THREE – Chicago Black Hawks and Nine Olympians Take the Stanley Cup: The Chicago Blackhawks beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4 games to 2 for their sixth NHL championship. On that Chicago team were Kimmo Timonen whose long and distinguished career included bronze and silver medals for Team Finland in 1998, 2006, 2010, 2014; Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith who won gold for Team Canada in 2010 and 2014 in Sochi, along with fellow Canadians Patrick Sharp and Brent Seabrook who won gold medal in 2014; Patrick Kane who won silver on the USA team in 2010; Johnny Oduya, Marcus Kruger, Niklas Hjalmarsson who won silver on the Swedish team in Sochi in 2014; Brad Richards Canada: who competed for Team Canada in 2006; and Marian Hossa of Slovakia who competed in 2002, 2006 and 2010.
TWO – FIFA Scandal and Ban: The FIFA Ethics Committee banned FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA head and FIFA heir apparent Michel Platini from all football-related activities for eight years, sparking hopes of greater transparency and an end to corruption and bribes which impact FIFA decisions. For a brilliant explanation of the scandal by John Oliver, all the way back in June, 2014, watch this video.
ONE – Russia Track and Field Team Banned: After it was revealed that Russian athletes were illegally doping thanks to a state-run program, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decides in November to suspend the All-Russia Athletic Federation, essentially all Russian track and field athletes, from participating in international competitions, including the upcoming 2016 Rio Olympics. Here is the documentary that sparked the investigation.
NINE – Meet Caitlyn Jenner:Jenner reveals in July that she would no longer be known as Bruce Jenner, sparking a dialogue about what it means to be transgender. The 1976 gold medal-winning pentathlon men’s champion’s cover story on Vanity Fair, and follow-up television interviews helped broaden the world view on people who identify themselves as transgender.
LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 12: Serena Williams of the United States and Novak Djokovic of Serbia dance on stage at the Champions Dinner at the Guild Hall on day thirteen of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championships on July 12, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Thomas Lovelock – AELTC Pool/Getty Images)
EIGHT – Olympians Serena Williams and Novak Djokavic Win 3/4 of their Grand Slams:Williams won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon in 2015. She is a four-time gold medalist, winning gold in doubles in 2000, 2008 and 2012, as well as the singles championship in 2012. Djokavic won the Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon in 2015. Djokavic now has a total 10 Grand Slams, and took the bronze medal in singles play in Beijing in 2008.
SEVEN – Barcelona FC Wins the Treble: In the 2014–2015 season, Barcelona win La Liga, Copa del Rey and UEFA Champions League titles, becoming the first European team to have won the treble twice. Olympians on Barcelona FC include Javier Mascherano (gold for Argentina in 2004 and 2008), Lionel Messi (gold for Argentina in 2008), Neymar (silver for Brazil in 2012), Luis Suarez (competed for Uruguay in 2012)
TWELVE – Jordan Spieth Wins 1/2 of Golf’s Grand Slam:Spieth, who won the US Open and the Masters, reminds fans of a young Tiger Woods. He and other golfers will make their Olympic debuts in Rio.
ELEVEN – Sprinter Usain Bolt Returns to Form:Bolt won the 100m, 200m and 4x100m at the World Championships in August, overcoming injuries and slower times up till then, as well as rival Justin Gatlin. Bolt has six gold medals, three each in the 100m, 200m and 4×100 relay at the 2008 Games in Beijing, as well as the 2012 Games in London.
TEN – Yuzuru Hanyu Breaks Records: Gold medalist in mens’ singles figure skating in 2014, Hanyu skated better than anyone has ever skated in 2015,finishing the year by breaking the world record for short programs first at the NHK Trophy tournament in November, and then again in the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona in December.
Candace Hill, of Rockdale County High School, after being named the Gatorade National Girls Track & Field Athlete of the Year, Thursday, June 25, 2015 in Conyers, GA.Photo/Gatorade, Susan Goldman, handout.
Candace Hill is one of the fastest women in the world. And she’s turned pro. At the age of 16.
