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Jerry Shipp: Fighting the Cold War and the Past on the Basketball Court

Jerry Shipp in 2019, courtesy of Shannon Shipp Cooper.
In commemoration of the 56th anniversary of the XVIII Olympiad, here is an excerpt from my book “1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes.”
日本語版：ジェリー シップ_アメリカ対ソ連

 

Jerry Shipp didn’t like to lose. He didn’t shake hands with opponents after games. He admitted that a basketball game to him was war, and in the heat of battle, he wasn’t a good sport. A shooting guard on the US men’s basketball team, Shipp had a chip on his shoulder, one that had grown since his days in an orphanage in Tipton, Oklahoma.

 

Jerry Shipp on Phillips 66ers_Amateur Athlete 1964

The two-meter tall shooting guard, whose unorthodox shooting form was often deadly from a distance, Shipp became the highest scorer ever for Southeastern State College (now known as Southeastern Oklahoma State University). Drafted by the New York Knicks in 1959, Shipp decided that he needed a steady job and higher pay than what he could get in the NBA. He opted for work at the oil company Phillips, which also had a team in the corporate league, the now-defunct National Industrial Basketball League (NIBL). He would go on to lead the Phillips 66ers to three consecutive championships in the NIBL, while also playing on the national men’s basketball squad.

 

In 1962, Shipp was on the US squad that played the Soviet national team in Lubbock, Texas, in an exhibition match. In contrast to the 1960 squad that featured future hall-of-famers Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Walt Bellamy, and Jerry Lucas, the 1962 team prepping for the Tokyo Games was considered a team of no-names, “a second-rate representative for Uncle Sam,” not only losing to the Soviets 66-63, but ending the game in unsportsmanlike fashion.

 

Sam Blair, a sports columnist from the Dallas Morning News, wrote that in the last moments of the game, the Soviet center, Alexsandr Petrov, and Shipp were fighting over possession of the ball when Shipp swung arms and elbows clipping Petrov across the chin and sending him to the hard court.

 

“It was a pretty shameful moment for the US for Shipp swung in a fit of anger after retreating madly to tie up Petrov, who had slipped free down court in the last hectic seconds to take a high-lob pass and was preparing to sink a simple layup. Fortunately, the Russian had a cooler temper or more self-discipline than Shipp did.” As Shipp recalled, famed sports columnist Blackie Sherrod wrote that he was trying to start World War III.

Jerry Shipp with his father Ed Shipp at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, courtesy of Shannon Shipp Cooper.

No US team had ever lost a basketball game in the Olympics through 1960. And yet, just as the Tokyo Olympics were about to start, the US press was predicting that the streak would end. And if any team was going to do it, it would have to be the Soviet team, runners-up to the US in the previous three Olympics.

 

The coach of the US men’s basketball team was Hank Iba, a basketball legend. He coached teams to NCAA championships in 1945 and 1946, and to medals in the Olympics in 1964, 1968, and 1972. And yet, even legends get criticized. “The 12 men selected yesterday for the October duty in Tokyo have the best chance in history to lose one,” wrote columnist George Meyers.

 

Iba knew he didn’t have the firepower of the 1960 team. “Our big problem is that we have no one man who’ll get us twenty points every game,” he pointed out. “So it has to be a team effort. But when a team has played together as short a time as this one has, it’s bound to get sloppy at times.” Sloppy, yes, but it did not bode well that the team lost its last two exhibition games in the United States prior to shipping off to Hawaii for a training camp just before the Olympics.

 

Fortunately, Coach Iba was one of the toughest, most well-prepared coaches of his time. Center Luke Jackson said that the team was constantly practicing. “Coach Iba wouldn’t let up. When we first came in the locker room, he gave each of us a notepad and said, ‘I want you to learn these plays. Those who don’t learn, won’t play.’ And then he walked out of the room. We practiced those plays. And those who didn’t learn them, didn’t play.”

 

“Those five-hour practices a day—those were tough,” recalled forward Jeff Mullins. “He had his Iba-isms. If you had a turnover he would say in his raspy voice, ‘Can’t have that, boys. Can’t have that.'”

 

The US team crushed the team from South Korea 116-50 in one of the early contests of the Tokyo Olympics. Jackson said that after the game, “Iba took us to practice and worked us until our feet fell off. He said that we didn’t rebound well. He was just putting it on our mind that every game was important. You have to do things the same way every time. I’m sure we were hot-dogging against the Koreans. And we realized that this guy was serious.”

