Victor Boin

At the age of two years Victor Boin won a beautiful baby contest in Oostende. As a teenager, in 1903, he founded the first ice hockey club in Belgium and also became its first president. In 1906 and again in 1907 he become Belgian champion in the 100 metres as well as in 200 m freestyle swimming. He participated in the 1908 Olympics as a swimmer and water polo player, winning a silver medal in water polo. At the 1912 Olympics, he was fourth in the individual épée in fencing and won a water polo bronze medal, while in 1920, he won another silver medal, this time in team épée fencing.

Boin also competed in judo and tennis, and was Belgian Champion in judo, eventually earning a black belt in that sport. In swimming he earned fame in 1896 when he rescued a woman and her child off the coast of Ostend in the breakwater in front of the Kursaal. For that rescue, Boin was given La Croix Civique by King Leopold, the youngest ever to receive that award.

Boin became famous in the Olympic Movement as he was the first person to recite the Olympic Oath at the 1920 Opening Ceremony. He was also the Belgium flag bearer at the 1920 Opening Ceremony. His Olympic collections are preserved in the Flanders Sports Museum.

Boin worked as a sports journalist and theatre critic and became a sports official. In 1913 he created the Belgian Professional Association of Sports Journalists and was also involved in the 1924 founding of the International Sports Journalists’ Association (AIPS) and was first Vice-President, and then President. Between 1955 and 1965 Boin was President of the Belgium NOC, and was the founding President of the Belgian Paralympic Association in 1960. In World War I, he enlisted in the Belgian Army in 1915 and joined a unit of trucks with machine gun cars, and later the Air Force as the personal pilot of the Belgian Queen Elizabeth, a Bavarian Princess. He later started an airline that became SABENA, the Belgian national airline from 1923-2001.