During the discussion of the issue of holding the III Olympiad, the International Olympic Committee decided to organize it on the territory of the United States, since this country showed good results at the two previous games. Initially, they wanted to hold the Olympics in Chicago or New York, but as a result, the choice fell on the small port town of St. Louis.
The III Olympiad in St. Louis, along with the Paris Olympics, was held within the framework of the World Exhibition. However, the local management of the Exhibition did not consider it as a competitor, but, on the contrary, in every possible way tried to use the games for their own advertising purposes. In addition, the organizers repeated some of the mistakes of the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. Due to attachment to the World Exhibition, the competition was pushed into the background, and the Olympics itself lasted for almost 5 months (July 1 - November 23, 1904). Many competitions were held under the leadership of various professional organizations, however, despite this, they were all awarded the title of Olympic disciplines.
According to the IOC, 12 countries took part in the St. Louis Summer Games. The only state to attend the competition for the first time was South Africa. Compared to the Paris Olympics, the number of participating countries has dropped dramatically. The 13 states that participated in the Summer Paris Games were unable to come to St. Louis for economic reasons. Russia, which was at war with Japan at that time, did not take part in the competition.
A total of 651 people took part in the III Summer Olympics, including 6 women. They competed for 94 sets of awards in 18 sports. The most numerous was the team of the United States of America, they represented 533 people at the games. In many sports (boxing, wrestling, water polo, archery and tennis), only American athletes performed, so the games clearly demonstrated the country's superiority.
In St. Louis, for the first time, they began to award the three, not two, athletes who showed the best result. The main winner of the competition was awarded a gold medal; the athlete who took second place - silver; and the third place was awarded a bronze medal. This tradition has survived to the present day.
In the unofficial team event, the participating countries were positioned as follows: I place - USA (78 gold, 82 silver, 78 bronze medals), II place - Germany (4 gold, 4 silver, 5 bronze medals), III place - Cuba (4 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze medals).
