Search Results for: 1964

US Swim Team May be Swimming Upstream in Rio

From upper left clockwise: Johnny Weissmuller: 5 gold medals in 1924 and 1928; Don Schollander: 4 gold medals in 1964; Dara Torres: 4 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze in 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008; Mark Spitz: 9 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze in 1968 and 1972; Jenny Thompson: 8 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004; Michael Phelps: 18 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze in 2004, 2008 and 2012
From left to right:
Johnny Weissmuller: 5 gold medals in 1924 and 1928; Don Schollander: 4 gold medals in 1964; Dara Torres: 4 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze in 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000 and 2008; Mark Spitz: 9 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze in 1968 and 1972; Jenny Thompson: 8 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004; Michael Phelps: 18 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze in 2004, 2008 and 2012

Except for Katie Ledecky, who won five gold medals and set world records, the US swimming team had a relatively weak World Championships. Despite the fact that the Americans were atop the medal standings, they had the lowest totals in an Olympics or Worlds in the past 50 years.

Americans have been dominant in swimming. At every Olympics since 1964, the American swimming team won the medal count, often overwhelmingly. There was one bump in this relatively smooth ride through the past 50 years of international competition, when the East German team had the largest medal haul, led by Kristin Otto, the first female to win 6 gold medals in a single Games.

But according to Michael Phelps in this NBC OlympicTalk blog post, the American swimming team finds itself in unfamiliar territory: “Honestly, I really don’t know what to say about what I’ve seen over there,” said Phelps. “An interesting place

Continue reading →

On Being Grateful: Bob Schul

Bob Schul victorious_
Bob Schul upon winning the 5,000 meter race in Tokyo, from the book “The Olympic Century – XVIII Olympiad – Volume 16”

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.

Continue reading →

The New Emblem for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

tokyo2020emblem

The emblem for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was simple and bold.

The emblem for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was presented last week. I’m no art or design expert, but the new one reminds me of the JAL re-branding of the 1990s.

Japan_Airlines_Logo_(1989_-_2002)_svg

The design concept, which you can see more clearly in the video, feels like some cubist blend of Miro and Picasso.

I’m sure it will grow on me.

Continue reading →

Joe Frazier Wins Gold in Tokyo With Broken Hand

From
Joe Frazier, recovering from surgery to his thumb at a hospital in Philadelphia after returning from Tokyo. From “The Olympic Century – XVIII Olympiad – Vol 16.

What a great picture of Joe Frazier, the butcher from Philadelphia, and gold-medal heavyweight from the Tokyo Summer Games. For years, Frazier was the verbal punching bag of Muhammad Ali, tolerating all sorts of insult regarding his looks. But here, Frazier is looking handsome and cool in his PJs.

You can see the left hand in a cast. At the Tokyo Summer Olympics, he apparently broke his Joe Frazier in Tokyo USA shirtthumb in the semi-final match with Vadim Yemelyanov, the Soviet boxer he knocked out in the second round. He knew something was wrong with his hand as he had trouble gripping with it. But the hand felt better after soaking in cold water, and so he didn’t bother getting x-rays. Frazier went on to gain a 3-2 decision over Hans Huber of Germany to win gold. While he clearly favored his right, he did occasionally throw a left hook. In the locker room, he must have been feeling supremely

Continue reading →

Makoto Sakamoto – Tokyo Olympian and Coach of Champions

Mako Sakamoto and Roy_ 1I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many Olympians from the 1964 Summer Olympics, over the phone, but yesterday I met in person with my very first oversees interviewee, Mr Makoto Sakamoto. Mako-san was visiting Tokyo, and it was a tremendous honor to meet the highest scoring performer on the US Men’s Gymnastics team in 1964.

Born in bombed-out Tokyo Japan, Mako-san left for the United States with his family when he was 7. At the age of 16, he got his US citizenship. At the age of 17, he was recognized as the country’s best gymnast, and represented America in the country of his birth, competing with the very best in the world, finishing 20th overall in the individual competition.

The world of men’s gymnastics at that time was dominated by countries like Japan, USSR,

31 JUL 1984: THE UNITED STATES TEAM CELEBRATE AFTER RECEIVING THEIR GOLD MEDALS FOR THEIR VICTORY IN THE MENS TEAM GYMNASTICS COMPETITION AT THE 1984 LOS ANGELES OLYMPICS. THE USA TEAM COMPRISES PETER VIDMAR, BART CONNER, MITCHELL GAYLORD, TIMOTHY DAGGETT, JAMES HARTUNG AND SCOTT JOHNSON.
31 JUL 1984: THE UNITED STATES TEAM CELEBRATE AFTER RECEIVING THEIR GOLD MEDALS FOR THEIR VICTORY IN THE MENS TEAM GYMNASTICS COMPETITION AT THE 1984 LOS ANGELES OLYMPICS. THE USA TEAM COMPRISES PETER VIDMAR, BART CONNER, MITCHELL GAYLORD, TIMOTHY DAGGETT, JAMES HARTUNG AND SCOTT JOHNSON.
Yugoslavia and Italy. The US was competitive, but not considered a threat.

