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Lot 65 in Fellows upcoming auction of Watches (28th November) is a stainless steel manual wind chronograph Longines Conquest wrist watch (estimate £300 – £400)
‘Official Olympic Time Keeper’ is an honour that a number of watch brands have chased over the years including Omega, Longines, Seiko and Heuer. Longines was a supplier of timers to the first Olympics of the modern era in 1896 but at that point in the games’ history, no company was awarded ‘official’ status.
From 1932 onwards Omega has dominated Olympic timing, although Longines has fought hard for the prize. The 1940 Olympics was due to feature Longines as official timekeeper but the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war saw the games moved to Helsinki and then cancelled altogether. 1952 saw Longines as timekeeper for the Oslo winter games and in 1968 they shared the summer honours in Mexico with Omega. For the Munich games in 1972 Longines bid to be official timekeeper again, but despite offering to do the work for free, they still had to share the responsibility with local company Junghans.
The motto of the Munich Olympics was ’The Happy Games’, attempting to eradicate the memory of the 1936 Berlin debacle. Sadly for the Olympic movement and for Longines it became a games that many would rather forget. The kidnap and murder of Israeli athletes and coaches by the ‘Black September’ terrorists with the bungled rescue attempt and final shoot-out will be linked in history with the words ‘Munich’ and ‘Olympics’ forever.
Longines technicians were put under the spotlight during the ill-fated games’ second great controversy. The political tensions of the Cold War were being played out through titanic chess battles, crushing ice-hockey matches, and at the Olympics it was basketball. The USA had won every gold medal since the introduction of the sport in 1936 without losing a single game and the Russians were determined to break this dominance. In the dying seconds of the game the Russian officials protested that a request for a time-out at 3 seconds to go had been ignored. With one second remaining on the clock – and a USA victory inevitable – the game was stopped. The Longines timekeeper Andre Chopard was instructed, not by the referee but by William Jones – the head of FIBA the sport’s governing body, to reset the clock to 3 seconds remaining. A chaotic and pre-emptive restart ensued, but when order was resumed and the game recommenced the Soviet team clinched victory with a final basket. Outraged at this result the USA team took the unprecedented step of refusing to collect their silver medals. Cuba, who finished third were not promoted to fill the gap and so the US silver medals remain in the Olympic museum in Lausanne to this day.
The watch that Longines produced to celebrate the Munich games is an elegant and striking piece. A manual wind mono-pusher chronograph available with a blue, navy or silver dial, the blocky indices and vibrant orange seconds hand are evocative of the early 1970s. The Fellows Watch auction of the 28th November 2013 offers a silver dial example complete with box and papers. The guarantee is incorrectly completed but appears correct for the watch and box. Interestingly, the sale date is entered as 1978, suggesting that it was not a great seller at the time of the Munich games but when the Olympic cycle rolled round again four years later and the memory had faded a little, the sporting connection prompted the purchase.