THAT CLOSING CEREMONY IN MELBOURNE THE CHINESE BOY, THE CHIEF ORGANISER AND AVERY BRUNDAGE by Harry Gordon mong more than three hundred heroes who ing global unrest. The Soviet team stayed away Areturned to Melbourne in late November 2006 from the athletes' Village, living instead on board for the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Olympic Games a passenger liner moored in Port Phillip Bay. The was one man who had never competed in anger, or water polo teams of the Soviet and Hungary trad- in any other mood for that matter. He had never ed punches in the pool, and newspapers carried even pulled on a tracksuit. He was Chinese, very reports of athletes being ordered not to mix with trim for his age of 67, and he'd travelled all the way athletes from other countries. "It was all pretty de- from London. Even though he'd never been an ath- pressing," WING says now. "I worried about it a lot, lete, he deserved to be feted: he had made a huge, and finally thought it would be terrific if we could show enduring contribution to the Olympics. world leaders that athletes at the Olympics could mix to- John Ian WING, a retired builder gether [...] that people from all nations and restaurateur, had been living could befriends." away from Australia, mostly in WING'S disarmingly audacious Britain, for nearly 40 years. What letter, addressed to the chairman of he had done a half a century before, the Melbourne Olympic Organising when he was just 17 and an appren- Committee, Wilfrid (later Sir tice carpenter, was to come up with Wilfrid) KENT HUGHES, made the a charming, cheeky idea that would point that the opening ceremony change the Games forever: one that had been enjoyable enough, but would cause those Games to be that the closing parade needed to dubbed the Friendly Games. Some be decidedly different. He began would call his proposal, which had it, "Dear Friend", and signed it just the symbolic effect of transforming "John Ian", neglecting to put either 67 separate nations into just one his surname or his address on it. In family, Melbourne's greatest gift to it he confessed that he had felt that the Olympic movement. the opening ceremony might turn WING'S father ran a Chinese Wilfrid Kent Hughes (The Of- out to be "a muddle", but it had been restaurant in Bourke Street, in the ficial Report of the Organizing a success - mainly because of "the heart of Melbourne, and some- Committee for the Games of friendliness of Melbourne people." times young John would help out the XVI Olympiad Melbourne Then he cut to the chase: 1956, Melbourne 1958, p. 17) in the kitchen. It was in his bed- "The march I have in mind is dif- room above the restaurant that he ferent than the one during the wrote a letter that is now a valuable piece of his- Opening Ceremony, and will make these Games tory, held in the archives of the Australian National even greater. During the march there will be only Library in Canberra. It is an unlikely document, 1 NATION. War, politics and nationality will scrawled in just-out-of-school handwriting, with all be forgotten. What more could anybody want, some words crossed out and others pluckily mis- if the whole world could be made as one nation ? spelled. (One of the key words in it emerged, in Well, you can do it in a small way." capitals, as OLYMIPIC). It was obviously written in Then he explained, with the aid of a diagram and a hurry, and with some raw passion. a set of crayons, how it should be done. No team His main motivation for writing it was the un- should be "kept together", he wrote. The teams happy state of the world in November 1956, and needed to be broken up, and spread out evenly. the effect politics were having on those Olympic (Here he drew a column of multi-coloured blobs, Games. Soviet tanks had rumbled into Budapest; to signify athletes from different nations). armies had massed beside the Suez Canal; the "THEY MUST NOT MARCH," the apprentice two Chinas and two Germanys sulked and jos- carpenter warned the chief organiser, but should tled, and the Cold War simmered. Six nations - the walk freely, and wave to the public. "I'm certain eve- Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Egypt, Lebanon rybody, even yourself, would agree with me, that this and Iraq - had refused to attend the Games, blam- would be a great occasion, and no one would forget it. It JOURNAL OF OLYMPIC HISTORY 15(MARCH 2007)NUMBER 1 35 will show the world how friendly Australia is." When were no Sunday newspapers then in Melbourne. he had finished, WING carried the letter on foot to Then on the Monday it was in all the