Winner’s medal issued for the Stockholm 1912 Summer Olympics. Silver, 18 gm, 38 mm, by Bertram Mackennal and Erik Lindberg. The front depicts a victorious athlete with a palm branch being crowned with a laurel wreath by two seated females; the reverse, encircled with the text, “Olympiska Spelen I Stockholm,” features a herald proclaiming the opening of the Olympic Games, with a bust of Ling, the founder of Swedish gymnastics, in the background. The front of the medal, designed by Mackennel, was originally used on the winner’s medals for the 1908 London Summer Olympics.
Of the 2,408 participants at the Fifth Olympiad, a total of 90 athletes were awarded this second-place silver medal, with Sweden, the United States, Great Britain, and Germany winning the lion’s share. The 1912 Games proved a rousing and innovative success, introducing novel events like women’s diving and swimming, art competitions, and the pentathlon and decathlon, the latter two won by Jim Thorpe. These Olympics also witnessed the debut of Japan as a competing country, the first of any Asian nation to participate. A highly desirable winner’s medal from a truly historic Olympic Games.
