Leonard Cuff

Leonard Albert Cuff (born March 28, 1866 in Christchurch , New Zealand , † October 9, 1954 in Launceston , Tasmania , Australia ) was an important athlete and sports official in New Zealand and a founding member of the International Olympic Committee .

Live and act

Drawing by Leonard Cuff 1890

Cuff was the best long jumper in New Zealand in his active time . When the New Zealand Amateur Athletics Association (NZAAA) was founded in 1887 , Cuff was not only one of the founding fathers, but he also assumed the position of general secretary, which he held until 1896.

In 1890 Cuff organized for the first time a competition trip for New Zealand amateur athletes outside their home country, which took them to the Australian continent , where they took part in championships in the independent British colonies of New South Wales , Queensland and Victoria . The eight New Zealand athletes, with Cuff himself actively participating, achieved seven first places, five second places and two third places in twelve competitions. This success encouraged influential circles in New Zealand to send the team to England to compete in the British Championships in 1892. The company became a national task, because not only was the sporting performance in the colonies generally viewed with skepticism in the mother country of England, the presence of a New Zealand sports team would be a demonstration of the colonists' growing self-confidence and national pride.

Four athletes traveled to London with Cuff under his leadership . The interest, curiosity and respect was great here, because no one had ever undertaken the long journey halfway around the world to compete with British elite athletes. The London-based Amateur Athletic Association (AAA) , which had a superordinate function for all sports associations within the British Empire, entrusted the care of the New Zealand guests to one of its most important officials, Charles Herbert . Herbert suggested to Cuff that the New Zealand athletes should also take part in a sports festival in Paris that the Union des Sociétés Francaises Sports Athletiques (USFSA) organized on the occasion of its fifth anniversary. Secretary General of the USFSA was Pierre de Coubertin .

Cuff and the rest of the New Zealand athletes stayed in Paris for just two days. Inevitably, there was also a meeting between Cuff and Coubertin, and little more than politeness and organizational matters were exchanged. However, this brief encounter was to have consequences.

Coubertin, who pursued the revival of the Olympic Games with an international sports congress at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1894 , which would later go down in history as the first Olympic congress , needed the most international and worldwide participation possible. The Australasian region should also be represented. On the recommendation of Charles Herbert, Cuff received an invitation to the congress from Coubertin. In contrast to many other personalities with whom Coubertin had a lively exchange of views before the congress, Cuff was poorly informed about Coubertin's plans and consequently could not imagine the Olympic Games. This circumstance should strongly influence Cuff's later actions.

Cuff's name was on the list of honorary members of Congress, but like many others on that list, he was actually absent from Paris. For Coubertin, this did not prevent him from appointing Cuff as a member of the International Olympic Committee, which was founded on June 23, 1894, the last day of the Congress. Coubertin relied on Cuff's connections to the sports federations in Australasia and on Cuff's interest in international sport, so that the participation of as many nations as possible in the decision to host the First Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 would be guaranteed. Cuff's appointment to the IOC also had a second reason for Coubertin, as Cuff, as a New Zealander, gave the committee an international flair and prestige, which should be helpful to Coubertin for the implementation of his ideas.

Cuff's efforts to get New Zealand or Australian athletes to participate in the Athens Games were unsuccessful. On the one hand, there was no financial support for sending an official team that should have started under the name Australasia, on the other hand, the Olympic Games were not taken seriously by the British colonies far from Europe for their national development. The only Australian in Athens, Edwin Flack , lived in London and took part in the games on a purely private initiative. However, with his victories in the 800-meter and 1500-meter races, interest in the Olympic Games suddenly grew in Australia and New Zealand.

At the same time, Cuff had given up a number of positions in various sports organizations, including that of the Secretary General of the NZAAA, due to professional and geographical changes. In 1897 he moved to Melbourne . His participation in various sports congresses, despite resigning from his offices, showed that he was still an influential man in the sporting scene in Australasia. Coubertin also held on to Cuff, although he no longer showed any great effort to campaign for the spread of the Olympic movement in Australasia. Meanwhile there were others who took on this task, in particular Richard Coombes , who had a prominent role in the Amateur Athletics Union of Australasia (AAUA) , a newly formed umbrella organization of the national sports federations of the region.

In 1899, Cuff moved to Tasmania. His influence on the sporting scene now decreased noticeably. Coombes had also established his own contacts with Coubertin. Eventually there was a disagreement between Cuff and Coombes, because Cuff's inactivity in the IOC saw Coombes as an obstacle to the further development of the international sporting importance of Australasia. For Coubertin it would have been unthinkable to exclude the members he had designated. In addition, he was not very well informed about what was going on in the distant regions. It was not until 1905 that Cuff declared his resignation from the IOC and recommended Richard Coombes as his successor.

As a cricketer, he completed a total of 24 first-class games for Auckland, Canterbury and Tasmania between 1886/87 and 1904/05 .

Cuff died in 1954 as the last of the 13 founding members. In most publications, however, he is remembered as a member who was not present at any IOC Congress, at any IOC meeting or at any Olympic Games.

Since 2000, the New Zealand Olympic Committee has awarded the Leonard A Cuff Medal for “contribution to Olympism in New Zealand”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Player profile at Cricinfo
2. ↑ Leonard A Cuff Medal ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.