In June 1924, L’Auto, the French sportspaper that had launched the Tour de France, ran a large portrait on its front page. This was the Olympic Games of the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi and his five gold medals; of Harold Abraham and Eric Liddell, whose story would be told in Chariots of Fire; of Johnny Weissmuller, who would later play Tarzan, winning three swimming golds; of WB Yeats’s brother, Jack, winning Ireland’s first ever medal, in the painting that formed part of the culture programme of that era; but the face of the 1924 Paris Games was the Uruguay centre-half José Andrade.
This was remarkable for two reasons. First because this was the first football tournament to feature countries from Europe and the Americas, a combination that made it the most popular and profitable sport at the Games. And second because Andrade was black. The 1924 Olympics was the Games in which DeHart Hubbard became the first African-American to win gold, in the long jump, but it also gave football its first black superstar, its first global superstar.
