London 1908 was the weirdest Winter Olympics in history – and here's why

Boxing and football? In a Winter Olympics? In October? Held in 1908, the first-ever winter games was an experimental affair. But, writes Martin Polley, it was one that sowed the seeds for future – and snowier – competitions

A black and white photograph of three men wearing striped helmets sitting in a bob sled. Behind them, a large crowd of men, wearing white jumpers and caps and helmets

Published: February 15, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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“Outside dirty, slushy streets, a melancholy drizzle and a muggy, uncomfortable atmosphere suggestive of nothing more remote than the crisp, keen, invigorating air that is associated in everyone’s mind with the sport of skating.” This editorial, published in Sporting Life, was far from a sparkling endorsement of the first-ever Olympic skating event. But then this was far from a typical Olympics.

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In fact, the inaugural Winter Olympics, held in London in 1908, would be unrecognisable to modern eyes familiar with today’s four-yearly snow-and-ice spectacle. Yet it forged the way for what’s now become a major fixture on the international sports scene, the latest iteration of which – Milano Cortina 2026 – is being staged across Lombardy and north-eastern Italy this February.

The figure-skating event introduced in such dismal terms by Sporting Life was held in the Prince’s Club, Knightsbridge, and was part of a larger ‘winter’ programme staged in Britain as part of the fourth modern Olympic Games.

Those games would witness a number of innovations, some of which today sound odd or even faintly ridiculous – motorboat racing or bicycle polo, for example. Other experiments stuck, though. The 1908 games saw the concept of national teams first formally introduced, while the distance for the Marathon that the London organisers used went on to become the standard for the race.

And like these other innovations, the winter programme left a long-lasting legacy. Though it was another 16 years before Olympic organisers staged a full Winter Olympics, it was the British Olympic Council (BOC) that first put an ice-based sport on the programme, and which first organised an event called the Olympic Winter Games.

A postcard depicting a large white, circular stadium in London. It is surrounded by free spaces and in the background, Big Ben and the houses of parliament stand. The sky is pink and blue

The Great Stadium at what’s now White City was the first purpose-built Olympic arena (Image by Getty Images)

Organisational feat

London took on the 1908 Games in late 1906. In less than two years, the BOC pulled off an enormous organisational feat. It scheduled a fortnight of sports in July, centred on the world’s first purpose-built Olympic stadium at the Franco-British Exhibition Grounds in Shepherd’s Bush, known at the time as the Great Stadium (or just the Stadium), later as White City. Other events – from sailing and rowing to shooting and polo – were held at venues in London and farther afield.

London’s Winter Games was conceived as a distinct programme involving six disciplines. Four were team games – football, hockey, lacrosse and rugby – that were played between September and May in Britain, and thus considered winter sports. The fifth was boxing, added to the Olympic programme too late to be held in July. The sixth was figure-skating – the sport that gave the programme a genuinely winter flavour, and which made this experiment a forerunner of the Winter Olympics that started in earnest in 1924.

The first Winter Olympics would be unrecognisable to those familiar with today’s four-yearly snow-and-ice spectacle

From its first meeting in December 1906, the BOC comprised representatives from numerous disciplines, including two people from snow and ice sports: W Hayes Fisher of the National Skating Association (NSA), and Edgar Syers of both the Ski Club of Great Britain and the Figure Skating Club. They joined counterparts from the Football Association and the Rugby Football Union. That first meeting discussed “the possibility of holding Olympic Skating Competitions in the winter of 1907–08”. By March 1907, the Amateur Hockey Association (AHA) had joined the committee, the English Lacrosse Association had been invited, and the BOC agreed to stage “a cycle of winter sports [as] an integral part of the Olympiad”.

The meeting minutes don’t explain this decision. At that time, just over a decade after the first games under the auspices of the IOC was held in Athens in 1896, the Olympics was still a novelty without any fixed programme; local organisers were relatively free to shape the schedule.

