Olympic Games/ Spring, 1896/ Athens/ Pole Vault/ - Lot 11

Olympic Games/ Spring, 1896/ Athens/ Pole Vault/ A surprising pre-Olympic trophy, but one that brings to mind the first Olympic pole-vault champion. In fact, less than a month elapsed between Massachusetts Institute of Technology student William Welles Hoyt (1875-1954) receiving this trophy for a pole-vaulting victory on March 14, 1896 in the USA, and the title he won in Athens on April 10, 1896, with a leap of 3.30m. This typically American pewter trophy, with its two voluptuous handles, is signed Wood and Sons in Chicago. Measuring 10cm with a lovely diameter of 12, it still reflects its owner, an Olympic champion and pioneer of the specialty. After graduating from Harvard in 1897, Mr. Hoyt became a doctor in 1901, then a surgeon, and operated at the front in 1914-18, before settling in France and returning to the United States. He died in 1954, between two Olympic pole-vaulting victories by his compatriot Bob Richards, another phenomenon dubbed the Flying Pastor. Pole vaulting was the great American specialty, and it was Hoyt who brought it to life here, as this perfectly unique piece reminds us.