Chapter 8: Developing British Sporting Institutions

In this chapter, we look at the actual formation of the British Olympic Association (BOA) in 1905 led by Britain’s three IOC members – Charles Herbert, Reverend Stuart de Courcy Laffan, and Colonel Sir Howard Vincent, together with the Conservative MP William Grenfell (later Lord Desborough). The BOA was a voluntaristic and amateurist organisation built on top of the network of existing sporting associations which aimed to further a knowledge of Olympism in Britain as well as formalise Britain’s representation at the IOC and provide a framework for British sporting representation. We more formally introduce some of the members of the BOA and attempt to place them within their wider context. We also consider the parallel development of international football at this time which the British also played a key role in; this would be important to our story as the Olympics attempted to include international football from the start, in a period where the prevalence of professionalism was tightly regulated.