"Thank you very much for this post! I have been hearing this story for quite some time, and, though it saddened me, because I have long been an admirer of FDR, I had simply accepted it. As an archaeologist and life-long student of history, ancient and modern, I shouldn't have done that. I will no longer accept that story. Speaking as a student of history, it strikes me that one aspect of the story, and of its acceptance broadly, is the tendency of people to think that the world as they find it around them has always been as they believe it to be 'now' (whenever their 'now' is). What you have uncovered is an obvious fact - the modern Olympic Games weren't always perceived as so important as they are now. Only during the Cold War, when they came to be seen as a showcase of the superiority of various politico-economic systems, and began to be used for propaganda purposes, did political leaders begin to publicly honor Olympic winners. I suspect that this would also be found to be true in many other countries, and it would be interesting to check this hypothesis with some research into the primary sources!" RC
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