Igniting the Flame: America's First Olympic Team

by Jim Reisler, Dave Wottle (Foreword)

The story of the fourteen men – largely forgotten and never the subject of a full-length book – who created the American Olympic movement by winning eleven gold medals at the first modern Olympics in 1896 in Athens, timed for publication leading up to the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials and the 2012 Olympics in London.

Genres: Sports

296 pages, Hardcover

First published June 5, 2012

Reviews

[Arish Bheraiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Think about this. An American Olympian shows up for the an event, having never really tried it before,doesn't know what to expect; some accommodating Greek athletes demonstrate, and he wins!! Such was the state of turn-of-the-century international athletic competitions. And so it was that a small American team of 14 members traveled to Athens, having no idea what sort of competition they would face. Not much: They came home with 11 firsts to a country now ecstatic about the Games! Reisler weaves a handful of narrative threads: the story of the resurrection of the Olympic Games and the American team, and of the men who accomplished it; the stories of the individual American athletes and accounts of the events on their trip; and some whatever happened to those follow up. An American won the first medal James Connolly in the triple jump, almost on a lark, headed for Greece and took firsts, and another American attempted the marathon, which was saddley won by the Greeks, to tumultuous patriotic thunder. The American pole-vaulters passed on all the lower levels; when they were ready, all the other competitors were eliminated. Reisler writes well about the odd photograph of the sprinters lined up in a potpourri of poses is a howl—but he sets us up for an exciting 100-meter race, cuts away, then disappoints later with his account. Though the author sometimes writes like their agent.

[Jeff Koslowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a quick read based on limited sources. You will learn a lot about the spirit of the team. This was a fun read especially with the Olympics going on.

[Rich Watson]

The first US Olympic team at the inaugural modern games in Athens in 1896

[Emily Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: All of these ratings are on a 1-10 scale.

Quality of Writing: 6
Nothing spectacular here; fine word choice and sentence construction, but nothing to get excited about. The quotes were used well and did not feel forced as quotes sometimes can. Perhaps there were too many quotes for my usual tastes, but as I'm doing research on this topic, I found it helpful.

Pace: 3
Good point: this book is a fairly fast read. Bad points: all of the breaks in time, jumping around, etc. Usually it was explained and not horrifically confusing, but it is confusing for the first few paragraphs of each chapter, or each of the multiple breaks within that chapter.

Characters: 7
A fair amount of the characters described got their own chapter, in which I felt I got to know each of them well - especially true for the panoramic view of Baron de Coubertin, Connolly, and Sloane. However, if a character's chapter happened to be near the end of the book, I felt lacking until I read it, and some characters only got a paragraph. So no higher than a 7, I felt.

Enjoyability: 9
Without precedent, these games ran into more than their share of mismatches, miscommunications, and mishaps, which I enjoyed every minute of. It was also nice to revel in the glory of a legacy which I can still appreciate.

Insightfulness: 10
Who knew the first modern Olympians were such a ragtag bunch with a dream? I didn't. I knew absolutely nothing about the 1896 games - now I feel like an expert.

Ease of Reading: 8
Despite the time jumps, this is a fairly easy read. It explains anything that might be foreign to a non-sportsman like myself - such as the history of pole vaulting, or why the ground ought to be marked for the triple jump. I never found myself confused or frustrated.

Photos: 3
Sometimes, in the text, Reisler would describe a photograph in detail. So I would go look for it in the photo section, only to find, to my dismay, that it was not there. I would be quite disappointed. Also, the photos there were not what I was looking for in my research, so I found them unhelpful. Though I have no doubt they are probably the best extant pictures of an event that took place over 100 years ago.

All of this averages to a 6.5/10, which is a 3.3/5, hence the 3-star rating.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read. Before reading Igniting the Flame all I knew about the first modern Olympics, held in Greece in 1896, could be put in a nutshell: Baron Pierre de Courbertin was single handed in being responsible for spearheading the movement to revive the ancient Olympic Games and along the way wrote the Olympic creed that hasn't changed over time; the marathon was won by Spiridon Louis, a Greek shepherd? water-carrier? farmer? army officer? who ran barefoot and came out of nowhere to place first. That's it, that's all I could have told you about the games ... and after reading the book, those "facts" aren't necessarily going to hold up to scrutiny.

But what is factual is a book filled with stories leading up to the Olympics, the events themselves and the absolute excitement and pride of bringing the games back to Greece. Igniting the Flame covers the fourteen American athletes as well as athletes from thirteen other nations who made the world sit up and take notice during these ten days of glory.

[Patrick Macke · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing to think that sports in this nation was once mainly an amateur, collegiate affair, almost exclusively run at the club level ... you won't recognize the Olympic movement depicted here

[Jim Blessing · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting book about the 1896 Olympic games, first in the modern era.