 

Prior to the finals, the American men’s team didn’t lose, despite what many had predicted. And so, the USSR and the USA teams both went into the gold medal round undefeated, playing for geopolitical bragging rights and Olympic glory at the beautiful Kenzo Tange-designed Gymnasium Annex in Yoyogi.

 

In the first eight minutes, the Americans played sluggishly as the Soviets jumped to a lead. Iba admitted jitters. “I’ve been in this business a long time,” he said to reporters after the game. “I know if you get so sure you’re going to win, you usually get knocked on your bottom. But we never talked about it.”

 

Toward the middle of the first half, Jackson woke up, grabbing rebounds and sinking baskets. And then, the rest of the team got going. Joe Caldwell started pouring in points. He was joined by Bill Bradley (he of Princeton, the Knicks, and the US Senate), Larry Brown (he of the countless university and pro coaching roles), Walt Hazzard, and Shipp, who led the US team in scoring average in the tournament and did not cause World War III.

 

In the end, the US men’s team continued its dominance, defeating the Soviet Union 73-59, and registering its forty-seventh straight victory since basketball became an Olympic sport at the 1936 Berlin Games. It was one of the last of the USA’s thirty-five total gold medals gathered at the Tokyo Olympics and marked the first time that the US won more gold medals than the Soviet Union since the powerful communist nation was allowed into the Olympics in 1952.

 

But the Cold War was not on Shipp’s mind when the gold medal was placed around his neck. Shipp had played countless times against the Soviets, knew them inside out, and would have run through a brick wall to defeat them. But it was not triumph over the Russians that caused his breath to shorten or his heart to tremor. It was the realization that the long climb out of his childhood, one filled with hurt, insecurity, and loneliness, was over.

 

Jerry Shipp receiving his gold medal, courtesy of Shannon Shipp Cooper

As he stood on the medal stand, waiting for his gold medal, memories of the orphanage where he grew up and the school he attended flooded his mind’s eye. He remembered his high school algebra teacher, Miss Maynard, who, instead of nurturing him, told him he was never going to learn anything. Out of frustration, Shipp once completed an algebra test by putting a zero on it, and submitting it as is. The teacher told him, “You will never amount to anything. You’ll be in jail one day.”

 

And so, at the moment the twenty-seven-year-old bent at the waist to receive his gold medal, the volcano at the pit of his stomach, roiling with the bilious lava of his youth, erupted.

 

I straightened up and I saw the camera pointing at me with the red light on, and I shouted, “Old Lady Maynard, I hope you’re watching, ‘cause I made something out of myself!” I never forgot it. I was still angry. My teammate, George Wilson, was standing next to me and asked me what that was all about. But I never told him.

 

I now realize that Lotus Maynard played such a big part in my life. I just got to thinking that my anger was hurting nobody but me. I realized, in fact, that she drove me to success. Now I go back and I say, “Mrs. Maynard, thank you.”

Jerry Shipp (14), Larry Brown (6), Jim Barnes (4), Luke Jackson (11) and Bill Bradley (5) of Team USA, in finals against the Soviet Union at the ’64 Summer Games.
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The Best of The Olympians 2020: Reasons to Believe

When coronavirus body slammed the world, the IOC and the government of Japan postponed the Tokyo2020 Olympics and Paralympics as the global economy stood punch drunk in the corner, tagged with constant jabs and body blows.

 

As we approach the end of the year, as infection rates continue to soar, a ray of hope has appeared in the form of newly developed vaccines. Will that ray of hope grow into that light at the end of the tunnel IOC president Thomas Bach desperately wants to see?

I hope so.

 

As a footnote, my own 2020 was not a total bust – the Japanese version of my book was published, and I appeared in A&E History Channel’s documentary, Tokyo Legacy, which is about the history of Tokyo from 1945 to 2020. While I was not so prolific this year in my blog, I did write a number of original articles I am proud of.

