The Olympic Village in Washington Heights: Athletes Get a Taste of Americana in Tokyo

Rock and rollers in Harajuku in 1986
Rock and rollers in Harajuku in 1986

The Olympic Village in Tokyo in 1964 was very popular. The athletes appreciated the well-manicured greenery, the ample and delicious food, the abundance of bicycles that got them around, and the light-touch security. It felt truly like a village.

Before the Pacific War, the area of the Olympic Village was a Japanese military field, where soldiers would practice and conduct parades. The US military converted the area into housing for American military families during the post-war occupation, and they called the area Washington Heights.

Washington Heights
Washington Heights

The inside of these homes, furnished with American white goods and furniture for the convenience of the American families, were a revelation to the Japanese. Emerging out of a devastated industrial and urban wasteland, the typical Japanese would look at these homes with their huge refrigerators, spacious living rooms, and modern look as a vision of a future Japan.

And what happens when you have a concentration of thousands of Americans in the middle of a highly congested Japanese metropolitan area? You get Americanization. Not far from the Washington Heights area is Omotesando, the road currently famous for being the Champs d’Elysee of Tokyo, and the entry way to Harajuku, a global mecca today for fashion-conscious youth. In its hey day,

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Three-Time Olympic Champion Tadahiro Nomura Retires from Competitive Judo

Tadahiro Nomura with His Three Gold Medals
Tadahiro Nomura (left), a three-time Olympic judo champion at 60 kg, attends a Monday news conference in Osaka. | KYODO

He won gold medals in the 1996 Atlanta Games, the 2000 Sydney Games and the 2004 Athens Games in the extra lightweight (-60kg) judo division. No other judo-ka has ever accomplished such consistency for so long.

On August 31, Tadahiro Nomura (野村忠宏) announced his retirement from competitive judo at the age of 40. As he was quoted in this Kyodo news report, “I began to feel my physical limit,” the 40-year-old Nomura said at a news conference. “I’ve done everything I can. I have no regrets.”

In addition to his three consecutive Olympic golds, he also won gold in the Judo World Championships in 1997, as well as bronze in the 2003 World Championships in Osaka. The man from Nara, Japan often won in spectacular fashion. He employed a seoi-nage technique, a throw where the thrower’s feet get in between the opponent’s legs in lightning fashion, and the thrower is able to toss the opponent over his back and shoulder with unexpected ease.

See the video below for a visual explanation, which is in Japanese, but fairly self-explanatory. A more detailed explanation of the seoi-nage in English can be found at this link.

Nomura comes from judo pedigree – his uncle Toyokazu Nomura was the gold medalist in the -70 kg division of the 1973 Games in Munich, while his father coached Shinji Hosokawa to gold at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

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Premature Celebration: Feeling for the Molly Huddle’s of the World

The 10,000 meter race is a grueling race. At the IAAF World Track and Field Championship in Beijing, on August 24, American Molly Huddle would see Vivian Cheruiyot and Gelete Burka ahead of her as they crossed the finish line. Exhausted but elated to be crossing the line in third, Huddle raised her hands in triumph.

And in that split second before the line, fellow American and teammate, Emily Infeld passed Huddle to win the bronze.

There are no words really that can console the Mary Huddle’s of the world…except that you are human, and you are not alone.

Here is a great piece from NPR that highlights some of the more painful examples of premature celebration.

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Dodi Fayed – Executive Producer of Chariots of Fire – Died August 31, 1997

He died in one of the most famous car accidents in the 20th century.

Dodi Fayed and his friend, Diana, Princess of Wales, were in the back seat of a Mercedes-Benz W140 departing a hotel in Paris. Followed by camera-wielding men on motorcycles, the car lost control in the Pond de L’Alma tunnel, and tragically, on this day in 1997, both Dodi and Diana lost their lives.

Dodi Fayed was the eldest son of the Egyptian magnate, Mohamed Al-Fayed, who owned at the time the Harrods Department Store, the Fulham Football Club, and the Hotel Ritz in Paris, where Dodi and Diana stayed just before their demise.

dodi-al-fayed-princess-diana

Dodi was the executive producer of Chariots of Fire, the story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams competing for glory at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. If you don’t recall the movie, you probably would recall the movie’s theme by Vangelis. The film won four Oscars at the 1981 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Original Score.

On the re-release of Chariots of Fire during the 2012 London Games, quite a lot was written about the producer of the film, David Puttnam, and his money man, Dodi Fayed. For some

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In the Presence of Awesome, We Watch in Awe (Even Olympians)

Mekhi Gerrard giving up an enormous home run in the Little League World Series.
Mekhi Gerrard giving up an enormous home run in the Little League World Series.
Red Land Little League from Lewisberry, Pennsylvania beat Webb City, Missouri 18-0 in an opening game of the Little League World Series that took place in August.

Cole Wagner smashed a grand slam in an 8-run third inning to get his team up by 18 runs, which if you know baseball, is a lot! What’s even better – the reaction of the pitcher who surrendered the massive hit by Wagner. Watch the video below from the 45 second mark and see the absolute amazement of the pitcher, Mekhi Gerrard, who forgot he was a competitor, enjoying the moment.

Even at the Olympic level, athletes can find themselves in awe.

Bob Hayes was the man in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Everybody seems to have a story about him, and how awesome he was.

The 1992 US Men’s basketball team, aka The Dream Team, had ten of the 50 greatest players in NBA history at the Barcelona Games. According to Olympic.org, “So overwhelmed and star-struck were America’s basketball opponents they even requested photograph and autograph-signing sessions before playing them.”

And by the time

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The Elusive Nature of Time – When is a Tie a Tie and Not a Tie

Kanako WatanabeKanako Watanabe is one of the up-and-coming swimmers from Japan, who won gold in the 200-meter breaststroke at the world championships in Kazan, Russia in early August.

More interestingly, in that same competition, the bronze medal went to three swimmers as they all finished with the identical time of 2 minutes and 22.76 seconds.

In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the regulations set by the international swimming body FINA dictated that times were measured in tenths of seconds, and the first arbiter of times were human judges. In fact, judges would line up at the end of the pool where the race would finish. Not only did they time the swimmers with hand-held stopwatches, they also used their eyes to determine when the swimmer in their lane touched the wall, presumably seeing finishers with their peripheral vision to determine whether they finished ahead or behind swimmers in neighboring lanes.

In the men’s 100 meter freestyle competition, Don Schollander took gold in an Olympic record time of 53.4 seconds. Brit Robert McGregor took silver with a time of 53.5 seconds. However, two men ended up with identical third-place times. Both Hans-Joachim Klein of Germany and Gary Illman of the USA were determined by the judges to have touched the wall at 54 seconds flat. But using the unofficial electronic time available at the Tokyo Games, Klein finished one one-thousandth of a second faster, and was awarded bronze.

So remember, even today, every one one-thousandth of a second counts.

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