Mallon's book on the 1920 Olympic Games

The data on these pages are completely according to the excellent book by Bill Mallon and Tony Bijkerk:

"The 1920 Olympic Games - Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary", Jefferson NC, 2001

There are no problems with the determination of which events in Antwerpen are Olympic and which are not.

Philip John Noel-Baker is listed a second time under Baker and erroneously counted a second time. Mallon arrives at 40 British athletes instead of 39, 510 athletes instead of 509
Tennis : Mallon counts 4 Italian and 2 Swiss tennissers, but that should be 3 each

Waterpolo: Mallon does not count Torsten Kumfeldt and 1 Dutchman, arriving at 97 instead of 99
Shooting: Mallon lists one Robert Andrieux among six possible shooters on the Belgian Military pistol team. I believe he has combined Victor Robert and Louis Andrieux (and there were 7 possible members out of whom 5 actually competed). I choose not to include Robert Andrieux as a competitor. Consequently I count only 233 known shooters, to which I add 6 unknown Belgians (see below) to arrive at 239.
Mallon equates René De Smet, Belgian boxer, with René Smet, Belgian rower. Both these names are quite normal, and the mere likeness of them should not induce one to think they are the same person. I have asked Mallon to re-check and count this as an error in the meanwhile. Consequently, I have one Belgian more than Mallon.

The non-winning artistics entries are unknown
Shooting: there are a vast number of competitors in the individual shooting competitions that remain unknown. However, it is extremely unlikely that any competitors that did not compete in a team competition (who are all known), participated in the individual contests. Mallon does believe there is one Dutchman who certainly competed and counts him. He also chooses to believe there are a total of 29 Belgian shooters and he definitely identifies two of them. He counts 24 Belgians (including those two) and concludes there are 5 unknowns. He lists 8 names out of which those 5 must have come. However, in listing his 22 definitive competetitors, he makes (IMO) a mistake concerning Robert Andrieux. I believe there are only 21 definitely identified Belgian shooters. In order to arrive at 29, there must be 8 others, 2 known and 6 unknown. That is how I count the number of Belgian shooters. One of the 8 names is a competitor who competed before (Eugène Poty). I have chosen to list him as a definite and I am left with 5 unknowns out of 7 possibles.
Additionally, the names of 2 Spaniards are known, but Mallon does not believe they actually competed. I have not counted them either..

Contrary to Mallon, I count the Artists as full competitors. So when Mallon counts 77 women and I arrive at 78, we actually agree.
Mallon counts one British Athlete too many.
He counts 5 Belgian shooters too few.
He counts a Swedish Waterpoloist too few.
Mallon counts one doubler too many and one Belgian too few.
In my opinion, Mallon's total of 2588 men is 6 too few, and I add 10 artists to arrive at my total of 2604

Written 2002-01-23 - last modified 2002-01-23