TWO lines! Fifteen words! Today's newspapers will be more full than Sir Steve Redgrave's medal cabinet with pictures of the spectacular opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Athens. But The Northern Echo of 1896 devoted just two lines and 15 words to the opening in Athens of the first modern Olympic Games.

On the second day, there was a paragraph recording that the Greek royal family was enjoying the Games and the nice weather. The paragraph included a couple of results, and mentioned that "weight-lifting by one hand was won by Elliot of England".

This was, in fact, Britain's first gold medal (actually silver as in 1896 first place got silver, second bronze and third nothing, although over time there has been a reclassification of these results).

And the first Olympic controversy.

Launceston Elliot's remarkable story begins before he was even conceived. His father, Gilbert, was an aristocratic diplomat whose second wife mysteriously plummeted to her death from a hotel balcony in Australia. Gilbert promptly returned to the hotel and married the receptionist. She conceived in Tasmania and gave birth to Launceston in India.

Launceston grew up, an especially well-built young man, on a farm in Essex and sailed to Athens as the best weightlifter in Britain.

His first event was the two-handed lift. Both he and Viggo Jensen of Denmark lifted 110kg, and as there were no heavier weights available, the referee, Prince George of Greece, decided that Jensen was the winner because his was the cleaner style - Launceston had shifted a foot while lifting.

This was controversial. The Olympics is about being the strongest, the fastest, the highest... Nowhere does it mention anything about being the nicest or the prettiest to watch.

Undaunted our hero, in true Olympian spirit, turned his hand to the next event, and immediately got his revenge. It was the one-handed lift, and although Viggo's style might have been more pleasing to the eye in the two-hander, he had also picked up an injury. In the one-hander, the Dane could only pick up a dumbell weighing 57.2kg. Launceston breezed passed him with a 71kg lift to become Britain's first Olympic champion.

He remains as one of only three Olympians ever to have competed at four sports: as well as his weight-lifting, he came third in his 100m heat, he came fifth in the rope-climbing, and he was eliminated in the first round of the Romano-Greco Wrestling.

He took his defeat by a German so badly that the Greek princes had to escort him from the ring. But the Greek public loved his swashbuckling style so much that he received several proposals of marriage. He graciously declined, and returned to Britain to become a professional strongman, touring the world with his show. His grand finale involved strapping a long metal bar across his shoulders and dangling a cyclist from each end.

Although his physique was phenomenal, one can only imagine what such exertions did to his frame, and Britain's first Olympic champion died aged 56 in Australia of cancer of the spine.