A black and white photograph of a large crowd of men standing looking in the same direction. To the right of the crowd, some brick building stand, and there are some children standing on one of the roofs, looking out over the crowd

Competitors prepare for the marathon at the Athens Olympics in 1896. When the games reached London 12 years later, they were still a novelty with no fixed schedule (Image by Topfoto)

The BOC, led by sportsman and politician William Grenfell, Lord Desborough, wanted to use the Olympics to showcase British sport in the round. In his younger days, Desborough had been something of an archetypal Victorian amateur sportsman, and he had served as an MP before entering the House of Lords in 1905. With his sporting credentials and political networks, he was perfectly placed to drive the Olympic project. He led fundraising schemes, chaired the BOC, organised banquets, and delivered speeches to garner maximum publicity for the Games.

The winter programme was a crucial part of this project, intended to ensure that the Olympics would achieve more than they would if they finished in July. What’s more, the Franco-British Exhibition – the organisers of which financed the London Olympics – did not close until 31 October. Having extra sport in October would bring in more paying customers to the exhibition.

International ambition

There was also an international imperative. From Desborough’s idealistic perspective, the inclusion of winter sports ensured an extension to what he called, in his speech at a banquet for competitors, “the great idea of the Olympic Games”: that they could “draw together, not in a small sphere, but in the larger sphere of the world’s politics, the nations of the world… through the idea of friendly competition”. The BOC hoped that the team sports would inspire entries from overseas, and give the Winter Games an international profile.

Rugby already had a significant following in South Africa and Australia, both of which sent teams to the summer Games. The Olympics were for amateurs only, and rugby union broadly conformed to this culture. Football and hockey were both growing as amateur sports in many European countries, as was boxing. Skating, an amateur but socially elite sport, could draw from many European nations. Lacrosse was the outlier, with a smaller reach, but the organisers hoped at least for a Canadian entry and some British representation. The fact that countries were able to send teams at what Desborough described as “an inclement time of year” added to the value of the winter project.

A black and white photograph of men running along a field, holding hockey sticks. To the right, there are two men wearing pale shirts with black shorts and long black socks. To the left, there are two other men dressed in all white, with black socks

England take on France in the first round of the field hockey tournament, winning 10–1. They went on to victory over Ireland in the final (Image by Topfoto)

As preparations progressed in 1907, the BOC planned to stage the Winter Games at Easter of the Olympic year, then settled instead on two weeks in October 1908. Of the six sports included, competitions in hockey and skating had not been held in the previous three Olympics. Football had appeared in the previous two, rugby had featured at Paris 1900, and boxing had made its debut at St Louis in 1904. The innovation, then, lay both in some of the sports and in packaging them as a winter programme.

The Olympic Winter Games of 1908 opened on 19 October. First up was football, with matches held at the Stadium; Great Britain won the six-team tournament with a 2-0 victory over Denmark in the final. In between football matches, the Stadium hosted a two-team lacrosse event in which Canada beat Britain. In the two-team rugby tournament, Australia ran out winners over Britain.

The action then moved to the Northampton Institute in Clerkenwell on 27 October for the boxing tournament. Two days of skating began at Prince’s on 28 October, followed by the six-team hockey tournament at White City. The Games ended on 31 October with the hockey final.

A black and white photograph of a large boxing ring, with one man on all fours on the ground, while another man stands over him. Surrounding the ring is a large crowd, all sat down looking towards the ring. There are white posters and signs around the sides

English boxer RK Gunn defeats his French opponent in a featherweight bout in 1908. He was one of the five British pugilists who took all of the top medals in that sport at the Winter Games (Image by British Library)

Think rink

It was, of course, the skating that gave this programme a winter feeling, away from the muddy pitches at White City. The BOC hired the Prince’s Club, London’s only all-year private rink, for several weeks in October, allowing competitors to practise ahead of the two-day event. Spectator tickets were expensive – £2 2s (well over £200 today) for a two-day pass, or £1 1s for one day – but they sold well, and there were full houses throughout the competition, perhaps because it attracted some of the biggest names in the sport. There was Ulrich Salchow of Sweden, who won gold in the Gentlemen’s Individual, and Nikolai Panin of Russia, winner of the Special Figures.

They were joined by Britain’s leading female skater, Florence ‘Madge’ Syers. She won the Ladies’ Individual event and, partnering her husband and BOC member Edgar, took bronze in the Pairs. These Olympic medals rounded off a stellar international skating career in which she had won British and World titles.

