A Playground for the Posh Wales at the Olympics

The Olympic Games come on a grand scale, so vast only the biggest

need apply. London! Olympic budgets are calculated by the billion, so

too the television audience. This is sport subjected to huge

pressures, to protest, global in size. Yet the massive is only a

compilation of individuals each with a tale. This is the story of a

small land and our part in the biggest show on earth. Wales at the

Olympics. It's one of the oddities of the

London Games that they start here at the Millennium Stadium in

Cardiff on July 25. It's on obvious Welsh connect but it maibgdz the

general point about the Olympics, the first action, women's football,

Great Britain against New Zealand, then Cameroon against Brazil. Then

men's football. Sport for all regardless of gender, colour or

background. It wasn't always like. That the Olympics were designed for

well to do white men from polite society, men from a castle in North

Wales. A Welsh Gold Medallist amateur to his very core or nearly.

And in this sport, Wales's greatest Olympian ever was not soure at all

and he was from Cardiff docks. Two contrasting tales of winners and

the Welshman who didn't win, didn't become part of this legend. The

cruelty of the amateur code and how that code has evolved to keep a

modern Welshman very much in contention for a Gold Medal. Tom

James at the Games of today just like at the last Games. Gold Medal,

Great Britain, wonderfully done! First, organising the sports of

yesterday. In the 1850s a doctor in rural Shropshire, William Penny

Brookes promoted sport for the good of all. His Wenlock Games are

viewed fondly as a building block of the modern Olympics. There were

spin-off Games in Wales. In 1865 in Llandudno. And a rival Goran ever

governing body was created by the three As. Sports were given

unifying sets of rules, edging them towards international

multidisciplined competition. But as they advanced by the rule book,

sport shrank in the sense of being open to all, a sort of

protectionism had crept in. The spirit of fair play could be safe

guarded only by a certain class. Sports club membership at the end

of the 19th century was almost exclusively for people who could

vote, in other words, people who had property. And people who were

from other classes were very much frowned upon. Baron Pierre de

Coubertin the founding father of the modern Olympics. The much

travelled French nobleman drew on many sources for the Athens Games.

But one sport in particular inspired him. De Coubertin had been

to Wenlock and taken note of the Olympian Games. On the river bank

he found sport set against the back drop of a genteel English garden

party, exactly what he was looking forment during his fact-finding

tour, De Coubertin came to watch the racing here at Henley-on-Thames.

There's been a regatta here since 1839. We could still be in 1839. He

was so impressed with the stewards who ran the regatta, he made them

the model of the International Olympic Committee. There was a code

of conduct here, amateurism was the way, sport through love, not money.

Money was a recipe for cheating, professionalism was a dirty word

and winning wasn't everything. It meant you could only go to the new

Olympic Games if you could afford the time, if you didn't take sport

too seriously. Tales are told of people going on their yachts, on

their boats independently and turning up, sometimes not even

knowing that there was a Games on and then deciding to sign up and

have a go. Then perhaps even come ago way with medals. However scen

tick, the Games grew in popularity. 12 years after Athens they came to

London with one favourite sport going up the Thames, back to the

source of Olympic inspiration, Henley. And it was here that one of

Wales' first gold medals was won by a man raised in a castle in harden

in Flintshire North Wales. Albert Gladstone was the son of a vicar

who went to Eton and then Christ Church Oxford, grand enough. But

the tale grows grander. Sir Albert Gladstone. Fifth barren et,

grandson of William Gladstone, fourth time Prime Minister and one

of the giants of the Victorian age. The castle is still in the

Gladstone family. The four-time Prime Minister famously chopped

down trees for exercise. The rest of the family headed for the river,

including Sir Albert's nephew, Sir William. Do you think there's

something about rowing which seized your family at the turn of the

century? I don't know what it was. They were certainly quite a rowing

dynasty. They went to a house at Eton where rowing was very popular.

That's where the success of my uncle Albert and my father began.

If fair play was everything, sport was still a serious business. De

Coubertin had witnessed France's humiliation in the Franco Prussian

war and saw sport for a vehicle for national self-improvement and

international cooperation. Meaty stuff. The whole Olympic ideal was

based on muscular Christianity. not quite sure you're being fair to

say that. I mean, it wasn't an imperialistic kind of regime. I

think it was part of the Victorian ideal of sportsmanship, the amateur

spirit, never cheating or trying to bend the rules or anything like

that. Never going in for a competition just to win a cup.

Indeed the Leander crews never practised for more than three weeks.