 

Reasons to Believe

 

Emotional Memories of Japan

 

The Paralympic Movement

Recalling 1980 and the Cold War

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The 1980 Moscow Olympics Part 1: The American Boycott

1980 Mockba Olympics t shirt
I was the only kid on my block in Queens to have a 1980 Olympics t-shirt.

It was May 21, 1980, and I was at Astor Plaza Theater in New York at the premier of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. I was an ordinary carefree high school student with extraordinary interest in comic books and science fiction. I was 17 years old.

At the same time, Luci Collins, was in California, an extraordinary kid with an extraordinary talent for gymnastics, who made Team USA and was scheduled to be in Moscow for the 1980 Summer Olympics two months later, until President Jimmy Carter (in the role of Darth Vader), announced at the White House to Americans selected for the 1980 Olympic Team that “Our team will not go.” She was 16 years old.

Collins, who wanted to grow up to be just like Soviet superstar Olga Korbut, was on the precipice of making history – becoming the first ever Black gymnast to make an Olympic team. But after the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in late December, 1979, President Carter gave the USSR an ultimatum: get out of Afghanistan by February 20, or else. The USSR did not reverse course, and President Carter stuck to his guns and forced the United States Olympic Committee to comply with a boycott as retribution.

Luci Collins
Luci Collins ranked fifth in this Essence list of Top 13 Black Women Who Changed The Face Of Gymnastics. 

So instead of becoming the trailblazing Jesse Owens or Jackie Robinson of gymnastics, Collins had to wait another 4 years for her chance in her home state of California. Unfortunately, Collins didn’t make the team for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

“I couldn’t even watch the 1984 Olympic Games on TV because I was so disappointed to not be there,” she said in the book, Boycott: Stolen Dreams of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. “It was heartbreaking for me. There were people on that team that I had placed ahead of just four years prior….”

1980 – A Miserable Year

For the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, President Carter was desperate to make the USSR feel painful consequences for their invasion of a neighboring country. He was also desperate to change the mood of the country.

In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group of nuclear physicists who created the “Doomsday Clock,” moved the time to from 9 to 7 Minutes to Midnight, a metaphor for how close the world was to nuclear Armageddon.

Seven months earlier, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to curtail the production and number of strategic nuclear weapons in a treaty called SALT II, but the US Senate never ratified it. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December of that year, US President Jimmy Carter withdrew from the treaty.

In 1980, the Cold War was at near freezing temperatures, and the American mood was dark. In addition to the increasing belligerency between the US and USSR, Carter was dealing with double-digit inflation, oil shortages and an American hostage crisis in Iran that began in November, 1979.

Chronicles Olympic Defector_coverLittle Sympathy

In contrast to the Olympian’s perception, the American public’s view was that USSR general secretary Leonid Brezhnev represented the Empire. In late February, 1980, 73% of people who knew about the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan supported a boycott of the Olympics, a monthly jump of 24 points.

As four-time Olympian and coach of the 1980 US Canoeing Team, Andras Toro, wrote, “the national polls were running very high in favor of the boycott, and the athletes were portrayed as selfish, unpatriotic, un-American spoiled brats.” He told me that there was a public perception that Olympians were professional athletes and were making a lot of money, but that was an unfair comparison.

“Basketball, yes. Track, maybe swimming a bit. But there were 27 or so sports that were part of the Olympic program. The public was not tuned into the sacrifice being made by athletes in sports like kayak, team handball and archery.”

Jan Palchikoff, a member of the 1976 US Olympic Team was also gearing up for the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a rower in  the women’s quadruple sculls. And she was furious that she and her teammates were denied an opportunity to compete in the Summer Games.

“Had we been receiving money from the US government, you could make the case,” she told me. “But we rowers were all on our own. I had a series of part time jobs, waitressing in two restaurants. I worked in a cookie bakery and sold imported baskets at a swap meet. I was training 30 to 40 hours a week and not getting paid. In fact, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to be paid. So I really felt the rug was pulled out from under us.”

Jan Palchikoff quad sculls_1980 4x
Bow or #1 seat: Nancy Vespoli, #2 seat: Anne Marden, #3 seat: Elizabeth (Hills) O’Leary, Stroke or #4 seat: Jan Palchikoff, Cox: Kelly (Rickon) Mitchell, training late Spring, 1980.

The Rationale

At the heart of the argument between athletes and the US government was whether a boycott would achieve any significant results. There was little doubt that the Olympics were viewed by the Soviets as a powerful public relations tool for the Soviet way of life. Olga Chepurnaya, wrote in her 2017 article, “The Moscow Olympics, 1980: Competing in the context of the Cold War and state dirigisme,” that promoting communist ideology was one of the biggest reasons they bid for the Games in 1971.