A gold medal depicting three naked people: one man standing in the middle and a woman each side of him, placing a wreath on his head. On the bottom left, the words OLYMPIC GAMES are written. On the opposite side, the words LONDON 1908 are there

A gold medal from the London games of 1908, which saw a number of Olympic innovations (Image by Getty Images)

The relatively low turnout of countries in the team sports rendered some of the games sadly one-sided, as seen most clearly in the early rounds of the football. Bohemia and Hungary withdrew at a late stage, so France entered A and B teams to make up the numbers, competing alongside Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. France B lost 9–0 to Denmark, while the same opponents hammered France A 17–1 in the semi-final, before Britain took gold.

It was the skating that gave this programme a winter feeling, away from the muddy pitches at White City

With rugby and lacrosse attracting only two teams each, these tournaments comprised just finals. The Australian rugby team happened to be in Britain at the time anyway, so simply added the Olympics to its schedule. A British tour of Australia and New Zealand that year prevented the main team from competing, so the BOC designated the county champions, Cornwall, as Britain’s representatives. Australia won 32–3.

Hockey attracted only Germany and France from overseas, so the AHA split Britain into its four constituent nations (at the time including Ireland as one entity) for the tournament. England beat Ireland 8–1 in the final. In boxing, 32 of the 42 fighters were British; the other 10 included representatives from Australia, Denmark and France. All five of the gold medals went to Britons. Skating was the most international event, with entrants from Britain, Argentina, Germany, Russia, Sweden and the US.

In the gold medal tally for the Winter Games, Britain came top with eight, followed by Australia, Canada, Germany, Russia and Sweden with one each.

Frosty reception

This pioneering Winter Games programme had a mixed reception. Crowds at the stadium events were small, with fewer than 3,000 watching the rugby final and 2,000 at the football (in a venue that had held more than 80,000 back in July). Tickets in the uncovered sections were available for only 6d (about £3 today), but most matches were held on weekdays and in bad weather, which did not help attract spectators. Boxing and skating, both held indoors, fared better.

Most newspapers, both general and sporting, were interested throughout, with the Daily Mirror leading the way. It offered updates on all of the competitions throughout October, and ran action photographs that ranged from the Canadian lacrosse team in training to portraits of the Olympic boxing champions, and action photographs from the skating and the team games.

A black and white photograph of a large group of men dressed in white shorts and white jumpers with a maple leaf reading Canada on the front. They are all holding lacross nets up in the air and cheering. In the background to the right is a man dressed in a long black coat and a bowler hat

Canadian lacrosse players cheer their defeated opponents, Great Britain, after the Olympic final. They were the only two teams involved in that competition (Image by Bridgeman Images)

Sporting Life also excelled, running interviews, previews, fixture lists, ticketing news and match reports. Other papers and magazines, including Country Life, The Field, the Daily Mail and the Athletic News, gave the Winter Games coverage in the form of previews, reports and, in some cases, action photographs. Local newspapers carried syndicated stories, ensuring nationwide coverage.

In some cases, the reporting was negative. The Athletic News described the two-team rugby tournament as “an Olympic Fiasco”, and The Field printed the slightly barbed remark that the boxing bouts involved “more fighting than science”. Broadly, though, the press took a positive approach, welcoming this novel gathering of international teams across so many sports.

The Athletic News described the two-team rugby tournament as “an Olympic Fiasco”

However, at a time when the Olympics had not yet become the centrepiece of world sport, these events were relatively minor elements of Britain’s sporting scene. That status was reflected in some of the press, with fixture lists particularly revealing. So, for example, the football match between Paddington Thursday and Great Eastern Railway appeared just below the Olympic semi-finals in Sporting Life on 22 October. Similarly, The Field’s account of the hockey final ran in the same column as its report of Cambridge University’s match against Beckenham.

Lasting legacy

The 1908 games were staged long before the idea of legacy figured in Olympic thinking. However, the experimental Winter Games had some lasting impacts. Though lacrosse has not returned to the Olympic programme since 1908, and rugby struggled along only until Paris 1924 (though it was reintroduced in Sevens mode in 2016), the other team sports blossomed after their inclusion at London. The football tournament was the largest of its kind held to that date, and hockey has featured in all but two subsequent editions. Similarly, boxing later became a permanent fixture.

