A long, long time ago, I remember watching a TV miniseries about the first Olympics of the modern era in 1896.
One of the amusing substories I remember involved the USA's National Anthem and the Olympic band. The story was that the band leader asked the USA delegation for their national anthem to play in the event. He was told that the USA didn't have one, and was provided a list of three songs that are commonly used.
The "amusing" part was that the band leader picked his favorite of the three, but one of his band members prefered The Star Spangled Banner, and secretly replaced the band leader's choice with it. Thereafter whenever the USA won something, we got a shot of the anthem being played, with the one band member looking smug and the band leader looking disgusted.
I'm wondering how much of this is true, and how much was just made up for the drama. It does appear to be true that The Star Spangled Banner didn't become the USA National Anthem until 1931, but how much (if any) of that had to do with the Olympics? Was it in fact the song played for the USA at the 1896 games?