Strict Aussie quarantine laws forced equestrian events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics to be held in Stockholm

SIXTY years ago today the Olympic cauldron was lit in Stockholm — five months before the games were to start in Melbourne — in one of the most unusual episodes in the history of the modern Olympic Games.

The equestrian events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics were held in Stockholm due to quarantine restrictions.

THE joyful procession through the streets of Stockholm on a bright June day in 1956, was part of one of the most unusual episodes in the history of the modern Olympic Games. The parade, largely riders on horseback, wound its way to the Stockholm Olympic Stadium where the flame was lit, five months before the games were scheduled to begin in Melbourne.

The Olympics was forced to start early because of strict quarantine laws. Australia refused to bend its rules to accommodate the horses for the Games, so the Games bent its rules to accommodate Australia.

When Melbourne was awarded the games in 1949 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had been won over by Australia’s sporting prowess and the country’s “opalescent beauty”. At the time it hadn’t occurred to anybody that there would be any problem with the equestrian events. Melbourne made no reference to strict quarantine laws in its bid.

A 1950 report on venues for the games only said that equestrian events would be held in “the Main Stadium and excellent picturesque hunting country”.

The Olympic flame is lit marking the opening ceremony of the equestrian events held in Stockholm five months ahead of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

In 1952 when other nations began to raise concerns about the cost of transporting horses to Australia, they also realised that horses would need to be quarantined for six months before they would be allowed to compete.

The IOC began negotiating with Australia. Although it exerted some influence, the IOC was not the all-powerful body it would later come to be.

They asked the Australian government to relax its quarantine rules, but the government refused.

In 1953 Avery Brundage, president of the IOC warned that it might be necessary to give the Games to someone else or that the equestrian events be excised from the schedule.

Colonel Harry Llewellyn, captain of the British Olympic team, was one of many who complained. He said: “It is a great blow. If horsemen all over the world have no gold medal to aim at for eight years we may as well take up ping pong.”

One major block was the Olympic charter which stated: “The events must all take place in or as near as possible to the city chosen and preferably at or near the stadium. The city chosen cannot share its privilege with another.”

In 1953 when Dublin offered to run the equestrian events Brundage replied: “We can’t start farming out pieces of the Games all over the place, or they soon wouldn’t be the Olympic Games at all”.

Delegates from Olympic member nations lobbied the IOC to allow the equestrian events to be held in another country, until early in 1954 they gave in, asking for nations to apply to host the equestrian events. In a May 1954 vote by the IOC, Stockholm was the winner with 25 votes, in front of Paris with 10, Rio de Janeiro 8, Berlin and Los Angeles, 2 votes each.

But the IOC’s dithering meant there was a relatively short time for preparations. The pressure had a tragic impact on chairman of the Executive Committee of the Equestrian Olympic Games, Count Gustaf-Fredrick von Rosen, who killed his wife and family and committed suicide in January 1956.

The Stockholm Equestrian Olympic Games opened on June 10, 1956.

The very Swedish opening ceremony included folk dancers forming Olympic circles and Swedish equestrian Hans Wikne lighting the cauldron, the first time it had been lit on horseback. It was also the first and only time Olympians rode horses in the opening parade.

Australia sent its first ever Olympic equestrian team, but the event was dominated by Europeans. Sweden won three of the six gold medals, but the mighty German horseman Hans Gunther Winkler won the first two of his five gold medals at these games. In one event Winkler competed despite a painful groin injury. Given drugs to cope with the pain he was pumped with black coffee to keep from nodding off on his horse, and he still took the gold. One of the British gold medal-winning horses, Countryman III, belonged to Queen Elizabeth, she was the first member of the British Royal Family to enter a horse for the Olympics.

In all, the event was successful and free of political tensions, coming as it did before the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which caused nations to drop out of Melbourne and resulted in clashes between competitors from rival nations.

The IOC was forced to amend the Olympic charter. It now states that the IOC may, at its discretion, organise events to be held outside the host country.

Originally published as Strict Aussie quarantine laws forced equestrian events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics to be held in Stockholm