newspa- the office of the organizing committee, a few blocks pers about what a success this anonymous idea away. He didn't want bother with the postal sys- had been. One of them called it the idea of the tem. He was still in a hurry, because the closing cer- century. The press wanted me to come forward. emony was just three days away. I overheard people talking about it at work, but I KENT HUGHES was a crusty man, a former army decided not to say anything. I was just too embar- colonel who had been a Rhodes Scholar, a hurdler rassed. I didn't even tell my father. I was fright- in the 1924 Olympics, a hero in two world wars, a ened he might be upset." prisoner of the Japanese, a published poet, a self- The official report of the Melbourne Games called proclaimed fascist, and a maverick minister in the closing ceremony "a prophetic image of a new the conservative government of Robert (later Sir future for mankind", and "a fiesta of friendship", Robert) MENZIES. Maybe the greatest wonder of offering "scarce-imagined possibilities for the race this whole episode is that, amid the mood of frantic of man." The Prime Minister (and president of the bustle that existed at the heart of those Olympics, Games) Robert MENZIES wrote in his foreword: this formidable figure even found time to read "On the first day [the athletes] had all marched such an out-of-the-blue letter. It is as competitors in their national certainly to his eternal credit that teams, preserving their national he decided to act on it, so very late identity, headed by their na- in the day - and, in doing so, sym- tional flags. On the last day they bolically pull the rug on Olympic went around the arena as men tradition. and women who had learned to The closing ceremony did fol- be friends, who had broken down low substantially the instructions some of the barriers of language, of outlined in WING'S letter. Athletes strangeness, of private prejudices. joined others from different coun- And because of this, the last day tries, linked arms, laughed, waved became a remarkable international and strolled around the main stadi- demonstration, carrying with it a um, the Melbourne Cricket Ground. significance which was not over- They behaved as if their only mis- looked by anybody who was lucky sion was to have fun. And this enough to be present." mood of easy disorder, without The report's chapter of the closing separate contingents, has marked ceremony made it clear that the Avery Brundage (The Official all Olympic closing ceremonies Report of the Organizing mixed parade, which it described since. The concept has also since Committee for the Games of as "unexpected", had been the re- been adopted for Commonwealth the XVI Olympiad Melbourne sult of a very late decision. It men- Games and world championships. 1956, Melbourne 1958, p. 10) tioned that two or three days be- John Ian WING did not attend fore the ceremony, "a suggestion" the closing day, or any other day, had been made; that it was not un- of the Melbourne Olympics. He couldn't afford a til mid-day on the day before the closing ceremony ticket - and he watched the opening ceremony, and that organisers were instructed about the prospect some track-and-field and swimming events, on of a different kind of parade; that on the last night black-and-white television in a department-store a meeting was called of chefs de mission, some of window. (TV was new to Melbourne in 1956: the whom were unable to attend; and that there was total number of sets in a city whose population was no opportunity to "arrange precise procedure" for the 1.6 million was 5000). On the final day a Saturday, ceremony. he went to the movies and watched a western In Melbourne November 2006, at a ceremony whose name he's forgotten. When he came out in on the Melbourne Cricket Ground attended by all the late afternoon, he joined a small crowd outside the returning Olympians, including such multiple a shop window watching the close of the Games. champions as the discus thrower Al OERTER and He wasn't sure whether the Olympic boss had tak- the diver Pat MCCORMICK, Ron CLARKE ran a lap of en any notice of his letter. the arena as the final torch-bearer and John LANDY "They [the athletes] all seemed to be doing what took the athletes' oath - just as they had in 1956. I wanted them to do," he explained later. "But I John Ian WING, from a podium in the middle of the wasn't sure whether it was because of my letter, stadium, read aloud the letter which caused that or whether the organisers had planned it that way closing ceremony and all of those that followed, to anyway.