The Games of the X Olympiad opened in Los Angeles despite the Great Depression severely limiting international travel and participation, with only 37 countries sending athletes compared to the 46 at the previous Games. Held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the 1932 Olympics introduced the victory podium for medal ceremonies and the photo-finish camera, innovations that became permanent fixtures of Olympic tradition.
Los Angeles in 1932 was an odd host for a global celebration of amateur athleticism. The Depression had gutted travel budgets worldwide, and many nations simply couldn't afford to send full teams across an ocean; some countries sent only a handful of competitors, and the total field of roughly 1,300 athletes was barely half the size of the 1928 Amsterdam Games.
Organizers compensated with spectacle and innovation. They built a purpose-designed Olympic Village for male athletes for the first time in history, housing them in prefabricated cottages in Baldwin Hills, though female competitors were lodged separately at a hotel. The opening ceremony at the newly renovated Coliseum, packed with over 100,000 spectators, set attendance records that helped convince skeptics the Olympic movement could survive hard times.
Athletically, the Games belonged partly to American sprinter Eddie Tolan and to Mildred 'Babe' Didrikson, who won two gold medals and a silver in track and field, cementing her reputation as one of the greatest athletes of the century regardless of gender. The Games also debuted the three-tiered victory podium and the photo-finish camera for close races, both quiet innovations that outlasted nearly everything else about that Depression-era Olympics.