1912 Olympic Games Official Report Part 2

them. In the high diving, Sweden was first, just as she was at theGames of London, but Germany easily took pride of place in thespring-board diving.The Water Polo Tournament, too, showed that this branch of sporthas made considerable progress in several countries. In London, in1908, Great Britain was undisputably the champion, while Belgiumand Sweden had no one to challenge their rights to second and thirdpositions. The relative positions of the two countries last mentionedwas now reversed, and it was only after a severe struggle that GreatBritain was able to retain its position at the head of the list, Belgium,in the first match, succeeding in making a draw until extra time wasplayed. Belgium’s struggle for third prize was also characterized bysome hard matches, both Austria and Hungary sending good teamsto Stockholm.If a summary is made of the lessons learned by these competitions,it must, first and foremost, be pointed out, that the fact of the existenceof an International Swimming Federation, whose principles forthe arrangement of the races were strictly followed, considerably facilitatedthe management of the competitions.Some inconvenience was experienced when making the preparations,in consequence of there being no standard programme for the SwimmingCompetitions of the Olympic Games, and such a programmeshould most certainly be drawn up. Another thing to be desired is,that the privilege of making entries for the competitions should be sofar restricted, that no nation may have the right to enter so many as12 competitors for the individual events. It can hardly be imaginedthat there are so many absolutely first-class swimmers in any nation, thatit is not possible to make a selection of, say, 6 or 8 representatives foreach event, before making entries for the Olympic Games. Only inthe Diving Competitions can there be any real reason for retainingthe present number of entries for each event, as, in such competitions,accidental circumstances play such an important role. As far as theraces are concerned, however, the proposed restriction ought certainlyto be made, and this so much the more as it would thereby bepossible to retain the principle adopted at the Fifth Olympiad whendividing the competitors into heats — that of allowing the secondman in each heat and the best third to take part in the next round —for it can never be fair, when it is a question of both the secondand third prizes, to allow only the winners of the several heats to takepart in the following round. That is; there is nothing to exclude thepossibility of the absolutely best three men in a competition beingdrawn together in the very first heat, or in one of the intermediate rounds.Of this, a very good example was given by the results of the WaterPolo Tournament, as compared with what would have been obtainedhad the elimination system, pure and simple, been applied, and aslong as the competitions in water polo, football, tennis, etc., are formore than one prize, the elimination system employed at the Water749