They were immensely fit men. They came together three weeks before

the regatta, because it was thought thating in more than that would

stink of professionalism. And at the pinkest and poshest of all

rowing clubs that wouldn't do. Leander, Albert's club, and the

Leander eight would be Britain's blue-riband crew at the Olympics.

They were known as the old man's eight, there any affection ended.

All that idealism was swamped by a good old fashioned grudge match

with this lot, as the bad guys. Belgian crew came over in 1906 and

1907. They described them as beer swilling, significant ar smoking

Belgians with long hair. They won. They beat the cream of the best

clubs in London and they didn't like it at all. The Olympics were

going to come up in 1908. It was felt something must be done.

mind set changed. They were determined that come the Olympics

that they would get their revenge and they wouldn't allow the honour

of England and Great Britain to sail down the river. So, for the

first time ever, a British rowing crew got together early in the year,

that means April, in fact, and trained right through the summer.

The dastardly practice paid off. The romantic idea of gentlemanly

amateurism was being stretched. There ways Gold Medal to celebrate

for Leander, Great Britain, uncle Albert and Wales before a normal

service of reserve was resumed. Olympics was the great moment.

There's no doubt about that. But he was incredibly modest and so,

anything you got out of him about his rowing success had to be

squeezed out of him. Sir Albert with eight fellow rowers at Eton,

all nine went off to serve in the First World War, only three

returned alive. Albert Gladstone among them, having served with

distinction with the Gurkhas. He went on to become a director of the

Bank of England. Would anything, including the Olympics, ever be the

same after First World War? When it came to the ever so slightly

strange world of rowing, it appeared it wo. -- would. In the

1920s another promising rower appeared Jumbo Edwards, known as

Jumbo. His father was the Welsh speaking vicar of west cot Barton.

Jumbo went to Westminster school and here like Albert Gladstone to

Christ Church Oxford. They were, however, very different characters.

Jumbo and this hallowed setting did not go together well. Jumbo soon

had to leave Oxford. His son David tries to explain why. We've never

been quite sure why he left. Certainly he didn't do very much

work. I think maybe it was suggested to him that it was best

if he went down until he decided to do a bit more. The second thing was

his rowing. He won an Oxford blue in his first year but collapsed

during the boat race of 1926. You could be forgiven for not working

hard at Oxford, but not rowing hard? They were neck and neck at

the time. Cambridge went on to win by a good distance. There was hell

to pay. They called him a baby. They wouldn't have him back in the

boat. He was villified. He actually went off to see the doctors and

they checked him over and found he had a bit of a heart default and

shouldn't really have been rowing. Jumbo sought solace, as you do with

a dodgy ticker, in flying. Flying brought him back to Oxford.

wanted to do more flying, so he found that if he got a degree, he

could join the RAF on a university commission. So he decided he'd come

back here again. Take two! The second time round he said he wasn't

going to row, except he did, of course and was selected in the

Coxless pair for the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. He won gold and on

the same day, after one of the Coxless four fell ill, he stepped

in and won a second gold. The lives of the sons of Welsh vicars were

parallel again. Now, like Sir Albert Gladstone, Jumbo Edwards

went off to war, as a pilot in Bomber Command in the Second World

War. Being Jumbo he was soon in trouble. He had an incredible

moment. He was flying a bomber, coming back from a raid. He ditched

off the coast of Cornwall. The rest of the crew died. But his sport

came to save his life, because in an inflatible dinghy he rowed

through a minefield and got to safety and survived the whole

incident. Quite some man. After the war Jumbo took up coaching and did

it his way. He coached Oxford, Great Britain and he coached his

sons for Wales at the Commonwealth Games. He always complained because

I didn't like wearing socks in the boat and because he thought my hair

was too long. How can you go fast if you have got hair that long?

When I was looking at some photos recently, I came across a picture

of the 1932 Olympic four and Jumbo is in what appears to be either

Oxford or Christ Church kit without From the first half of the 21st

century to the war heroes, public school, Oxford and the military,

the classes that safeguarded the spirit of sport. Or where they?

Until Sir Steve Redgrave one at five consecutive Olympics,

Britain's most successful was a water polo player, summer, Paolo

Randelovic, born to working-class immigrant parents here. In the

Docklands of Cardiff. What is interesting about his background

days it is reflective of Cardiff at the turn of the 20th century, this

cultural melting-pot and people from all over the world coming to

Cardiff, Croatian father, Irish mother. These people, off the back

from working on the docks and it was a very similar environment.

