Melanie Daigle's Blog: My Dad at the 1948 London Olympics

The 1948 London Olympics were known as the Austerity Games. It was the first time in twelve years that there were any Olympic games as 1940 and 1944 were cancelled because of World War II. London had little time to prepare as host, and very little money. Food was still being rationed. No new buildings were constructed for these Games, and as noted previously, athletes were billeted in three different areas around London as opposed to having an Olympic Village built for them.

There was a larger than expected number of entries in Boxing which forced a re-scheduling of the first rounds for the Olympic Boxing competitions; now held in the first week and not the second. An extra day of boxing had to be scheduled to accommodate all of the 205 Boxing entries from 39 nations; more entries and participating nations than any other previous Olympic Games. This extra date and first round of competition was held on Saturday, August 7th, 1948 (and yes, I have intentionally planned this writing to coincide with today's date, August 7th, 2012). The venue to be used for the second week of the Olympic Games was not available for Boxing as of yet, so the Empress Hall Earl's Court was used on a last minute basis.

This is Dad's copy of the Official Programme ......

While I have not included every page, the Bantamweight page that shows my Dad's event, also shows how he personally kept track with notes made in his own handwriting. He was matched against the Australian, J.W. Carruthers who went on to the next event on Monday, August 9th.

Dad doesn't have any photos of himself at all in competition during the Olympics, so I thought I would include some action photos of him boxing to get a sense of how the action looks with Dad in the ring.