Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games
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The Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games are usually held every year in Much Wenlock in Shropshire, England. The 2005 Games were the 119th.
On 25 February 1850, the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society resolved to establish a class called The Olympian Class "for the promotion of the moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Wenlock and especially of the working classes, by the encouragement of out-door recreation, and by the award of prizes annually at public meetings for skill in Athletic exercise and proficiency in Intellectual and industrial attainments". The secretary of the Class and driving force behind the Olympian Games was William Penny Brookes. The first meeting was held at Wenlock racecourse on 22-23 October 1850.
In 1859, it sent £10 to Athens for a prize for the best runner in the longest race at an Olympian Games held in November. The Wenlock Prize was the largest prize on offer and was won by Petros Velissarios of Smyrna.
In 1860, the Class officially became the Wenlock Olympian Society.
Pierre de Coubertin visited the Olympian Society in 1890, who held a special festival in his honour. He was so impressed that he decided to establish the International Olympic Committee leading to the modern international Olympic Games.
Biography of William Penny Brookes
William Penny Brookes (1809–1895). Surgeon and campaigner for the revival of the Olympic games, was born on 13 August 1809 at 4 Wilmore Street, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, the first of the five children of William Brookes doctor who career he followed. Following his father's death in 1831 he took over the practice. He often rode some 70 miles a day to visit his patients.
At 5 feet 2 inches tall he buzzed with dynamic energy. He was fluent in Latin, French and Greek, and became a botanist of distinction. He was also near fanatical about keeping fit.
In civic life he became a local justice of the peace and commissioner of roads and taxes and was responsible for introducing gas lighting to the town in 1856 and also the railway, which was officially opened in 1862.
In 1841 Brookes established the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS), an early kind of lending library for working men, which met in the reading rooms above the corn exchange.
From this the the Olympian Society (WOS) was created in 1850 to hold annual games ‘for literary and fine-art attainments, and for skill and strength in athletic exercise’
The games were open to ‘every grade of man’. At first the events were a hodge podge of athletic events, old country sports, and a special events to amuse the spectators. These proved hugely popular and attracted such large crowds Brookes founded the Shropshire Olympian Games (1861) and was instrumental in the formation of the National Olympian Society (1865), hosted by different towns with the host town financing the games. Their first games, held at Crystal Palace in 1866, attracted over 10,000 spectators.
Brookes was an enthusiastic Philhelline but it seems he never visited Greece. However he did donate a prize of £10 to the Zappas Olympian games in Athens in 1859 and regularly petitioned the Greek government to re-establish Olympic-styled games. Sadly due to local political problems his dream was never realised in his lifetime.
Meanwhilwe Brookes's was in contact Baron Coubertin another enthusiastic advocat of compulsory physical education in schools. Coubertin attended the Wenlock Olympian games in 1890 and they became firm friends with a shared ideal to revive the Olympics. In the December 1890 edition of La Revue Athletique Coubertin generously acknowledged his old friend; ‘If the Olympic Games that Modern Greece has not yet been able to revive still survives today, it is due, not to a Greek, but to Dr W. P. Brookes’.
Brookes died in the room he was born on 10 December 1895, just four months before his dream came true. In April 1896 the first modern Olympics were held in Athens.
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