Winston Churchill’s Olympic Speech (found speech transcript; 1923)
A 1941 portrait of Churchill.
Status: Found
Date found: 5 Aug 2024
Found by: Allen Packwood
Winston Churchill was a major British statesman during the 20th century, having served as the Conservative Prime Minister during the Second World War, as well as having a long-serving Parliamentary, journalistic and writing career beforehand. Churchill is highly regarded in Britain today as one of the best figures the country has produced, with a 2002 BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted for by the British public placing him at the top spot.
As a part of this reputation, Churchill was well-known for his oratorical and speech-making skills, especially during the aforementioned conflict, with many books complied of his speeches being released over the years. One such speech, made in 1923 concerning the then upcoming Paris Olympics, was lost for many years before being found more recently.[1]
The speech, made during a time when he was out of office (having lost his Dundee seat the previous year), was delivered in July of 1923 supporting an appeal which attempted to raise £40,000 for British athletes to attend the 1924 Paris Olympics. In the speech, he makes note of giving ‘everyone a chance’ and base British althetst on merit not class, all the while addressing the recent horrors of the first World War, stating that they would be taking place ‘"after a war in which our youth and manhood has suffered far more severely than some of the other great nations whom we shall meet in friendly rivalry’.
The speech was partially reported by the Times newspaper, but was forgotten soon after. It reemerged in 2024 when, in the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics (the first time the ceremony had been held in the capital city in a century), a request was placed by the International Churchill Society to the Churchill Archive Centre in Cambridge University as to whether Churchill had ever commented on the event, especially in light of his sporting prowess. The director of the latter, Allen Packwood, then discovered the speech in said archives, before releasing them publicly in August 2024.[2]