Manila Hosts Asia’s First International Multi-Sport Games

In early 1913, the First Oriental Olympic Games were held on the Manila Carnival grounds in the Malate district of Manila. The multi-sport competition brought together athletes from across the region, inaugurating a regional athletic tradition that later evolved into the Far Eastern Championship Games. The festival was officially opened by William Cameron Forbes, then serving as the Governor-General of the Philippines and a leading patron of Philippine amateur athletics. The event represented one of the earliest organized international multi-sport contests held in Asia, conceived as a regional parallel to the modern Olympic movement.

The initiative to organize the games came principally from Elwood Brown, who directed the Manila Carnival Games and led the Philippine Amateur Athletic Association. Brown proposed the establishment of a regional athletic festival to sports administrators in China and Japan. Working alongside J. Howard Crocker and representatives from the Young Men's Christian Association stationed across China, Japan, and the Philippine Islands, Brown sought to institute regular competitive meetings. Forbes established the Far Eastern Olympic Association to govern the enterprise. The main contestants at the initial gathering in Manila were the host Philippine Islands, the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.