The first teenager ever to win an Olympic or World Track and Field marathon championship.
Category Archive: Track and FIeld
The showdown!
“You see?” Meiler said. “It’s never too late. I’m 81 years old, and look what I did. I didn’t sit in my rocking chair and say, ‘I got a pain here and a pain there, and I can’t do anything.’ I get out there, and I work out the pain.”
Flo Meiler, according to this New York Times photo essay, broke the world record in the heptathlon for women aged 80-84. She was competing in Lyon, France at the World Masters’ Athletic Championships that just ended, a regularly held international competition that brings together people of 35 years and older whose love for competition has not diminished with age.
The world is graying – we all know that. People are living longer, and with fewer babies being born in the industrialized nations, the percentage of people 60 years and older is accelerating.
This post celebrates the idea that no matter your age, if you burn with competition, you burn forever. As these pictures by photographer, Angele Jimenez show, these athletes go all out.
Do you?
Yeah, you’re the fastest man in the world. But you’re running in the first lane, the most beat up sodden lane after two weeks of competition, and you can’t find your shoes.
This was the predicament that “Bullet” Bob Hayes found himself in, according to Bob Schul, in his book, “In the Long Run”.
Just in front of me was Bob Hayes, who seemed to be searching for something. “Bob, what are you doing?” I questioned. “Aren’t you supposed to run the next race?”
“Bob, I can’t find my shoes!” he said in a very worried tone.
“Can’t find your shoes! Where did you leave them?”
“Here, right here!” he answered frantically. “Every day I leave them under this bench while I warm up.” Then he stopped and turned to me. “I know where they are! They’re under my bed at the village! I forgot to bring them!” He looked at my spikes and I knew what he was thinking.
“I wear size 10 and a half, Bob,” I said.
“Too big! What am I going to do?” Just then Tom Farrell entered the area. Tom was in the 
800 final, which followed the 100 meters. It was apparent what Bob was thinking, and he ran over to Tom and asked what size spikes he word. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but within seconds Bob had Tom’s shoes and was running for the check-in room.
As I waited for the bus outside the stadium I heard the final results of the 100 meters. Bob Hayes had set an Olympic record in winning the gold medal. “Way to go, Bob,” I said out loud.
Bob Hayes set a world record running the 100 meters in 10 seconds flat.
Bob Schul had already won gold in the 5,000 meters, the only American Olympic champion in that event.
Tom Farrell would find glory four years later in 1968, wining bronze in the 800 meter race. He graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School, which is a 5-minute walk from where I grew up in Queens. I spent many a summer day playing stickball in that high school parking lot.
Coe beat out another Olympic champion in a vote.
He was the best at the triple jump in the 1960s. He held the Olympic and world records in that discipline. He hopped, skipped and jumped his way to two gold medals, one in Rome in 1960 and the second in Tokyo in 1964.
And yet, there’s not much available in English about Jozef Szmidt, triple jumper extraordinaire from Miechowice, Poland.
In addition to being the first human to ever triple jump over 17 meters, Szmidt held the world record for an incredible 8 years from 1960. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Guiseppe Gentile of Italy extended 2.75 inches further than Szmidt’s mark. Gentile held that record for moments before Viktor Sanyeyev of the USSR, Nelson Prudencio of Brazil and then Sanyeyev lept progressively further for record marks.
There was a time when you could get kicked off your Olympic team for getting support from sponsors, an affront to the idealism of amateurism in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, you can get kicked off your team for not accepting support from sponsors.
Nick Symmonds is a USA Track and Field 800-meter champion, but will not be invited to the IAAF Championships in Beijing because he does not want to wear Nike gear outside of competitions, award ceremonies and press conferences. Apparently the sponsorship contract the USTF has with Nike includes “other official team functions.”
Symmonds is personally sponsored by Brooks, and believes he should be able to wear Brooks gear when not competing, accepting awards or talking with the press. “I deserve the right to know what an official team function is,” Symmonds said in a New York Times article. “They haven’t defined that yet.” the article continues to quote Symmonds as saying “the federation apparently wants him to wear Nike gear for the world championships from the time he leaves his apartment in Seattle. That’s absurd.”
According to Runner’s World, Symmonds had to sign a document saying
Livio Berruti, who hails from Torino, Italy, was the most celebrated of the celebrity in Rome at that time, the essence of cool that hot Italian summer.
American Ken Norton was favored to win the 200 meters, but he faded quickly as Berrutti raced to a world record time of 20.5 seconds to win gold. David Maraniss described in his book, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, how Berruti felt as he emerged victorious. “He approached the finish line knowing that he still held the lead, and threw himself at it, sprawling on the dark red track, overcome ‘with that kind of liberation you feel when you’ve faced a difficult test and managed to pass it.'”
Amidst continuous cheers of “Ber-ru-ti! Ber-ru-ti! Ber-ru-ti!”, his fate as an Italian sports legend was sealed.
As for the shades, Maraniss explains that Berrutti was shortsighted, to the point that he could not see other runners or the finish line without them. So he wore prescription glasses that tinted in the sunlight, wearing the same pair whether competing or sitting at home.
In Tokyo, Berrutti finished fourth in the 200 meter race. And immediately went up to the Olympic champion, Henry Carr, and congratulated him a race run well.
Here is great footage
My ears perk up when Usain Bolt does well. I’d love to see him pick it up.
There comes a moment in your life, hopefully, when you realize that you are not apart from the world, that “no one is an island entire of itself”.
In the 1960s, the support from national Olympic committees and sports associations was not as great as it is today. Unless you were from a family of means, world-class athletes training for the Olympics had to sacrifice significantly to make ends meet. When long-distance runner, Bob Schul, was selected for the US track and field team, he did not have the means to bring his wife on the journey to Tokyo. His military paycheck yielded only $78 a month, which almost all went to food and the gas to pay for his car trips to the military base so he could train.
But as Schul related in his stirring autobiography, “In the Long Run”, schoolchildren in his hometown went door to door raising money in order to buy air ticket for Sharon Schul. Along with this financial contribution and a telegram with all the donor’s names – family and friends all – came this wonderful, heartfelt letter.
Dear Bob,
This is our way of expressing in you the pride we feel in our hearts at this time. The entire community has gained in civic pride from your achievements and representation. When you face the starting line and look up at the throng in that vast stadium, you’ll not be alone; for sitting there in spirit, and cheering you on, will be 3500 happy and emotion-packed citizens of West Milton. As the race is in progress, there will be 3500 heartbeats running in unison to yours. When you start your kick in that last lap, there’ll be 3500 people praying for you to have the strength to do your best. Win…lose…or draw, you’re a champion and first-class citizen in the minds and hearts of the people of this community. Good luck and God bless you.
A grateful Schul went on to win gold in the 5,000 meter race in 1964, the first and only American to do so in the Olympic Games.
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