The Olympic Games were planned as an event that would establish a basis upon which to propagandize the Soviet way of life and belief system both in countries of the socialistic bloc and in capitalist countries. In addition, a purportedly non-political headline event in the country fully fitted in with the general pattern of Soviet achievements, including space exploration and providing assistance to developing countries. By hosting a mega-event such as the Olympic Games, the USSR could considerably improve its international image on the one hand, and enhance patriotic feelings inside the country on the other.

An analyst with the CIA at the time, David Kanin, concurred with that perception, and felt that a boycott represented an action that could be seen and felt, as he explained in a podcast about Carter and the boycott.

The boycott was part of the effort, at least to show we were doing something. After Iran, where it seemed nothing was happening, I don’t think anybody, especially in an election year, could afford to be perceived as doing nothing. The Olympics were coming. It was a highly publicized event the Soviets cared about. It gave us a target. It gave us an opportunity. But also in the view I think of some it was an appropriate public expression of government and public opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We were then looking for support from allies, neutrals and others around the world.

Palchikoff found no solace in the explanations. She was tired of being told that the boycott was a necessary move to ensure national security. Today, she strongly feels that more could have been done for international relations if they had competed in the Olympics, and that the boycott made no difference in America’s national security. In fact, the US Government’s only impact was to harm its own citizens. “No lives were saved. We were used as a political tool. If that’s the best the US has to negotiate with the Soviets, then we’re in trouble.”

Like Toro and Palchikoff, Collins of course went on to have fulfilling careers and lives. But she felt that Carter missed the point about the Olympics. “In my opinion,” Collins said, “the Olympics has always been known to be where all the countries of the world come to unite no matter what differences we have. President Carter used the Olympics to prove his point, and that was wrong.”

Punch_hammer throw_10Feb80
Cartoon from Punch, February 10, 1980

 

The 1980 Moscow Olympics Part 5: The Japan That Could Not Say No

JOC head, Katsuji Shibata (seated, glasses) at press conference post-JOC vote to boycott JOC head, Katsuji Shibata (seated, glasses) at press conference post-JOC vote to boycott_Mainichi

In 1989, the Japanese minister of transport, Shintaro Ishihara wrote an essay that Japanese needed to be more assertive, speak up and say “no.”

In the case of the cold war rhetoric between the US and the USSR, Ishihara wrote that USSR missiles could hit their targets within 60 meters, while Americans bragged US missiles were accurate to 15 meters. Ishihara emphasized that Americans could make that claim thanks to Japanese technology.

“if Japanese semiconductors are not used, this accuracy cannot be assured,” wrote Ishihara in the 1989 book, The Japan that Can Say No.  “It has come to the point that no matter how much they continue military expansion, if Japan stopped selling them the chips, there would be nothing more they could do.”

Japan That Can Say NoIn the late 1980s, the Japanese economy was challenging the American economy, books on Japanese productivity and quality was must reading in MBA programs, and Japanese people were omnipresent globally, quietly confident about Japanese ways.

If the Moscow Olympics had taken place in 1988 instead of 1980, perhaps Japan would have had the confidence to say “no” to an American boycott of the Olympics. However, in 1980, that was not the case. Despite the fact that many of America’s biggest allies in Europe decided to go to participate in the Moscow Summer Games, Japan waited until the last possible moment before finally saying “yes” to America and the boycott.

On Saturday, May 24, 1980, the day before the deadline when national Olympic committees had to accept or decline their invitation to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, members of the Japan Olympic Committee(JOC) met to vote. The president of the JOC, Katsuji Shibata, clearly wanted Japanese athletes to compete in Moscow. But the odds were stacked against him.

  • Since January, 1980, officials from the Japanese government expressed a strong view that Japan must boycott the Games, although they were diplomatic enough to say that the final decision rests with the JOC, as per IOC rules.
  • In an opinion poll taken in late February, 40% of the public were against Japan sending a team to Moscow.
  • A week later, an informal poll of JOC members revealed that the committee was far from making a decision as 12 members were in favor and 13 were against, although 14 refused to provide a response.

