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In 1832 the Olympics moved to London where they competed for attention with the Great Reform Bill of that year! This was due to the enterprise of another ‘Baron’. This was ‘Baron’ de Berenger. Born plain Charles Random in the late 18th century, he worked in a humble capacity at a London printing company but then had the good fortune to meet and marry a German widow who styled herself Baroness de Berenger, a title which the new husband assumed, further embellishing it with the style ‘Charles Random de Berenger de Beaufain’. A spell in jail for a fraud which involved convincing a number of influential people that Napoleon had died in 1814, a year before Waterloo, did not prevent him from acquiring enough money to buy Cremorne House in the then rural area of London known as Chelsea where he proceeded to construct a number of facilities for sport including riding, shooting and swimming. He wrote books on self-defence which he called ‘defensive gymnastics’ and called his new facility ‘Chelsea Stadium’, its motto being ‘Volenti nihil difficile’ (Nothing is difficult for him who has will). The book was dismissed by one reviewer as ‘claptrap’ but sold well. There is no record of what happened at the 1832 ‘Olympic’ event but the Baron was sufficiently encouraged to repeat it six years later.

In 1838 the Baron wrote to a journal called Bell’s Life: ‘Permit me to announce directly what to most patrons of the Stadium has been known long since, that I am organizing trials of skill on a grand scale in rifle-shooting, archery, carousel riding, fencing, pistol shooting, gymnastics, sailing, rowing, cricket etc. to commemorate Her Majesty’s [i.e. Queen Victoria’s] coronation and rewarding the victors with suitable prizes. Accordingly an entire week will be devoted to daily public contests to be called “The Stadium’s first Olympic Week”.’ Further details of contests, competitors and prizes are not known but we must hope that the ‘suitable prizes’ would not have been incompatible with the amateur ethos which later came to prevail in the Modern Olympics.