She’ll be running in Rio, and she’ll be likely making a very, very good living along the way.
“Skipping college is attractive for three reasons: money, fame and momentum,” the sprinter from Georgia was quoted as saying in this New York Times article.
Call her arrogant. Call her the embodiment of the American dream. With the third best time ever in the 100 meters for women under 20 years old (10.98 seconds), she is not only the youngest woman to turn pro in track and field in America, she is the youngest person man or woman.
You would never have seen a woman like Hill over 40 years ago, before Title IX.
Title IX (nine) is part of the United States Education Amendments of 1972, a law that states “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
It’s hard to imagine that just forty years ago, young women were not admitted into many colleges and universities, athletic scholarships were rare, and math and science was a realm reserved for boys. Girls square danced instead of playing sports, studied home economics instead of training for “male-oriented” (read: higher-paying) trades. Girls could become teachers and nurses, but not doctors or principals; women rarely were awarded tenure and even more rarely appointed college presidents. There was no such thing as sexual harassment because “boys will be boys,” after all, and if a student got pregnant, her formal education ended. Graduate professional schools openly discriminated against women.
Today a generation or two of women have grown up in a culture that has encouraged women to all the pursuits that men had previously enjoyed. Thanks to Title IX, educational systems had to begin investing in girls and womens’ teams, which resulted in the popularity for women’s team sports like soccer, basketball, and baseball. Mo’ne Davis, who was the first girl to earn a win and pitch a shutout in a Little League World Series
Mikio Oda (織田 幹雄) is the first Japanese (in fact, Asian) to win a medal, taking gold in the triple jump in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Oda first competed in the Olympics in Paris in 1924, where he finished sixth in the triple jump. Hopping, skipping and jumping to a personal best of 14.35 meters gave Oda the motivation to try again in 1928.
When he took off for Amsterdam, he joined his fellow members of the Waseda University track team and spent two weeks on the Trans-Siberian railway to make their way through Europe. Oda was disappointed with the food, finding it expensive and not to his taste, and bored with the long trip particularly because he couldn’t train on the train.
Oda eventually made it to Amsterdam, and was one of the favorites in a field of 24 competitors. It appears that Oda was a confident person. Part of the reason was because he was the Far East Champion through much of the 1920s. Another reason was that on the day of the competition, the track team supervisor, a man named Takeuchi said out loud, “Today is a lucky day.” As Oda explained in an interview conducted likely in the 1990s, “this utterance was quite suggestive for me and I could be confident that I can win.”
His first jump was strong at 15.13 meters, and Oda was particularly confident since the two people he thought were his major competitors, Ville Tuulos of Finland and Nick Winter of Australia, fouled in their first attempt. Oda said that he believed the soft grounds due to rain had made Tuulos and Winter nervous. Oda eventually achieved a competition best 15.21 meters, doing so three times, while Lee Casey, the silver medalist from the United States could only come as close as 15.17 meters.
While Oda’s achievement was the first time the Olympic Games became known to the Japanese, Oda was not celebrated when he returned from Amsterdam.
“Japanese people at the time were not overly interested in the Olympics,” said Oda. “Therefore I was lucky. I didn’t have to be nervous. Interest to Olympics grew after the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, and to its highest at Berlin in 1936. When I won, I didn’t become a star. Newspaper issued a special edition. There was no TV and instant communication systems of today were not yet developed yet. There was no homecoming party. Waseda University also held no party. I think that was just the natures of sports in the public’s mind at that time. The only welcoming party was at my birthplace Kaitaichi-machi in Hiroshima.”
After Amsterdam, Oda graduated from Waseda and joined the Asahi
Bob Schul winning the gold medal in the 5000 meters in Tokyo_Life Magazine, October 30, 1964
Bob Schul was in a room under the National Olympic Stadium, mentally preparing himself for the race of his life, the 5,000 meter competition at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games. Schul was already filling a little uneasy. It was rainy and cold, so he spent most of his time in his dorm. Then he walked 200 meters in the rain, got on the bus and made it to the stadium, where his coaches ran up to him saying, “Where have you been?” Schul told me that his adrenalin shot up, and he thought he had gotten the time wrong. But they told Schul there was still over an hour before the race, which is exactly how much time he had intended to have. So calming himself down, Schul headed to a small room to prepare himself for his race. A member of the US track team and gold medal hope, Willie Davenport walked into the room.