A black and white photograph of five men dressed in black uniforms, black hats and black ice skates. Behind them, other men dressed in dark clothing look across the ice rink at them

Figure-skaters including Ulrich Salchow (centre), who won numerous World and European titles around the turn of the century as well as Olympic gold in 1908 (Image by Getty Images)

It was the skating, though, that helped to create a specifically winter legacy. No ice sports featured at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912, but Antwerp’s planners re-introduced figure-skating at their 1920 Olympics. British skater Phyllis Johnson returned at that games – adding the bronze in the Pairs to her silver from 1908 – and Salchow unsuccessfully defended his Olympic title. Antwerp also saw the first Olympic ice hockey tournament. From that point, it was a short step in 1924 for France to organise a programme of snow and ice-sports at Chamonix to complement that year’s Paris Summer Olympics.

The IOC formally launched a separate Winter Olympic Games in 1928 at St Moritz in Switzerland. Almost a century on, the 2026 iteration in northern Italy is set to be a sporting behemoth, featuring more than 3,500 athletes from 93 nations. Yet the seeds for this now-global event were sown not on pristine Alpine slopes but in the “melancholy drizzle” of London’s “dirty, slushy streets” in October 1908.

Breaking the ice

Five athletes who made their mark at London's Winter Games

William Grenfell: Channel-crossing chairman The 1st Baron Desborough (1855–1945) was the first chairman of the British Olympic Association, and the head of the British Olympic Council that organised the 1908 Games. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he was a talented amateur sportsman in his student days. He twice rowed in the Boat Race against Cambridge, and excelled in cricket, fencing and athletics. His wider sporting adventures included climbing the Matterhorn, rowing across the English Channel in an eight, and swimming across the pool at the bottom of Niagara Falls. Florence 'Madge' Syers: England's ice queen

The London-born daughter of a property developer, Syers (1881–1917) had revolutionised the sport of figure-skating by entering the World Championships in 1902 – even though there was no dedicated female class. She came second. 

Syers advocated for more practical dress for skaters, arguing against “flowing skirts and garden-party hats”, proposing that skirts should be short, falling above the ankle, and narrow. She also decried corsets, explaining that “the waist must be free, so that the muscles of the back may have play, and the body be easily rotated from the hips”. Syers also wrote about winter sports, and competed to a high standard in swimming and diving.  Sophus Nielsen: free-scoring Scandi strikerThis famously bow-legged footballer (1888–1963), nicknamed ‘Krølben’ (‘curly legs’), netted a staggering 10 goals in one incredible match – Denmark’s 17–1 win over France A team in the 1908 Winter Games semi-finals. That scoreline has never been matched in the Olympics, and the record of one player scoring 10 goals in a game has been repeated only once. One English sporting newspaper joked that many clubs in the Football League “would be glad of a forward who would shoot at goal 10 times in a match, let alone score 10 goals”. Nielsen played for Denmark again in the 1912 Olympics, and later managed the national team. Tom Richards: lion-hearted wallaby

This Australian rugby player (1882–1935), who won the 1908 Olympic gold medal with his team – scoring a try in the final – was described by the Daily Telegraph as “the cleverest forward in the world” for his overall performance in the Wallabies’ 1908–09 tour of Britain. 

The son of a Cornish migrant to Australia, Richards was one of only two players to have played for both Australia and the British Lions – a fact celebrated by the Tom Richards Cup, named in his honour and contested between Australia and the British & Irish Lions between 2001 and 2025. During the First World War he served with the Australian Imperial Force, fighting at Gallipoli and Arras, and was awarded the Military Cross.Ulrich Salchow: Sweden's skating superstar

This all-conquering Danish-born Swedish figure-skater (1877–1949) won numerous World and European titles, most of them in the first decade of the 20th century. Sporting Life described his gold medal-winning performance in the Individual event in 1908 as “an astonishing display [that] combined acrobatics with wonderful power and fascinating elegance”. 

Speaking at the Olympic banquet on 31 October, Salchow said that it was “quite admirable that the skating competition should have been carried out in such a splendid way in a country where for climatic reasons skating cannot be said 

to be a national sport”. 

In 1909, Salchow pioneered a move still named after him, which involves the athlete taking off for a jump on the rear inside edge of the skate on one foot and landing on the outside edge of the other.

Martin Polley is professor emeritus in history at De Montfort University. His books include The British Olympics: Britain’s Olympic Heritage 1612–2012 (Historic England, 2011)

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This article was first published in the February 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine

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