Shibata hoped that an outside force would convince the Japanese government to change its position and pleaded with the president of the International Olympic Committee, Lord Killanin, to negotiate with American President Jimmy Carter and Soviet secretary general Leonid Brezhnev to find “an effective solution to the present crisis of the Olympic movement.”

Even a week after the United States Olympic Committee voted on April 12 to support the Carter administration and boycott the Moscow Games, Shibata was still telling the press that Japan should go to the Moscow Games “in principle.”

In May, Japan Prime MinisterMasayoshi Ohira reiterated the government’s position to boycott the Olympics, while Finance Minister Noboru Takeshita said that financial assistance will no longer be available to sports organizations wishing to send athletes.

Grasping at straws, Shibata sent JOC officials to Asia and Europe to gather information, and perhaps uncover support for Japan to send a team.

But finally, the day of the May 24 vote came. And despite the tearful appeals of Japanese athletes, the JOC voted 29 to 13 in favor of the boycott. “With a heavy heart, I report to you that the JOC has voted to boycott the Games,” said Shibata in a Japan Times report.

One of the most promising medalists for Japan, distance runner Toshihiko Seko was present. Said Seko, who made it to the meeting after a 25-km practice run, “I am despondent but after all I suppose we have to follow what the government says because there would be no sports without a government.”

Alas, 1980 was not yet a time when Japan could say no.

Yuji Takada, wrestler, reacts to JOC vote to boycott the 1980 Olymipcs_Mainichi Yuji Takada, wrestler, reacts to JOC vote to boycott the 1980 Olympics_Mainichi

 

The 1980 Moscow Olympics Part 6: Lord Killanin vs Avery Brundage vs Juan Antonio Samaranch – Would Stronger IOC Leadership Have Made a Difference?

killanin and samaranch 2_NYT In 1980, Samaranch succeeded Lord Killanin of Ireland, left, as I.O.C. president. Associated Press

When Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan in December, 1979, Juan Antonio Samaranch was Spain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union. After two years of cultivating a trusting relationship with Soviet leadership, Samaranch, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member with a strong desire to become president of the IOC in 1980, was angered when the Spanish government expressed their support of the American call for an Olympic boycott.

As Andrew Jennings wrote in his book, “The New Lord of the Rings,” Samaranch was forbidden to attend the Moscow Olympics by his government, which could put his election to the IOC presidency in jeopardy. Certainly, he’d lose the Soviet vote. Samaranch hurriedly returned to Madrid and persuaded/strong-armed the Spanish National Olympic Committee to ignore the government and accept the IOC’s invitation to participate.

On Wednesday, July 16, 1980, three days before the start of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected president of the International Olympic Committee, replacing Lord Killanin, who retired at the end of the 1980 Olympics.

Over 60 nations boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in support of the American government’s protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and some suspected that stronger leadership by Lord Killanin might have influenced fewer nations to boycott. As an AP article noted on June 10, 1980, Lord Killanin did not compare favorably in style to his predecessor, American Avery Brundage, whom Killanin had replaced after the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Avery Brundage_cover of The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage
Avery Brundage, from the cover of the book, The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage

The reporter noted that when the West German National Olympic Committee voted in Duesseldorf on May 15, 1980, or when the United States Olympic Committee voted in Colorado Springs on April 12, 1980 to support the boycott, Brundage would not have stood for that, and instead would have met members of those Olympic committees and challenged them to stand up to their governments. Citing a long-timer reporter of the Olympic Movement, John Rodda of the London Guardian, the article explained what Brundage might have done.

If Brundage had still been president, he would have been in Duesseldorf for this meeting. If Brundage had still been around, and living up to his reputation, he probably would have been defying governments right and left at this movement. He was always the purist, depending the ideals of the Olympic Games as a supranational movement outside of governments and politics, uncompromising in his idealism and abrasive in his public comments. He never once faltered in this defense of the Olympic Charge in his 20 years as IOC president. Brundage, if true to form, might have gone to Colorado Springs to harangue the US Olympic Committee and call its leaders to ignore the White House and send athletes to Moscow. He might have gone to Dusseldorf. He might have been jet-hopping to Tokyo and Sydney, whipping into line NOCs of Japan and Australia.

