They elected the American multi-millionaire Avery Brundage as IOC President, a post he occupied for the next 20 years.

Even the IOC’s website concedes his tenure was “the most controversial of any IOC President,"

Brundage was co-opted to the IOC in 1936, and by the time of the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, he had become  a powerful voice in the Olympic Movement as IOC vice-president.

The IOC President he replaced was 81-year-old Johannes Sigfrid Edström, a Swede who had previously led the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF_.

Edström had taken over as acting President during the Second World War and navigated the Olympic Movement through the first years of peacetime.

"In view of my old age, I took the decision, years ago, to resign my functions as President of the IOC, immediately after the Helsinki Games," Edström had announced.

It soon emerged he wanted Brundage to be his successor.

"The Executive Commission’s proposal of nominating Mr  Brundage to be President is carried out unanimously,” official IOC minutes recorded. 

There had been plenty of lobbyists for Brundage.

His countryman John Jewett Garland wrote to the Greek IOC member Ioannis Ketseas to rally support and others followed suit.

In 1948, Garland’s own admission to the IOC had been backed by Brundage so this was a favour returned.

Egypt’s Mohammed Taher Pacha, a driving force behind the first Mediterranean Games in 1951, was another to back Brundage.

"It is unnecessary to take into account the nationality of the new President," Albert Mayer, IOC member in Switzerland, insisted.

Mayer paid tribute to Brundage’s abilities as "an excellent administrator and a pioneer of integral amateurism."

All previous IOC Presidents had been European and this time the only other candidate was Lord Burghley, an urbane British aristocrat who had followed Edström as leader of the IAAF.

Burghley was a former athlete who had won 400 metres hurdles gold at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam and who was later to feature heavily as a character in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. 

An IOC member since 1933, he had led the Organising Committee for the 1948 London Olympics.

"Lord Burghley has outstanding athletic qualities," said Prince Axel of Denmark in proposing the candidacy.

"While devoid of any unfriendly feeling towards his American friends, he is of the opinion that the President should be domiciled in Europe."

There was support from Sir Arthur Porritt of New Zealand, another to feature later in Chariots of Fire after finishing third in the 100m at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris behind Britain's Harold Abrahams.

"The difficulty of the choice is that both candidates possess equally strong a personality," Baron Porritt explained.

Burghley had been keen integrate of the Soviet Union in international sport and the Soviet IOC member Konstantin Adrianov added his endorsement.

When the vote was taken, Porritt and Mayer were appointed as scrutineers.

Brundage finally won by 30 votes to 17 after a long drawn out vote.

He did not officially take office as President until after Helsinki 1952 and the formal handover of the ceremonial keys of office took place the following month at the IOC’s Lausanne headquarters in the villa of Mon Repos.

"This election is very appropriate because of the fact that all the former Presidents have been Europeans," Edström observed.

"Now we have elected a President who belongs to another continent of the Western Hemisphere,"

These days, the IOC President usually resides in Lausanne, but Brundage continued to work from his offices in Chicago and his California residence of Santa Barbara, from where he issued instructions via Otto Mayer, a Lausanne jeweller, who ran the Olympic office.

Back home in California, Norris Montgomery, the Mayor of Santa Barbara, proclaimed that there should be an "Avery Brundage Day".

A reception and banquet at a local country club celebrated the appointment.

"Whereas, in the months of July and August, 1952, Avery Brundage has reflected even greater distinction on the City of Santa Barbara when he headed the American Olympic Games team which so gloriously represented our country at Helsinki, Finland, where he became the first United States citizen ever to be elected President of the International Olympic Committee," an official decree declared.

"Therefore, I, Mayor Norris Montgomery do hereby proclaim and, designate the day of September 12 in the Year of our Lord, 1952, to be 'Avery Brundage Day’ in Santa Barbara, at which time all citizens will join in honouring his achievements."

After the plaudits, Brundage inherited, if not a poisoned chalice, then at the very least a delicate Olympic world on many levels. 

