Avery Brundage Biography Quotes 6 Report mistakes

Early Life and Athletic Beginnings

Avery Brundage was born in 1887 in the United States and came of age in the Midwest during a period when American sport and industry were both rapidly expanding. He discovered track and field as a young man, gravitating toward the demanding all-around disciplines that tested speed, strength, and stamina. In 1912 he earned a place on the U.S. team for the Stockholm Olympic Games, entering the pentathlon and the decathlon in the same year that Jim Thorpe produced his defining victories. Brundage did not reach the podium, but the experience cemented a lifelong devotion to the Olympic movement and to the ideal of amateur sport that he believed Pierre de Coubertin had envisioned for the modern Games.

Builder and Organizer

After Stockholm, Brundage's career turned to business. He established a construction firm in Chicago and cultivated a reputation for organizational rigor and financial discipline. Those same traits drew him into the governance of American sport. By the late 1920s he was a prominent voice in the Amateur Athletic Union and in the American Olympic Committee (later the United States Olympic Committee), where he argued that athletic competition should be preserved from commercial pressures. His insistence on amateurism soon became both his signature and his most controversial stance.

Berlin 1936 and the Boycott Debate

The 1936 Berlin Olympics brought Brundage to national prominence. As debate intensified in the United States about a boycott of Adolf Hitler's Games, he led the faction that sought American participation, contending that politics and sport must remain separate and that engagement would better serve athletes and the Olympic ideal. Jeremiah Mahoney, then a leading figure in the AAU, argued the opposite, warning that participation would legitimize the Nazi regime. Ernest Lee Jahncke, an American member of the International Olympic Committee, openly supported the boycott and was expelled by the IOC, an unprecedented step at the time. Brundage, who had traveled to Germany and accepted official assurances about conditions for athletes, emerged as the principal American Olympic spokesman and soon after became the United States member of the IOC. The U.S. ultimately sent a team to Berlin, where the triumphs of athletes like Jesse Owens stood alongside ongoing criticism of the decision to compete.

Ascent Within the IOC

During and after the Second World War, Brundage worked closely with senior Olympic leaders, notably Sigfrid Edstrom, who steered the IOC through the 1940s and became an important mentor. Brundage rose through committee roles that demanded attention to rules, eligibility disputes, and the delicate diplomacy of bringing nations back into competition after war. In 1952, as Edstrom stepped aside, the IOC elected Brundage its president. He would hold the office for two decades, presiding over a period in which the Olympics expanded in size, visibility, and political complexity.

Presidency and the Defense of Amateurism

As IOC president from 1952 to 1972, Brundage was the era's most forceful defender of strict amateur rules. He believed that the purity of the Olympic movement depended on insulating athletes from commercial endorsements, appearance fees, and professional leagues. This position put him in frequent conflict with competitors and national committees as television revenue and sponsorships surged. He condemned "shamateurism", but his efforts to police it often fell unevenly. The debate came to a head repeatedly: in 1972 he barred Austrian Alpine skier Karl Schranz from the Sapporo Winter Games on the grounds of professionalism, a decision that drew fierce criticism from winter-sport powerhouses and highlighted the growing gap between his ideals and the evolving sports economy.

Cold War, Decolonization, and Racial Justice

The Olympic stage reflected world tensions throughout Brundage's tenure. The 1956 Games were shaped by the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary; boycotts and walkouts tested the IOC's capacity for neutrality. In Africa and Asia, newly independent nations pressed the IOC to confront racial discrimination. Under mounting pressure from these members and international sport federations, the IOC suspended South Africa over apartheid, an issue that haunted the movement for years. In Mexico City in 1968, U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists on the podium to protest racial injustice; Brundage condemned the gesture as a political demonstration and demanded disciplinary action. The U.S. Olympic Committee, under threat of broader sanctions, sent the athletes home. Admirers lauded Brundage for enforcing a rule against political displays; critics saw a double standard that ignored deeper inequities and the reality that sport had always been entangled with politics.

Munich 1972 and "The Games Must Go On"

The most searing episode of Brundage's presidency came at the Munich Games. When terrorists attacked the Olympic Village and murdered Israeli athletes and coaches, the world looked to the IOC for leadership. Brundage halted competition for a memorial service, then announced that the Olympics would continue, encapsulated in the line widely associated with him: "The Games must go on". Supporters argued that the decision denied the attackers a victory over the Olympic ideal; detractors believed it failed to grasp the magnitude of the tragedy. The moment defined the moral and political burdens of the modern Games and shaped perceptions of Brundage's leadership. Shortly afterward, with Lord Killanin elected to succeed him, Brundage's twenty-year presidency came to an end. Juan Antonio Samaranch, then a rising Spanish sports administrator, was among the younger IOC figures who would carry the movement into a more commercial era.

Art Collector and Patron

Beyond sport, Brundage devoted himself to collecting Asian art. Over decades he assembled a vast private collection and became a major donor to institutions in San Francisco, where the Avery Brundage Collection formed the foundation of what became the Asian Art Museum. His passion for art reflected the same classicist sensibility that shaped his Olympic views, valuing tradition, craftsmanship, and continuity. The collection, celebrated for its scope, also drew later scrutiny in the broader, ongoing debate about provenance and collecting practices of the twentieth century.

Reputation, Criticism, and Legacy

Brundage was accused during his life and afterward of insensitivity, racism, and antisemitism, charges that coalesced around his conduct in the 1930s and his hard line against athlete protest. He denied such biases and insisted he was defending universal rules. His unwavering stance on amateurism delayed reforms that many in the Olympic family considered inevitable, and he opposed efforts to revisit historic injustices such as those suffered by Jim Thorpe, whose Olympic status was restored only years after Brundage's death. Yet he also provided continuity through tumultuous decades, expanding the membership of the IOC and guiding Games on multiple continents even as the Cold War and decolonization remade international sport.

Avery Brundage died in 1975. To some, he was the last guardian of an austere Olympic ideal inherited from Coubertin and reinforced by mentors like Edstrom. To others, he epitomized an era that refused to adapt to social change and the realities of modern sport. Figures who intersected with his career, from Adolf Hitler and Jesse Owens in Berlin, to Jeremiah Mahoney and Ernest Lee Jahncke in the boycott fight, to Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City, and to successors like Lord Killanin and Juan Antonio Samaranch, mark the arc of a life lived at the center of the Olympic movement's most charged debates. His influence remains palpable in ongoing arguments about politics, money, and the meaning of amateurism in global sport.