David Kanin, who was a CIA Analyst in the American government during this time, agreed that different leadership was needed in these times, and that the IOC believed a more politically savvy person was needed at the top of the IOC. Kanin explained in a podcast called “Sport in the Cold War: Carter’s Olympic Boycott,” that one of the myths the 1980 Olympics exposed was that politics and the Olympics were separate. In fact, politics and the Olympics were coming together in a way that was financially lucrative for all involved.

(The 1980 Olympics) ended that fiction. And the best evidence of that was the movement away from Lord Killanin, who was from the old school, and I think a bit over his head, to Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain, who was a seasoned diplomat. He wanted to get the Olympics for Barcelona and did. He understood geo-politics. He knew that the Games and politics were mixed. He knew and everybody else in the Olympic movement knew they could make a lot of money and get a lot of attention and a lot of influence by accepting that, and basically embracing the political side, even while they reject that publicly.

And while Samaranch could not strongarm the Soviet Union and her allies to participate in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he was able to bring the world together again at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. At the next Summer Games, Samaranch presided over an Olympics in his home country, opening the doors wide to professionals in basketball with the introduction of the American Dream Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

The Olympics were again a party everyone wanted to join.

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In Memoriam of 1964 Tokyo Olympians Who Passed Away in 2019: Part 2

Ken-Matthews-race-walk-by-Mark-Shearman
Kenneth Matthews

Kenneth Matthews

He powered through his long walk, entering the National Stadium first and alone, winning gold in the 20-kilometer walk race at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. And when Brit Kenneth Matthews reached his goal, his wife Sheila was there to greet him with a joyous hug. She continued to walk with her husband around the track as the crowd cheered. The great race walker from Birmingham died on June 2, 2019. He was 85.

 

 

lowelln-620x350
Lowell North

Lowell North

Two-time Olympian and two-time medalist in sailing for USA, Lowell North passed away on June 2, 2019. He was 89. The Springfield, Massachusetts native was one of three crewmen who competed in the Dragon class competition at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics which won Bronze. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, North partnered with Peter Barrett to take gold in the Star class competition.

 

Gunter Perelberg
Günter Perleberg

Günter Perleberg

Günter Perleberg was paddler who won the silver medal in the kayak K-4 1000 meter competition as a member of the United Team of Germany at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, adding to his gold medal in the K-1 4×500 meter relay won at the 1960 Rome Olympics. An East German from Brandenburg an der Havel, Perleberg defected to West Germany via Austria in 1963, this making his selection for the Unified German team a topic of animosity between the Cold War powers. Perleberg passed away on August 1, 2019, at the age of 84.

 

Roy_Saari_1963
Roy Saari

Roy Saari

American Roy Saari was selected for two different sports for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic: swimming and water polo. Having to choose one, Saari chose swimming where he won silver in the 400-meter individual medley, and gold in the 4×200 freestyle relay. That relay team set a world record. He also held the world record in the 1500-meter freestyle. His father was the famed water polo coach, Urho Saari. Saari passed away on December 30, 2018 at the age of 63.

 

OFS_Patrick_Sercu_1974_03-e1549901604217
Patrick Sercu

Patrick Sercu

One of the great Belgian cyclists of the 1960s, Patrick Sercu of Roeselare, West Flanders, took gold in the men’s 1,000-meter time trial at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Racing primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, Sercu won over 1,200 track and road races in his career, including 88 championships in the grueling Six-Day tournaments.

 

peter snell
Peter Snell

Peter Snell

One of New Zealand’s greatest athletes, Sir Peter Snell, passed away on December 12, 2019 at the age of 80. Snell’s heroics started with his gold medal triumph in the 800 meters at the 1960 Rome Olympics. But at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the native of Opunake, New Zealand became the only Olympian since 1920 to win gold in both the 800-meter and 1500-meter distances in the same Olympics.

Takahisa Yoshikawa
Yoshihisa Yoshikawa

Yoshihisa Yoshikawa

Yoshihisa Yoshikawa (吉川貴久) was the Chief of Police for Yawata Nishi in his home prefecture of Fukuoka, Japan. But he was more well known as the four-time Olympian, who won bronze medals in men’s free pistol 50 meters at the 1960 Rome and 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Yoshikawa was 83, when he passed away on October 12, 2019, nearly 55 years to the day when he won his second bronze medal in Tokyo.