“Willie Davenport, one of the world’s best hurdlers, was standing in the middle of the room dripping wet,” said Schul. “I knew he had just finished one of his trials. The first race for the US hurdlers should have been a cake walk for them. As I walked by and patted him on the back, I asked him how it went. His response was not what I had expected. He turned towards me and looked at me in the eyes and said, ‘Bob, I didn’t make it.’ Now, when somebody says that sort of thing, you don’t want to be there. I had a race to win and I didn’t want anybody saying to me ‘I didn’t make it’. But I couldn’t get away because he kept talking. I thought, ‘come on, I got to get out of here.’ Tears were coming down and he turned away. What do you say? I stood there and reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. I put my bag against the wall, and went to warm up. I tried to forget that.”
Fortunately, Schul was unaffected, winning the first ever gold for the US in the 5,000 meters. Davenport would recover after being eliminated in the 110m hurdle semis in Tokyo, going on to win gold in Mexico City, and bronze eight years later in Montreal.
The acclaimed author, Frank Herbert, once wrote, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.” Herbert’s mantra is particularly true for high performance athletes. The anonymous author who wrote the book, The Secret Olympian: The Inside Story of the Olympic Experience, also spoke of fear, its particular odor and its negative impact.
Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides in the 1984 miniseries, Dune.
“The physiologists can’t measure our sanity. Some of us are going well in training, quick and confident. Probably an equal number are struggling, working harder than they should to make the pace, and it’s those guys (some are friends, some rivals) who are starting to crack up. I can sort of smell this creeping fear of failure, an aura or a vibe around them. It’s like an elephant in the room. No one wants to talk about it. Some have gone very quiet; others are sort of manic. I can tell my best mate has been crying in the loos after training and back in the hotel sometimes. Not good for a grown man.”
The author, Anon, writes that everybody feels the fear. But you need to
First we take you to Bangkok, Thailand, my residence from 1994-2004, where Standard Chartered Bank hosted the annual Bangkok Marathon on November 15. As a part of the day’s event, a half marathon is held. Now for most of the world, half of the 42 kilometer marathon should come to 21 kilometers. And yet, as runners approached their expected times for 21 kilometers, they were surprised to see how far they were from the finish line, and disappointed at how slow their times were. As it turned out, the organizers had extended the length of the course a bit…if 7 extra kilometers is a bit….due to incorrectly informing runners where to make their u-turn. Unlike Singapore Math, Thailand Math won’t be coming to a neighborhood near you any time soon.
Brian Land had previously run a 1:20 half marathon in the Santa suit. Photograph by Island Photography
Next we take you the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my residence from 1981-1985, where a Guinness World Record was broken at the Philadelphia Marathon on November22. Brian Land, 29, a miler who raced at my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, decided to run the Philly Marathon….in a Santa Claus suit. Having run a marathon in 2 hours and 31 minutes, he was seeking to break the record of faux Santa Claus, Paul Simons, who set the then record at the 2009 London Marathon with a time of just under 2 hours and 56 minutes. Training in full Santa regalia at Planet Fitness in early November, and running a half-marathon in the suit, Land was confident. So when Santa Claus came to town for the marathon, he did so in the record time of 2 hours, 54 minutes and 2 seconds.
Astronaut Tim Peake
And finally, we take you to outer space, overlooking the planet earth, my home planet since 1963, where British astronaut, Tim Peake, plans to run the London Marathon on April 24, 2016. Yes, he’ll technically be in space on the International Space Station, and yes, he’ll be running on a treadmill alone while the other 37,000 run the roads of London. Peake will be tethered to the treadmill so he won’t float away, and will watch a video of the London course as he runs. Apparently, Peake isn’t the first to do so. NASA astronaut, Sunita Williams, also ran a marathon in space in 1997 racing in synch with the Boston Marathon that year. And yet, Peake’s goal is amazing. As he quipped, The London Marathon is a worldwide event. Let’s take it out of this world.”
