The III Olympic Games were held from July 1 to October 23, 1904 in St. Louis, USA. 645 athletes took part in them (6 of them were women). 91 sets of awards were played in 17 sports. It is worth noting that there were only 53 athletes from Europe, since most of them could not come because of the duration and cost of the trip. For the first time, athletes from South America and Canada took part in the Olympic Games. There was only one competition for women - archery.
These Games, in fact, became purely American. This is because the US team numbered almost 10 times more athletes than the teams of the other participating countries combined. In addition, many disciplines were either artificial or cultivated only in the States. For example, stick fencing, long diving, rocky and lyacrosse games. In most of the competitions, only Americans took part. Of course, in this situation, the fact that the US national athletics team won 22 gold medals out of 24 possible will not surprise anyone.
As a result, the USA team took the first place in the unofficial team event with 236 medals (77-81-78). The closest "pursuer" was the German national team. German athletes won only 13 medals (4-4-5), while Cubans were third with 9 medals (4-2-3).
To increase the representativeness and mass character, the organizers of the Olympic Games in St. Louis tried to hold the so-called. anthropological days in which it was planned to hold competitions for "colored" athletes. However, the head of the IOC Pierre de Coubertin regarded this as a kind of racist antics. He stated that this undermines the fundamental provisions of the Olympic movement, pointing out the inadmissibility of such a thing in the future.
These Olympic Games, like the previous ones (Paris, 1900), were rich in various curiosities that were associated with a rather weak level of development of sports in the world. For example, the Japanese pole vaulter Savio Funi overcame the bar in a very original way, but his attempt was not counted. The point was that he put the pole in front of the bar vertically, and then quickly climbed on it and calmly jumped over the bar. It was explained to the athlete that a running jump is valid.
The Japanese, in his next attempt, slowly ran along the path, after which he put down a pole, climbed up on it again and jumped over the crossbar. For a long time Funi could not understand why his second attempt was not credited either.