Many of the problems could be said to have been aggravated by his own personality.

"If his IOC colleagues were persuaded to accept him as Edström’s successor, it was for his organisational ability, his energy and his devotion to Olympism, not for his charm, his modesty or tactfulness," Brundage's biography Allen Guttman observed, 

The Games of 1952 had  seen the return of Japanese and German competitors, but Germany was now a politically  divided country and the problem of how to accommodate both East and West would be remain throughout Brundage’s Presidency.

He insisted that a united Germany team take part in the Olympics and regarded the achievement of this objective as one of his proudest moments, even though it represented an uneasy truce.

In Helsinki, the Soviets had insisted on separate accommodation for nations of the "Socialist" Bloc, emblematic of the Cold War backdrop throughout his Presidency.

The question of the "two Chinas", Taiwan which was recognised and Communist China which was not, proved a thorn in the side of the IOC for almost 30 years.

Brundage’s own handling of the affair led to hostility on both sides.

One Communist Chinese official described him as "a faithful menial of US Imperialists,"

As far back as 1935 Brundage had shown what many regarded as his true colours.

He visited Germany and took at face value assurances he received about the treatment of Jewish athletes before the Berlin Olympics.

"I was given positive assurance in writing that there will be no discrimination against Jews, you can’t ask more than that and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled," Brundage said.

Many years later, when American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their gloved salute on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City after the men’s 200m final, Brundage described their protests as the work of "warped mentalities and cracked personalities,"

The IOC expelled the pair from the Olympic Village.

Brundage was enraged when the incident was included in the official film of the Games.

"It was very disturbing to have you confirm the rumours that have reached my ears about the use of pictures of the nasty demonstration against the United States flag," Brundage wrote to the producers.

His protests were in vain.

It was a time when South Africa's Government had introduced the Apartheid system which discriminated on the basis of skin colour but Brundage dragged his heels over sanctioning the Olympic authorities in the country.

"If we are to judge apartheid per se, it is not for us to send a commission at all," Brundage wrote to Lord Killanin, a member of the IOC Commission of enquiry to South Africa in 1967.

"Our concern is with the NOC (National Olympic Committee) and what it is doing to comply with the Olympic regulations." 

Although they did not participate at the 1964 or 1968 Olympics, South Africa were not formally ejected from the Olympic Movement until 1970.

Brundage moved rather more decisively against what he saw as unacceptable commercialisation of the Olympics.

He insisted they were successful because, "they were organised by amateurs for amateurs and nobody could profit from them.

"Amateur sport is the only kind there is because if it isn’t amateur, it isn’t sport, it is business," 

In 1972, before the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Austrian skier Karl Schranz was expelled, in what many viewed as a personal vendetta by Brundage part after Schranz had appeared in magazine advertisements.

Schranz, who received a heroes welcome upon his return to Austria, claimed Brundage had a "‘little black book".

It was later in 1972, that Brundage did finally relinquish the reins at the age of 85.

By way of farewell, he enraged many by choosing to compare the massacre of Israeli athletes with the pre-Games dispute about the participation of Rhodesia in his speech at the memorial service in the Munich Olympiastadion.

Since Brundage’s departure from the Olympic stage 50 years ago, many have tried to distance themselves.

"He served during a very difficult, tumultuous time politically, but his autocratic methods won him few friends," the IOC website records.

Brundage, a prolific collector of Asian art, had made substantial donations which largely endowed the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, but in 2020 they withdrew his bust from display,  after it must be said, somewhat belatedly becoming aware of some of  Brundage’s less than palatable attitudes.

In 1972, my Insidethegames colleague Alan Hubbard wrote in World Sports magazine: "What the IOC needs now is someone more in touch with modern sport, Mr Brundage has served his time and his purpose and should go quietly and gracefully, Take a bow sir, but please no encores,”

Brundage’s successor Lord Killanin had said "one thing I can tell you, I am not Avery Brundage,"