By David Harazduk: Chaos and controversy characterized the boxing competition at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France. Biting, weeping, and rioting were commonplace. A hometown favorite was disqualified, best friends fought in the featherweight final, a series of records were set, and the team competition came down to the last fight.
The 1924 Olympics, which took place in the extremely hot Vélodrome d’Hiver, featured a few rules that would seem bizarre to those watching this year’s Games. Boxers only had to weigh in the first day of the competition. Referees stood outside of the ropes. Each nation could field up to two boxers in each weight class.
One hundred and eighty-one boxers represented 27 countries in eight weight classes. If lucky enough to advance to the finals, they fought from July 15 until July 20 with only one day off. France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States each sent 16 fighters to compete, the maximum allowed. Three of the Americans were members of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Flyweight Fidel LaBarba, and featherweights Jackie Fields and Joe Salas proudly represented the club.
The first controversy involved another American, bantamweight Joe Lazarus. After receiving a first round bye, Lazarus faced Sweden’s Oscar Andren on July 16. They engaged in a tactical stalemate in the first round. Between rounds, U.S. head coach Spike Webb advised Lazarus to go for the knockout, worried about the bad judging that had ousted American heavyweight Eddie Eagen the day before.
Lazarus cornered Andren and then unloaded a concussive right that knocked out cold his Swedish foe. From ringside, referee Maurice Siegel of France mistakenly believed there had been a clinch and that Lazarus had illegally landed the KO blow on the break. He instantly disqualified Lazarus.
Fans quickly moved from amazement at the knockout to bewilderment at the referee’s decision. After the announcer declared Andren the winner, fans chuckled, believing he had said the wrong name. When they realized what had happened, they threw their hats and any trash they could find into the ring in disgust.
Back in the locker room, a woozy Andren and the Swedish officials were sheepish about their apparent victory. Lazarus’s brother later recalled that a Swedish official told Joe, “We know as well as you do that you scored a clean knockout.” If the Americans protested the decision, the Swedes would back them up. Referee Siegel also came to understand he had made a mistake and claimed he would admit fault in the event of a formal protest.
Colonel Robert Thompson, the president of the American Olympic Association, refused to protest. “We will show the world that America loses just as courageously as she wins,” he declared. Graciously, Lazarus accepted Thompson’s decision.
So Andren advanced, but after winning the next day, he succumbed to American Salvadore Tripoli in the semifinals. Willie Smith of South Africa, who would win a portion of the bantamweight world championship three years later, beat Tripoli to win gold. Andren lost the bronze medal match to Jean Ces of France, who grabbed the host nation’s only boxing medal.
Middleweight Roger Brousse of France beat Manuel Gallardo on July 17 to advance to the quarterfinals. French fans hoped their fellow countryman could continue winning, but his next opponent was defending Olympic champion Harry Mallin of Great Britain.
Mallin completely outboxed Brousse the next day and was shocked when the Frenchman was declared the winner. He turned to the referee to protest. Brousse had bitten him, he claimed, and Mallin had the bite marks on his chest to prove it.
Mallin described his wounds as “a purple row of teeth marks and bruises.” He told the Belgian referee, “Look here. Is this what they call amateur boxing on this side?” The referee ignored Mallin. It wasn’t until Swedish officials launched a protest on Mallin’s behalf that his case was considered.
As part of the protest, Manuel Gallardo was also brought in and the bite marks on his chest were examined. French officials made the astonishingly hopeless argument that Brousse had a habit of biting down when he threw a punch.
The decision to retroactively disqualify Brousse was made the next day, so when French fans saw Mallin enter the ring for his semifinal fight against Belgium’s Joseph Beeken, the crowd became irate. “They hooted and booed and created [a] general uproar,” Mallin recalled. “There were free fights, and then the French group created a storm by marching around the arena carrying Brousse in their arms and shouting wildly the whole time.”
Mallin won his fight against Beeken and beat Jack Elliot, a fellow Londoner, in the final to become the first boxer ever to repeat as Olympic champion.
On July 17, referee Tommy Walker disqualified welterweight Giuseppe Oldani of Italy for excessively holding Canada’s Doug Lewis. Oldani then collapsed to the canvas bawling like a toddler. The Italian fans responded by firing random projectiles at Walker. After an hour, Walker was finally able to leave, escorted out of the arena by a consortium of boxers for protection.
Three days later, Belgium’s Jean Delarge dominated the first two rounds of the welterweight final against Hector Mendez of Argentina. Mendez came back in the third and nearly stopped Delarge. When Delarge was announced as the victor, the Argentine partisans started fighting Belgian fans for the next fifteen minutes. The commotion overshadowed Harry Mallin’s win in the middleweight final.
With 1920 light heavyweight gold medalist Eddie Eagen out in the first round, the 1924 heavyweight bracket opened up for two Scandinavians, Otto von Porat of Norway and reigning silver medalist Søren Petersen of Denmark. Eagen later won gold in the bobsled to become the first person ever to win gold in the Summer and Winter Games in different events. Von Porat defeated Petersen in the finals to win Norway’s first and only Olympic gold in boxing.
Denmark had a gold medalist of their own in lightweight Hans Nielsen, who beat Argentina’s Alfredo Copello in the final.
In the featherweight division, Americans Jackie Fields and Joe Salas were both in tears hugging each other in the dressing room minutes before they were about to battle in the final. “We would have done anything not to fight each other,” Salas would later say.
Salas and Fields had trained together at the LAAC since 1921 and the two teenagers developed a close friendship. Salas had won the national championship in May, so he was guaranteed a spot in the Olympics, but Fields had been eliminated in the national semifinals. Salas helped him train to defeat the two other American alternates at featherweight.
Both fighters beat four older foes to make it to the finals. “The European and South American fighters are not the equal of Americans when it comes to boxing,” Salas explained. “They are nearly all powerful sluggers, relying on their punching ability, but when it comes to infighting and the science of the game, they are forced to take a back seat.”
The 16-year-old Fields took a close fight that included a four-minute third round to become the youngest gold medalist in Olympic boxing history, a record that still stands. By taking silver, Salas became the first Latino American to win an Olympic medal.
“When they started to play the national anthem I bust out crying,” Fields remembered.
In 1924, boxing wasn’t just an individual support. Nations accrued points with each medal. The team title came down to the flyweight final. The United States’ Fidel LaBarba faced Great Britain’s James McKenzie.
Since boxers weighed in before the first fight, there was a huge discrepancy in weight. “I don’t know how the hell he made the weight,” LaBarba recalled. “The guy must have killed himself to make the weight… He probably was twenty pounds heavier than me when he fought me because he was so goddamn big.”
LaBarba whipped the bigger man to win gold and put the United States over the top. In an Olympic boxing tournament filled with firsts, a year later, he became the first ever Olympic gold medalist to win a professional world championship.
Fidel LaBarba later described his emotions while hearing the national anthem. “You cry,” he said, “but you’re not ashamed to cry. You let the tears come down because it’s from your heart.
“I’m the Olympic champion!”
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