My Dad at the 1948 London Olympics - Day 14

If you have been reading "My Dad at the 1948 Olympics" consecutively, you will recall, a couple of days ago I mentioned how there was something in common with the Boxing Team and the Swimming Team  in the 1948 London Olympics .... other than being photographed a lot together in the case with my Dad's photos of the Canadian Olympic Team!  

As we know, these were known as the Austerity Games.  No new venues were built in London in 1948 to house any of the Olympic games or the Olympic athletes as money was extremely tight following World War II.  The economy was not in good shape and food was still being rationed for these first Olympic games to be held after a twelve year hiatus due to the war.

Today, on this day, in 1948, the Boxing event took place, in the Wembley Empire Pool and I mean "IN" the pool!   I find this absolutely remarkable!!!   Had there not been so many boxers participating, all of the boxing events were to take place in the Empire Pool during this second week of the London 1948 Olympics after all of the swimming pool events had concluded during the first week.  So the swimmers and the boxers shared the same sports venue.  A floating Boxing Ring was constructed and it sat in the swimming pool.  They did not even have a chance to drain the pool prior to running the Boxing events such as the ones held sixty-four years ago today.

The floating boxing ring in the pool.

Canada's Boxer Armand Savoie is shown competing against Iran's Jamshid Fani.  As the newspaper article notes (below), Savoie won his match.   The article also mentions his other team mates, including my Dad, lost to judge's decisions on the previous Saturday (Blog Day 12).

Dad has an extensive scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings from his own entire boxing career.  However, he was missing news paper coverage while away in London for the Olympic games.  I was able to retrieve this one, along with a few others from the Quebec Archive Library.  They were very helpful.

This is Dad's Official Programme from this day's Boxing event, although he is no longer a competitor at this point.  I did notice that the only notes Dad made on the Bantamweight page, which was his weight class, was keeping track of J.W. Carruther's match against Hungary's T. Csik.  Carruthers was the boxer Dad fought two days ago (in the 1948 games as discussed in Blog 12) and Carruthers was the one who moved onto this round held on this day in 1948.  According to Dad's notes, Hungary won over Australia.  A photograph of the medal presentation in the pool/boxing area follows.

This is the Bantamweight Medal Presentation at the Pool.  Hungary took Gold; Italy took Silver; and Puerto Rico won Bronze.

Dad did, however, take notes of the Lightweight Division on this day as you can see in the following photo.

This next photo shows the same pool being used for the Olympic swimming events the previous week.  This was why a new venue had to be found quickly when they realized they needed to schedule an additional boxing event prior to August 9th.  See Blog 12 which describes what happened.  It had always been planned that Swimming would use Wembley's Empire Pool in Week 1 and then Boxing would use the pool in Week 2.

Here is a photograph of the U.S. Divers.   3 of the 4 ladies below achieved medals.

U.S. Divers Vicki Draves (2 Gold Medals); Zoe Olsen-Jensen (Silver Medalist); Juno Stover-Irwin; and, Patricia Elsener (Bronze).

U.S. Springboard dive winners:  Zoe Ann Olson (left); Vicki Manolo Draves (centre); and Patty Elsener (right) with their Olympic medals.

Dad has an autographed photograph of the double gold medalist, Vicki Graves (above), where she has signed the front of the photograph to him,  "Best Wishes from Mrs. Vicki Draves.  U.S.A."