCG crowd on November 23 as 28 competitors from 19 nations readied themselves for the high jump event of the 1956 Games.Just five months earlier, a 19-year-old Compton Junior College freshman named Charlie Dumas, with slow, confident strides, cleared the seven-foot barrier (2.15m) for the first time in history. It was akin at the time to breaking the four-minute mile – a human had never jumped higher.
But the home crowd had reason to believe with Charles Michael “Chilla” Porter, the Australian national champion, in medal contention.
In front of 60,000 fans and with the event lasting five hours, as dusk rose, only three competitors remained – Dumas, Porter and Igor Kashkarov of the USSR.
Dumas would miss at 2.03m before clearing 2.08m, alongside the Australian and Soviet athlete, who had now each claimed the-then Olympic Record. Kashkarov would then bow out attempting 2.10m, while Dumas cleared it on his second attempt and Porter on his final attempt.
Attempting 2.12m, it came down to the final attempt – the American cleared it, the Australian did not, consigning both athletes to their solitary Olympic Medals for their careers.
6. Delany claims Ireland’s sole track Gold medal
In the lead-up to the 1956 Games, despite Ronnie Delany becoming the fourth man to break the four-minute mile, he was no certainty to make the Irish team for the Games.He would scrape qualification for the 1,500m Final, but was considered an also-ran as he lined up on the start line. All eyes instead were on raging home favourite, John Landy – who just two years earlier had feature in ‘The Miracle Mile’ with Roger Bannister at 1954 British and Commonwealth Games.
The Dublin-raised athlete kept close to Landy for the first three laps of the race, with the MCG crowd willing Landy to drop the hammer and claim the expected Gold medal.
Instead, it was Delany who ran a crushing final sprint to win the race in a then Olympic Record of 3.41.49 and becomes Ireland’s first Olympic Gold medalist in athletics since 1932. Landy would claim the Bronze, behind Silver medalist, Klaus Richtzenhain of Germany.
He remained Ireland’s sole Olympic medalist until Michael Carruth won the Gold in boxing at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Delany, however, remains to be his country’s last Gold medalist in track and field.
5. Kuts conquers the world with a middle-distance double
Middle-distance running in Europe was at a fever-pitch at the beginning of the 1950s, when a World War II Navy sniper-turned-runner, Vladimir Kuts burst onto the scene in 1954.In the lead-up to the 1956 Games, Kuts had possessed the world record for the 5,000m event three times, and the 10,000m event on one occasion. On two occasions, when Kuts had lost the 5,000m world record time, he set about claiming the record back for himself within ten days.
Representing the Soviet Union, Kuts was a red-hot favourite for both iterations at the upper echelon of grueling middle-distances – and he did not disappoint.
The 10,000m came first. With Gordon Pirie of Great Britain, Kuts’ chief opponent, the Soviet athlete broke his spirits with four laps to go.
The 5,000m was perhaps even more remarkable. Kuts – like the 10,000m event – led from start to finish. He rounded the bend in front of the MCG’s Northern Stand, with the broadcast camera following him with a wide-shot in the hope of seeing his nearest rival. As Kuts crossed the finish line, there were no rivals to be seen – he had won by 11 seconds, the second-placed competitor had not yet entered the ‘straight’.
The winning margin remains the largest-ever for the 5,000m event in Olympic history.
4. Bobby Morrow takes the sprinting treble
Bobby Morrow may not have be known to the world when he lined up for the first heats events on November 23, 1956. By November 30, 1956 – the American was most definitely known to the world.The dual 100-yard national champion, firstly set the athletics track of the MCG alight, finishing a clear two metres ahead of countryman, Thane Baker, and Australian Hec Hogan, to claim Gold in 100m.
With a heavily-strapped thigh, Morrow then repeated the feat of a Gold medal in the 200m event, running 20.6sec to equal his own World Record and set a new Olympic Record.
Only his compatriot Jesse Owens had won two Gold medals at the same Olympics meet, when Owens claimed the 100m-200m double in 1936. But Morrow had his eye on joining his hero for a seat at a far greater table.
Joined by Ira Murchison, Leamon King and Baker, Morrow anchored the 4x100m to leave the Soviet Union team in his wake. The time of 39.95 seconds broke the 1936 World Record that Owens and his colleagues had set 20 years earlier.
Morrow became the only Olympic runner to win the two sprints and the relay since Owens (who also won a fourth medal, in the long jump, in 1936). Only Carl Lewis, in 1984, and Usain Bolt, in 2012 and 2016, have equaled that accomplishment.