The fuel for muscles are oxygen. The more oxygen, the more rapidly and powerfully muscles can flex. Some people thanks to their genetic makeup have a significantly higher aerobic capacity, or ability to consume oxygen, which enables them to go harder and faster in highly aerobic sports like running, swimming or biking over longer distances.
In the 1970s, those seeking to gain an edge used hormone treatments, for example epitestosterone. The sometimes dramatic effects on the body created suspicion of doping, particularly with regards to the East German team. But a new treatment, which was at the time legal, was becoming popular – blood doping. Also known as blood packing or blood boosting, blood doping was the act of drawing an athlete’s blood prior to a competition, and then after a time, re-introducing that blood back into the athlete’s system via transfusion.
The pioneer research from Sweden, Dr Bjorn Ekblom, discovered that separating the red blood cells from a quart of blood, refrigerating it, and then re-injecting it a month later increased the efficiency of that athlete by 25%, according to Daniel Rosen, who wrote the book “Dope: A history of Performance Enhancement in Sports from the Nineteenth Century to Today.” This research was no secret. Ekblom published it in a paper called “Responses to Exercise After Blood Loss and Reinfusion.”
Blood doping was not illegal at the time. However, in the realm of competition, it was considered sneaky enough not to talk about. But people did whisper about it. And people whispered about Lasse Virén, the Finn who accomplished the only Olympic Double-Double, by winning the grueling 5,000m and 10,000m races in two successive Olympiads – Munich in 1972 and Montreal in 1976.
People whispered that Virén only performed well in the big tent events, but in the years between the 1972 and 1976 Olympics, Virén did not reach champion levels. As Rosen wrote, “given the seemingly few and admittedly poor results in between the Olympics, some have argued that there must have been a secret source from Virén obtained his speed. Virén, on the other hand, insists that he has never blood doped and never needed to. By focusing on the Olympics, to the exclusion of other events, he built up his fitness specifically for those few events every four years.”
Blood doping was officially declared an illegal practice in 1986. But autologous blood doping, the act of reinjecting your own red blood cells back into your system, is not reliably traceable. One test that currently exists requires an athlete to breathe in carbon monoxide, which understandably, athletes balk at.
Lasse Virén of Finland winning gold in the 5,000 meters in Montreal
When you fall in a highly competitive race, it’s over for you, particularly for sprinters. But even in long-distance foot races, falling not only places you way in the back of the pack, it becomes a psychological burden as you see your competitors fly by you.
And yet, Lasse Virén of Finland was not fazed. Virén was competing in the 10,000 meters in the Munich Olympics in 1972. It was the 12th lap of a 25-lap race when Virén’s leg hit the leg of Belgian runner, Emiel Puttemans, sending Virén tumbling to the cinder track. Famed Tunisian runner, Mohamed Gammoudi, also took a nasty spill tripping over Virén’s body. Virén, who fell behind by 20 meters, got up quickly, and re-started those long strides, getting back into the race after four laps.
In the last lap and a half, Virén stepped on the gas. But as this thrilling account from The Guardian relates, the man whose leg sent Virén to the ground 12 laps earlier was now breathing down Virén’s back.
At the bell, Virén raised the pace yet again, and Yifter was unable to respond. The air was suddenly too thick for his limbs. But Puttemans held on. The small Belgian, his face contorting with determination, closed the slight gap that Virén had opened up. ‘I believed I had a chance to win the gold medal,’ he said later. ‘Lasse was five metres ahead and I knew I must take my chance going into the final bend.’ So Puttemans moved on to Virén’s shoulder. The Finn accelerated. ‘As we came round to the home straight,’ Puttemans said, ‘I knew the gold was his.’ You could see Puttemans absorb this painful truth, but make an instantaneous reappraisal of ambition: he looked over his shoulder, to make sure Yifter was far enough behind him to be no threat, and settled for silver.
