In 1920, the City of London Police Team competed for Great Britain in the tug-of-war at the Olympic Games held in Antwerp, Belgium, and won the gold medal. They remain the Olympic champions 105 years later because the event was never again included.
The archive of one of those on the championship team – Frederick Holmes – was sold by UK auctioneers Tennants in early December for $12,600. The group included the gold medal, a participation medal and two medals from the Olympic Trials as well as various documents relating to Holmes.
The tug-of-war was an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920, when it was dropped because of a lack of international participation (in 1912 only Sweden and Great Britain participated and there was no bronze medal awarded). When it was first included at the Paris Olympics the teams were of 5 or 6 men, later increasing to 8 from the 1908 Games onwards. The first gold medal was awarded to a combined team from Sweden and Denmark.
In the 1904 Olympic Games, held in the USA, the United States took the top four places at the tug-of-war event; four years later it was the London Olympics and the British teams took the top three places. Not without controversy, though: apparently the footwear worn by the Liverpool Police team was so heavy that ‘it was only with great effort that they could lift their feet from the ground.’ In their defence, the members of the team insisted they were wearing regulation police footwear.