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To Defect or Not to Defect—That Was the Question for Hungarian Canoeist Andras Toro at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Andras Toro defecting headline_Seattle Daily Times.JPG
Andras Toro is wearing the hat.

An excerpt from the book, 1964: The Greatest Year in the History of Japan – How the Tokyo Olympics Symbolized Japan’s Miraculous Rise from the Ashes

 

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the kayakers and canoeists landed at Haneda Airport like most other Olympians, but then were whisked off to Sagamihara, about sixty kilometers west of Tokyo. The competitions for the canoeists and kayakers were to be held at Lake Sagami, a man-made reservoir in an idyllic setting developed for tourists.

To Andras Toro, it was dreamlike:

Lake Sagami was a magical place with all the oriental beauty we had only seen before in magazines…the morning mist that rose along the shoreline was beautifully surreal.

It was the perfect setting for Cold War intrigue.

Since the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Toro and his friends in the Honved Canoe Club in Budapest had given serious thought to defecting from their country, as long as it was under the hammer (and sickle) of the Soviet Union. In fact, many of his friends did indeed defect, taking advantage of their participation at the 1956 Melbourne Games.

But Toro didn’t go to Melbourne. And his bronze medal finish at the 1960 Rome Olympics only fanned the flames of his desire to win in Tokyo. Competing in the individual 1,000-meter event, Toro had his sights set on the gold. But he also smelled an opportunity—that if he did not win a medal, he would seriously consider defecting to the West.

Just saying that you want to defect, however, doesn’t make it happen. There is no defector’s manual. Who do you contact? What country would take you? How do you avoid the ears and eyes of your country’s minders? Toro spoke almost no English. Who would he even start this conversation with?

And yet, when you want something, as Paulo Coelho famously put it in his novel, The Alchemist, “all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Off the foggy banks of Lake Sagami, the universe began to conspire for Andras Toro.

Andras Toro at Lake Sagami
Andras Toro at Lake Sagami, courtesy of Andras Toro

In the tiny community of Olympic canoeists and kayakers emerged quite unexpectedly a friend of Toro’s, Andor Elbert. Friends since their teenage years in the Honved Canoe Club in Budapest, Elbert had defected to Canada eight years prior, and was representing Canada at the 1964 Olympics. Toro, shielded behind his Hungarian minders, was of course never informed that a defector had made the Olympic squad on another nation’s team.

Then an American kayaker named Bill Smoke entered the picture. He was at Lake Sagami to compete for the US Olympic squad, but he was also looking for talent. Smoke lived in Michigan, famous for its lakes and love of boating of all kinds, and he hoped to find someone who could build canoes and kayaks so that he could start a business back home.

Smoke walked over to the Canadian dorms looking for someone who spoke English and happened to have that conversation with Elbert. Smoke wondered if Elbert knew anyone in Canada who might be willing to help him out. As a matter of fact, Elbert did know someone, but he wasn’t from Canada.

Elbert told Smoke that his friend Toro was not only good at designing and building boats, he was also hoping to defect from Hungary. Smoke in turn talked with US teammate and then-girlfriend, Marcia Jones, who was in Japan also competing in individual canoeing. She turned out to be a key connection, as her mother was Mary Francis, an attorney, one of two women to graduate from the University of Michigan Law School in 1929. She was also sympathetic to people who had to leave their home countries.

Jones said that when she was ten, they had a DP, or displaced person, couple from Latvia stay with them. “The government brought them over here,” she said. “My mother sponsored them. They lived at our place. They went to our schools. She wanted to help them out. She was a very generous person and we could afford to help them.”

When Jones told her mother about Toro, Mary Francis got to work, contacting the US Embassy in Tokyo to seek their help. According to Smoke, who eventually married Jones, his future mother-in-law was not someone you could say no to easily. Francis was able to set up a meeting for Toro at the Embassy.

So very suddenly, all of the pieces fell into place. Toro was ready to defect, resigned to most likely never seeing his family and home country ever again, but with hopes of starting anew in a new land. All that remained, strangely enough, was for him to lose.

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Spider-Man vs. The Hulk At the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics: It’s So Bad, It’s Good

Spiderman vs Hulk at the Winter Olympics_1

I grew up on comic books, thrilled by the Marvel world of super heroes fighting evil in the universe while dealing with their own complications of making a living, family strife, and acne. The reason that Hollywood is enamored with the Marvel and DC universes is because of the powerful character development of superheroes who were learning as they went, uncovering personal flaws, while wisecracking and cracking heads.

