This Day in History, 1924: Canada slaughters the opposition in hockey at the first Winter Olympics
Canada only sent a dozen athletes to the 1924 Winter Games
By John Mackie
Last updated 10 hours ago
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The first modern-day Olympics were held in Athens, Greece from April 6 to 15, 1896. But it was for summer sports.
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The first Winter Olympics weren’t held for another 28 years, until 260 athletes from 16 countries met in picturesque Chamonix, France, in the Alps near Switzerland and Italy.
The 1924 Winter Games were a far cry from today, with only 16 events, one of which was “military patrol,” which the Milan Cortina Olympic 2026 website describes as “a forerunner of the modern biathlon.”
Canada sent 12 athletes to the Winter Games, a nine-man hockey team, speedskater Charles Gorman, male figure skater Melville Rogers, and Canada’s first female Olympian, 15-year-old figure skater Cecil Smith. Smith and Rogers competed in events as individuals and also as a pair.
By comparison, Canada sent 78 athletes to the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, which had 126 events and 3,089 participants from 44 countries. There were no female Canadian Olympians at those Paris games.
Chamonix is home to one of France’s oldest ski resorts, but faced a big problem days before the Olympics were set to open Jan. 25, 1924: it got too warm.
“The Olympic winter sports due to begin on Friday are facing disaster, with a thaw and rain making the ice rinks pools of water suitable for swimming, and converting the toboggan courses for bobsled races into mountain torrents,” said a story in the Jan. 21, 1924 Vancouver Sun.
“The snow is so soggy and is melting so fast that sleighs cannot operate, the runners cutting through the mud, forcing (people) to go on foot. The mud is knee deep, so no wheeled vehicles are available.”
The warm snap went away and the Olympics were able to get underway Jan. 26 with a 500-metre speedskating competition. But Canada’s Gorman finished seventh, 1 2/5 seconds behind the winner, American Charles Jewtraw.
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Figure skaters Rogers and Smith didn’t do well, either. Rogers finished seventh and Smith fifth in individual contests, and seventh as a pair.
Curling was part of the 1924 Winter Olympics, but Canada didn’t enter a team. Britain won curling gold over the two other European contestants, Sweden and France. The curling medals weren’t awarded until 2006: Some sources said curling was supposed to be a demonstration event, not a real Olympic competition with medals.
Another Olympic quirk was hockey, which made its debut at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
The 1920 Olympics largely ran from Aug. 14 to Sept. 12, 1920. But there was an Olympic hockey competition held from April 23 and April 30 at Antwerp’s Palais de Glace, an indoor “ice palace.”
Canada was represented by the Winnipeg Falcons, a group of Icelandic Canadians that had won the 1920 Allan Cup, Canada’s amateur championship. Canada beat Sweden 12-1 to win Olympic gold.
The 1924 Olympic hockey tournament had even more quirks — the rink was outdoors, and didn’t have the usual four-foot-six (1.37 metre) boards, only a six-inch (15 centimetre) high barrier on both the sides and ends of the rink.
It didn’t seem to make much difference to Canada, which was represented by the Toronto Granites, another Allan Cup winner. It walloped Czechoslovakia 30-0, Sweden 22-0 and Switzerland 33-0 to advance to the medal round, when it beat Britain 19-2 and finally the U.S. 6-1 to take Olympic gold. Canada scored 110 goals in the five-game tournament, and allowed three.
The final against the U.S. was rough. The Toronto Star reported Canadian star Harry Watson “was cross checked across the face in the first minute of play, but played a sensational game with a bleeding mouth.”
Watson scored three of Canada’s six goals in the final game, capping a five game run where he scored 36 goals and 14 assists, including 13 goals in one game. Toronto Star sports editor W.A. Hewitt — who doubled as the manager of the Olympic hockey team — wrote a story headlined “Beaten U.S. Team Say Watson Greatest Player Of All Time.”
Some of his teammates and foes would go on to careers in the NHL, but the 26-year-old Watson never turned pro, even though he was reportedly offered a $10,000 contract ($180,000 today) to play for the Toronto St. Patricks in 1924-25. Watson was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1962.
Norway won the most medals at the 1924 Winter Olympics, picking up four gold, seven silver and six bronze medals. Canada finished eighth, with just one medal.