Most people would know who Jim Driscoll is these days and not so

many, Paolo Randelovic. Thanks to an 1878 amendment to the 1846 Baths

and Washhouses Act, local authorities were now encouraged to

build public swimming pools. It might have saved our greatest

Olympian's life. I started swimming and I was quite a young boy, at the

age of five, but I could nuts when because I try to swim in the card

of canals before the corporation plans were built and I was fairly

drowned twice and my mother said, they have built the bath houses,

but the child in and he learnt to swim. A government was encouraging

employers to create leisure opportunities for their staff and

you find a lot of swimming-pools being built around the South Wales

valleys at that time. Paulo became the youngest ever player in the

Wales water polo team. He won the first-ever Olympic gold in the

water pool and two years later, the second, the freestyle in the

swimming and then he was poached by Weston-super-Mare, whose town

council wanted to put the resort on the sporting map.. Paulo was set up

in the swimming pool and set up with a pub to run. Why did they

have the greatest swimming and water polo talent in the country?

Was a local authority may be seen the chance to promote the seafront

and appeared by having a good team? My theory was that he was head

hunted. Their rugby players being brought into the town and football

players and water polo players, anything weather was a team sport

that could raise the name of the town. This was straining against

the amateurism so dear to the Olympics and Paulo was also testing

any notion of fair play. Paolo tested any notion of fair play.

They used to get bigger attendances for the water polo matches and he

was a blood sport. He went to see some of the violence as much as the

goals and he was never shy. reputation spread far and wide so

we would have been a marked man. Very hard summer, physical man, he

taught them to play dirty. That is a well-known fact. And as the

landlord of the Imperial Hotel, Paulo's approach was the same. Take

no nonsense. There are stories of how he used to rule with an iron

rod, especially when the ferry used to come into the old peer and of

course the Imperial was one of first stops. It is alleged that

when they came in to cause trouble, he would shut the doors and what

sort them out single-handedly. Paulo went on to win a water polo

gold at the 1912 Stockholm Games and by scoring the winning goal in

the dying seconds against host nation Belgium, another in Antwerp

in 1920 Four golds in total. It could have been more had it not

been for the First World War. He competed in Paris in 1924 and

Amsterdam when he was 42 in 1928. A career worth boasting about.

not pulling my Trombert because you have to say what you can do. --

blowing my trumpet. I am and the only world in the day, the only

human being in the world that ever represented in six Olympic Games.

That stands up to all of the world, and it is proved that I had six

Olympics. That is a world record and there is another record, I am

the only man in the world in the sprint and the long distance to

have the championship that also stands. Nobody has ever won the

sprint and the long distance. I did that for Wales. He was a great

swimmer who was sunk. He is now forgotten among at polo players of

a certain generation. From 1960 onwards. They could not even tell

you who he is. And yet again, I have friends in Greece who know all

about him and collect his photographs. And here he is again,

on a postage stamp in Guyana. completely forgotten, after all.

Perhaps our greatness Olympian was allowed to slide from memory

because he challenged the sporting system of his time. Privilege was a

gateway to the Olympics for Albert Gladstone and Jumbo Edwards. Not

for Paulo Radmilovic. If he wasn't openly professional, he wasn't

strictly amateur either. Amateurism was one of the great pillars of the

Olympics and could be flexible. Paolo Rudman image, talent-spotted

and Cardiff and set up for life through water polo and on the other

said the Bristol Channel. Amateurism could be a rigid Keller.

Will betide anybody in athletics he broke the code, which brings us to

the Wash and denied a place in one of the great epic stories of the

Olympics. The runner who did not make it into Chariots of Fire.

Cecil Redvers Griffiths. CR Griffiths, born in England, but

from an early age raised in Neath. Four years before the famous Paris

Games of 1924, he ran at the Antwerp Games in the 4 x 400 metres

relay and won gold. A medal in safe keeping with his granddaughter.

This is the Cecil griffons living museum. It is wonderful to say that

my grandfather was part of the gold medal-winning team and he came

first and this is the original 1920 grand medal. You will see all the

other competitors him. If you want to read that... It is a wonderful

list of people. Guy Butler, Robert Lindsay and two Welsh names. CR

Griffiths and John Ainsworth Davies from Aberystwyth, who would leave

athletics to concentrate on his career in medicine. CR did not stop

running. He was barely 20 at the Antwerp Games and now he grew

stronger and faster. In all, he would win ten titles in official

Welsh Championships. But there was also an unofficial side to racing,

races open to all, and for the winner a cash prize. At the Paris

Games of 1924 it was to be a theme among the British that to have a

coach was unsporting. Professional. What would they think if they

discovered one of their own had once taken money? Antwerp is out of

the way, we enter the second chapter, which is for all the wrong

reasons still a stunning story. What happened? He was going to the

1924 Olympics and was on the way with all those fantastic races and

the Olympics came and he did not get there, he was on the boat and

had his blazer and everything ready. And then it was deemed that in his

youth, somewhere along the line, he had been paid professionally. He

was banned from the 1924 Olympics. What excites a poignant is that he

missed the Games, and it was legendary? Chariots of fire.