But perhaps in my youth, I was overly forgiving.

I picked up a 1980 comic book because it was related to the Olympics – Marvel Treasury Edition #25, Spider-Man vs. The Hulk at the Winter Olympics.

Spiderman vs Hulk at the Winter Olympics_3

And boy, it is bad. The illustrations are fine. The story is ridiculous. The writing is awful – way too much explanation.

According to this article, there was a time in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Marvel and DC were locked in a Cold War – Détente relationship. When DC put out a large-sized comic book called DC’s Limited Collector’s Edition, Marvel did the same with Marvel Treasury Edition. Measuring 10 inches by 14 inches, the Marvel Treasury Edition was significantly bigger than the standard 6.5 by 10 inch mag.

But Marvel featured primarily reprints. Inspired by the coming Winter Games in 1980, Marvel decided to use the Marvel Treasury format in issue #25, creating original content in commemoration of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, complete with appearances by Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. Despite the writing, and storyline, the art is still pretty cool.

I wonder if they were thinking to do one on the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. I guess we’ll never know.

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Steeplechaser Horace Ashenfelter Passes Away at 94: The FBI Takes Down the KGB at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics

Horace Ashenfelter ahead of Vladimir Kazantsev in 3000meter steeplechase
Horace Ashenfelter ahead of Vladimir Kazantsev in 3000meter steeplechase

It was 1952 at the Helsinki Olympics, and the Cold War was heating up.

Making their first appearance at the Olympics were the Soviet Union. And in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, the favorites were Russians Vladimir Kazantsev, and Mikhail Saltykov, both world record holders with times under 9 minutes. Horace Ashenfelter, an American whose best at the time was nearly 18 seconds slower than Kazantsev’s best, was not given a chance to win the steeplechase competition.

And yet the American press played up the geo-political theme, particularly since Ashenfelter was an FBI agent in the US government. As Red Smith wrote in his column on July 26, 1952,

It was evident at Wednesday’s steeplechase heats that the final would bring about the carnival’s first head-on, man to man clash between an American and a Russian. A lot of people had been waiting for such a match ever since it became apparent, long before the games opened, that the 15th Olympics would be chiefly a Russian-American struggle. Before the heats, however, nobody had dreamt that the match might come about in the steeplechase. All the tall tales about a generation of supermen rehearsing behind the iron curtain had made special mention of Vladimir Kazantsev of Kiev, who had been charging over the obstacles at speeds the outside world had never seen.

With such a foe looming, Ashenfelter was given little chance. In the book, The Heart of a Champion, he was teased about his likely fate at the hand of the Russians:

“Horace, how is it going to feel to be out there running on the track when Kazantsev is in taking a shower and on his way home?” Another team-mate said, “I’ll bet Horace will have only three laps to go when Kazantsev is getting his gold medal.”

And yet, Ashenfelter was never fazed by the challenge. As stated in this interview, Ashenfelter was in prime shape and had nothing to lose.

I’m a pretty confident guy, actually and – put it this way – he had to beat me. It was the first time and only time where I had about three weeks of controlled training and rest. I had fine tuned my weight and weighed 128 pounds which I carried on five feet nine frame as compared to my normal weight of 140. I was in outstanding shape and had no bad luck occur. I was just going to stay with the pace as long as I could and to make the pace if I had to – I didn’t mind that.

He got suckered by his coaches as his plan they had was for him to stay with me. That meant that he was running on my right shoulder the whole race and adding three or four yards to each lap. I ran him a little bit wide on the corners and we bumped several times as he was running that close to me. That didn’t bother me but it may have bothered him – I don’t know. I knew I had a lot left at the end.

The American press lapped up the victory. As Smith wrote in his column, “The G man, reluctant to keep his back turned on a Commie, trotted back and slapped Kazantsev on the blouse of his britches.”

It was not known at that time that Kazantsev was also a KGB Agent, but one could imagine that Red Smith’s rhetoric would have been even more provocative.

As for Ashenfelter, he could care less about the Cold War drama on the track. “He was just an opponent. The media writes what they think and what they believe will attract readers.”

On January 6, 2018, Horace Ashenfelter passed away at the age of 94.

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