COLOMBES, France — Yves du Manoir Stadium sits nondescriptly in what amounts to a northwestern suburb of France. It’s about 8 miles from Notre Dame Cathedral, tucked in a neighborhood among a grouping of 15-story working-class apartment buildings. It’s easy to imagine driving by and missing it completely. There is, though, an awning lining one section of seating that might look familiar.
On Saturday, bodies occasionally appeared on balconies of those neighborhood apartments, checking in on things. Everyone from the eighth floor upward has free peak-in Olympic tickets for the main field hockey venue at Yves du Manoir for the next two weeks. Several residents were out there at the start of the evening, seeing the French men’s team take on Germany. They went back inside shortly, as the Germans piled on early in what would be an 8-2 win.
Some version of a stadium has stood in this section of Colombes since the 1880s. What started as a race track grew to include seating, then became a 20,000-seat stadium. Stade du Matin was built in 1907 not for Olympic sports, but for horses. It was expanded to 45,000 seats in the build-up to the 1924 Games.
One hundred years later, Yves du Manoir is the lone stadium or arena still in use for Paris 2024.
Except few will see it. Field hockey is a markedly small sport in Olympic terms. It’s a game played primarily by men in some corners of the world and primarily by women in other corners (notably the United States). It is exceedingly niche — small crowds, limited buzz, little TV time. Only those seeking out field hockey will see much, if any, field hockey during these Games.
Apartments rise over Yves du Manoir Stadium, built up for the 2024 Games, giving some residents a view of the action below. (Alex Gottschalk / DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
So few, if any, will be aware of Yves du Manoir, out there in the Parisian suburbs.
Walking outside the stadium Saturday, in casual conversation, those attending Day 1 of the Olympic field hockey competition had little awareness about what was in front of them — what looked like nothing more than a small, inornate, unimaginative venue. A few said it didn’t seem as grand as they expected, this being the Olympics and all.
The truth, though? That little pitch out in Colombes is so much bigger than the rest in Paris. It is, while looking like a scale model of those massive stadiums we’ll see for most of the 2024 Games, arguably deeper at the heart of the modern Olympics than anywhere else.
In 1924, DeHart Hubbard walked onto the track in Colombes after traveling to Paris in the bottom of a large ship that prohibited Black men from sitting anywhere other than the bowels. Hubbard was a dominant sprinter and long jumper at the University of Michigan. Not just dominant. Too dominant, in some eyes. Olympic organizers did not want him to compete in all the races and field events he was qualified for, fearing he might sweep them all. So he was encouraged, or told, to pick one.
Hubbard chose the long jump. On the journey to France, he wrote to his parents: “I’m going to do my best” to be the first African-American Olympic champion.
Then, in front of 45,000 in Colombes, he did exactly that. Despite competing with an injury, Hubbard leaped 7.445 meters. He became the first African-American to win gold for the United States in an individual sport. Not only was he the greatest jumper of the pre-Jesse Owens era, he left an unmovable mark on history.
DeHart Hubbard competes in the long jump at the 1924 Olympics. He was the first African-American man to win an individual gold medal in the Olympic Games. (Central Press / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
That same Olympics was supposed to, at last, decide who was the fastest man in the world. Rival British sprinters Harold Abrahams, an Englishman, and Eric Liddell, of Scotland, came to Colombes with a long history and a formidable task of competing against a pack of Americans capable of winning gold. The stage was set for a race that would stop time, until when Liddell, a devout Christian, learned the 100-meter heats were scheduled for a Sunday. Liddell, obligated to observe the Sabbath, withdrew, deciding instead to run the 400, a vastly different race.
Of course, Abrahams ended up taking gold in the 100, and Liddell won the 400. A great story. So much so that it was the premise for the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire.”
All the indelible imagery of those moments — the pillars in the background, that pronounced awning, all as Vangelis’ score plays — that was what the original stadium in Colombes was like.
What would come to be known as Yves Du Manoir Stadium.
Du Manoir, the man, was a local rugby star in the mid-1920s. While he’s grown over time into a near-mythic figure in France, he was still a massively popular figure then.
Which is why Paris was so devastated in the winter of 1928. Du Manoir set off on what was supposed to be the final test flight before earning his pilot’s license, before crashing and dying at age 23.
The stadium in Colombes, where he filled those 45,000 seats, was named in his honor.
In time, it expanded to over 60,000 seats after World War II.
For decades the stadium remained integral to Parisian sport until, in 1972, the Parc des Princes opened as the city’s new stage.
Yves du Manoir was left to wear away, sections of seating gradually removed piece by piece. Smaller and smaller, it evolved into the home of a French rugby team and a Ligue 1 football club.
But now it’s 2024, and what’s left of the old Yves du Manoir, one side of seating and a familiar-looking awning, is still here to be seen. It’s under layers of surface-level renovations and next to an adjoining new building, new surrounding rugby fields, and a new track, but it’s there.
Under it all.
Something to see.
Yves du Manoir Stadium hosted the opening ceremony of the 1924 Olympic Games and a slew of events, including track and field and equestrian. (WWP / Topical Press Agency / Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
(Top photo of action from a Netherlands-France women’s field hockey game Saturday at Yves du Manoir Stadium in Colombes, France: Alex Pantling / Getty Images)