Virén not only won, but smashed the world record for the 10,000 meter race that had stood for seven years. Virén went on to win the 5,000 meter competition in the Munich Games, accomplishing the so-called “double”, which had been done only three times prior to Virén, and three times after him. Even more amazingly, Virén did it again, winning both the 5,000m and 10,000m races at the Montreal Games in 1976, the only “Double-Double” ever.
You can watch Virén years later watching himself win the 10,000 meter race in Munich on video below.
I recently learned that one of the Olympians from the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden was General “Old Blood and Guts” George S. Patton – American military hero from World War II. As this wonderful Wired article relates, Patton put in a wonderful effort in the modern Olympics first modern pentathlon. The pentathlon is composed of shooting, swimming, fencing, horse riding and running – the concept being that the officer of that time might have to do all those kinds of things in order to get a message safely to its receiver in a time of war.
In 1912, Patton was a promising junior officer with a reputation for being dedicated, and a hard-driving leader. And despite Patton’s short time to prepare, he finished fifth in the pentathlon, behind four Swedes. Here are a few remarkable anecdotes related to one of the most well-known military leaders of the 20th century.
Patton had a bigger gun:Patton fired 20 bullets with a .38 caliber pistol, while his competitors were using .22 gauge pistols. When judges examined the paper target and saw only 17 holes, Patton claimed that all of his shots hit the target, but because of his higher gauge bullets, larger holes were found in the target. Patton claimed that the missing shots went through existing holes. The judges did not agree, and so he finished 20th, instead of first if he was to be believed.
Patton entering the stadium after his pentathlon run at the 1912 Stockholm Summer Games.
Patton was doped up: The final event of the pentathlon was the 4k race (about 2.5 miles), although it included a run through a thick forest and very muddy pathways. Patton, who had known for only two months that he was heading to Stockholm to represent the US in the pentathlon was not in the condition he would have preferred. But Patton was a ferocious competitor, training hard on the ship – SS Finland – from US to Europe, and then applying a level of energy and aggressiveness that could only be described as all out. In the 300-meter run, he simply swam to exhaustion, but took seventh. In the 4k run, the US trainer decided that Patton could use a little help with a bit of “hop”. That was the nickname for opium, a legal pick-me-up back in the day. Patton ran hard, ended up walking into the Stadium, crossing the finish line in third, and promptly passing out, for several hours.
Patton was an aggressive fencer, but not as aggressive as his wife: Patton approached fencing like he approached warfare – aggressively. In fact, Patton placed fourth in fencing, defeating the French fencer, Jean de Mas Latrie, who had lost only to Patton. As the Wired article quotes a Patton biographer, “Throughout his career, disdain for defense was a Patton trademark. To attack was to succeed, to defend was to invite defeat.” But in this passage from Michael Keane’s book, George S. Patton: Blood, Guts, and Prayer”, Patton was no match for his wife, who was preparing for the family’s move from France to the US, after Patton’s assignment to the École Militaire in Saumur, France.
George and Beatrice Patton
As the family prepared to return to America, Beatrice was left to pack their belongings while George attended the fencing academy. The day before they departed, Patton casually remarked to his exhausted wife, “I hope you remembered to pack all those swords under the bed.” Walking into the bedroom, Beatrice discovered dozens of swords and scabbards of which she had been completely unaware. Frustrated that her husband had not appreciated her efforts or informed her of the swords he had been collecting, she angrily picked up one of the weapons and began chasing him around the house. A frantic Patton scurried over chairs and tables, pleading with his furious wife, “Don’t! Don’t! Please don’t!” Beatrice eventually brought the sword down on a table, missing her husband, but hard enough to embed the sword in the edge of the table. A newly compliant husband now offered to help his wife pack his collection.
Here is a clip from the movie, Patton, which has nothing to do with the Olympics, but is still fun to watch.
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