Oscar winning film celebrated Harold Abrahams, winner of the 100

metres. And Scotsman Eric Goodall, who won the 400 because. Which --

would Cecil gryphons have been part of this, his favourite distance?

One form, he surely would have. won the British have file and an 25

he won the have file. In 1924, he was at his peak, his times would

indicate he would have won a medal. Amateurism said that Harold

Abrahams was devised by the aristocracy in 1860 is to exclude

undesirables from competitions they were organising. There was no place

in this world for a railway worker from Neath. Such a shame. He has

come under the river, he really has. We are trying to get that rectified.

They eventually, the Olympics would change and open the doors.

Amateurism is now seen as a quaint relic of the past, unimaginable for

today's elite competitors. It is sometimes hard to see any

connection between Olympians past and present. Except they still do

the same thing. Rowers still row, going fast backwards as they've

always done. It's just that for Welshman Tom James, the notion of

not training too hard has been thrown overboard. This is what you

go through to earn a place in the men's four for London 2012. But as

part of this space-age preparation, they still come to the Edwardian

tea party on the banks of the Thames at Henley and come down the

course once rowed by Sir Albert Gladstone. The rowing life, has it

changed at all? The people who did this 150 years ago, where they

still do that again? I would hope that they would see rolling in

pretty much the same light, it is the same sport. They race in the

same way, there is a mechanical animals -- mechanical element and

things have moved on. They did not have carbon fibre. Obviously, the

difference between amateur and professional is one thing that

would have changed. There was something of the Corinthian spirit,

winning was not that important I'm going pot hunting was frowned upon?

He won what you could. Presumably you don't feel that today? Well, I

think deep down, underneath what you do, when you come to racing,

winning is what you try to do. That is the goal. But you have to be

realistic. We are competing and you don't know the outcome. And there

are so many reasons for doing this. I don't want to upset by

experiences of the Games. reason, as good as any, is to

defend his Olympic title. 5:30pm on the afternoon. This is a date that

will forever be etched on the soles and the lives of the screw. Great

Britain, and the number four. -- this crew. The graft goes on,

repetitively, repeatedly. And if this seems dull, the real thing is

not. Steve Williams, starting to move on... He pulls hard. Sir Steve

Redgrave. As he did eight years ago. Were ever you are, scream and shout.

We have to urge the British crew on words... The British are coming!

The British are coming! Australia hanging on. Great Britain are

eating into this. Eating it up, stroked by a stroke. The British

look good! We're going to get it! Gold! Great Britain! Absolutely

amazing! Expectation was high and the execution. Magnificent. What a

perfect day for the British coxless four. The defence of that Olympic

title will be staged at Eton, privileged home water. And some

guiding principles from the old days. To not take it so seriously,

to get caught up in the moment, too excited about the event, that is

when you get overwhelmed and you do not think straight, you don't think

in that competitive way, you don't focus on beating the opposition. It

was a confident race. Those elements have been overwhelmed.

They don't fit that mentality. If anything, I have learnt that I have

to enjoy London, enjoyed the experience but take it as it comes.

Of course there will be a lot of expectation but there is enough

pressure on myself from the country. That is a good thing. Nerves and

pressure are good if you learn to use it right. Use it your best

advantage. Thank you very much. This is one posh Welchman to

another! All these men, from the same pod. Brilliant row worse, and

posh. Some high-rolling has cut that link going. Does it matter?

Not if we're winning gold medals. The Auld sound the same when

sharing. Wales will be represented and will be cheering at London 2012.

Whatever the background, honours, riders and women going from lifting

Benz to raising the Olympic bar, which brings us to next week...

What and who forced the Olympics to change. How women rode straight

over the men who opposed their participation in the Games and kept

on riding. And running, even when they shouldn't. A in those days,

the foreman ran more than 400 metres, she was likely to drop down

dead. And the rise of the Paralympians. Out of the shadows

and into the record books as the greatest. No-one had a clue what

the Paralympics meant, there was no media coverage, it was hard to get

into the club and most people's attitude towards disabled people

doing sport was, what? And protest at the Games. Politics at the Games.

And how Welsh stars were there when terror came to the Games. Half a

dozen Palestinian terrorists have climbed over the fence. Dressed in

tracksuits, carrying bags with machine guns. There we were,