3. Shirley confirms legend status with world record in Olympic swansong
At the age of 31 and with a three-year old son, Shirley Strickland had been advised by her coach to retire. Again.And again, she ignored the suggestions.
Fresh off a Gold and a World Record in the 80m Hurdles at the Helsinki Games in 1952 and a Gold and World Record in the 100m at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw in 1955, Strickland (had? Missing word) her eyes on multiple medals when the 1956 Games in Melbourne rolled around.
Her first taste of the Melbourne 1956 was disappointment when she was run out of the heats in the 100m. She would make amends by defending her title in the 80 metres hurdles again in Olympic record time, becoming Australia’s first track and field back-to-back Gold medalist.
More Gold would arrive in the 4x100m event when she took home Gold with Betty Cuthbert, Norma Croker and Fleur Mellor.
It would bring the curtain down on a remarkable career as she climbed to top of the podium to the acclaim of the MCG crowd. Strickland individually won seven Olympic medals – three Gold, one Silver and three Bronze – six national titles, set three individual world records, and was a member of six world record-breaking relay teams.
In November 2004, Strickland whose name changed to De La Hunty when she got married, was immortalized as a Bronze statue outside of Gate 3 of the MCG. Inside the Australian Sports Museum at the MCG, Strickland’s childhood trophies are featured inside the Sport Australia Hall of Fame Gallery.
2. John Wing creates an Olympic tradition at the Closing Ceremony
In the lead-up to the Games, international tensions were at all-time high: four countries boycotted the Olympics in response to the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union’s presence saw the Dutch, Spanish and Swiss also boycott the Olympiad, China’s distaste at Taiwan’s participation also caused them to miss the Games. Despite the infamous Hungary-Soviet Union water polo match, the “Friendly Games” were about to introduce a new tradition.Just days before the closing ceremony of the 1956 Summer Olympics at Melbourne, the International Olympic Committee received an anonymous letter, later revealed to be penned by Australian-Chinese teenager John Wing. The young man encouraged the then-IOC to instruct the athletes to not march segregated into nations, but walk freely as one, mingled together, and wave to the public during the closing ceremonies.
In Wing’s letter, he pressed: “During the Games there will be only one nation. War, politics and nationalities will be forgotten. What more could anybody want if the world could be made one nation.”
It was a suggestion that would bring all the athletes together as a symbol of global unity; the proposal was adopted, and ever since Olympians have entered Closing Ceremonies as one unified group. Wing’s idea has been an enduring legacy of the Melbourne Olympic Games.
Soon after the Games, the President of the Organising Committee arranged for Wing to be presented an official commemorative medal for the 1956 Games. These are struck in bronze and presented to all the athletes and their support staff, event officials, and certain volunteers involved in planning and managing the games.
When the intermingled athletes marched into the stadium in Melbourne for the closing ceremony, a huge sign on the scoreboard above them declared: "The 1956 Olympic race is run. May all who have been present go forth to their homelands and may the Olympic spirit go with them."
1. Betty Cuthbert becomes the “Golden Girl”
It’s one of the most iconic photographs in Australian sport.Just days earlier, the 18-year-old from Sydney set the World Record in the 200m in the heats, before then lining up in the Final of the 100m Final that was shockingly without Australian world record holder, Shirley Strickland.
At the top of the straight, Cuthbert took off with the gun, holding off her opponents and crossing the line, mouth agape with an expression of physical anguish having pushed her body to run the fastest she possibly could.
The result: an 11.4 seconds personal best and her first Gold medal. As the big favourite in the 200m event, she lived up to the expectations to claim another Gold medal.
The Australian media were quick to attach the tag that never left the aura of Cuthbert, she was Australia’s “Golden Girl”.
She would establish her pre-eminence in running the anchor leg of the victorious 4x100-metre relay team and became Australia's first triple Gold medallist, achieving the feat just ahead of Murray Rose at the same Olympics.
Injury and retirement in 1960, a comeback in 1963 and a Gold medal in the inaugural 400m event at the 1964 Tokyo Games only confirmed Cuthbert’s Legend. At the MCG, she is honoured with a bronze statue in Yarra Park, unveiled in 2003 – the first statue erected of an Australian-born woman. Cuthbert’s medals from the 1956 Olympic Games are also featured inside the Australian Sports Museum.
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