But in 1984, a team whose head coach was Melbourne and Rome Olympian, Abie Grossfeld,

Continue reading →

Dominating in the Discus: 4-Time Champion Al Oerter

From Melbourne in 1956 to Mexico City in 1968, Al Oerter was one of the most dominant performers in any sport, winning gold and breaking Olympic records in four successive Summer Games. In 1964, he had to overcome tremendous pain to win. As he was once quoted as saying, “I slipped one day in the wet weather, and I tore a fairly good portion of my rib cage. Given any other environment, I would have stopped. I don’t what it was. But I can remember saying ‘These are the Olympic Games and you’d die for them.’ I really felt that at that moment. I was there and I was going to do my best.”

Australian, Warwick Selvey also competed in the discus throw and shot put in Rome in 1960, as well as in the discus in Tokyo in 1964. Selvey told me that by studying a slow motion series of 20 or so frames of a single throw by Oerter, Selvey was able to reproduce his technique, with the help of his coach Alan Barlow in Melbourne.Warwick Selvey

“Al crouched close to the ground, lower than most men, so the drive through his legs was greater than others, creating a longer arm pull on the discus,” explained Selvey, who won 18 Australian Championships in athletic events. “When he did his turns in the discus ring, he transferred his weight from his left leg at the rear of the ring to the right leg in

Continue reading →

The Rise (in Rome) and Fall (in Tokyo) of Nikita Khruschev

New York Times, October 16, 1964
New York Times, October 16, 1964

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was at the height of his influence and powers in 1960. At the kickoff of the Olympic Summer Games in Rome, he released a letter to all Olympians that grew feelings of good will towards the Soviet Union.

Rome 1960_MaranissAs David Maraniss wrote in his brilliant book, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World, “Khrushchev’s message was meant not just for the Soviets but for all athletes gathered in Rome, even if it was boilerplate Soviet rhetoric… ‘The Olympic Games were worthy because they improved brotherly contact among sportsmen of different countries,’ he noted, concluding: ‘I wish all sportsmen taking part the best success in sports as well as in work, studies, and their private lives.’”

Maraniss emphasized that “American diplomats had been frustrated for days by the seeming propaganda coup the Soviets gained when newspapers around the world reported on the message of peace and friendship that Premier Khrushchev sent to the Olympians in Rome.”

Khruschev, in the summer of 1960, was heading to New York City to address the United Nations, and he was at the top of his game.

But four years later, at the end of the first week of the Tokyo Summer Games, the world learned that one of the most powerful men in the world was deposed. As Ron Barak, US gymnast at the 1964 Games related to me, it was all a bit of a mystery.

“The day in the Village began like any other day during that two-week period. Then people began noticing the Soviets were gone. No one had witnessed their departure and until they returned late in the day, no one knew what was behind it. But there

Continue reading →

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

the narrow road to the deep north cover

An Olympian I interviewed told me about a time he returned from the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and gave a talk at a Rotary Club. He spoke about how wonderful the experience was, and how friendly and helpful the Japanese were. The Olympian’s father who was at the presentation had a friend who remembered the Japanese differently, and resented the Olympian’s talk.

1964 was only a couple of decades removed from World War II. For those who served in the Pacific War on either side, atrocities were the product of everyday life, particularly in the latter years of the war.

A book I am currently reading, “The Narrow Road to the Deep North“, tells the story of an Australian POW, Dorrigo Evans, who worked on the infamous “Line”, the construction of the Burma Railway. Hundreds of thousands of slave labor, made up of PoWs and captive Asian civilian labor, perished in the effort.

This Man Booker Award winning novel by Richard Flanagan is extraordinary in its descriptions of the human psyche, not only from the hero’s survivor complex to the sword-wielding, poetry-citing slave-driving commander.

Dorrigo Evans is the surviving protagonist of the novel, and I was struck by this reference to fleeting nature of life and beauty. He and his lover Amy are lying on the beach, an idyllic time prior to the horrors that awaited months later.

Dorrigo held his arm up to the white-streaked sky and thought he had never seen anything so perfect. He closed one eye and with his other watched his finger touch the beauty of a cloud.

Why don’t we remember clouds? He said.

Because they don’t mean anything.

And yet they’re everything, thought Dorrigo, but this idea was too vast or absurd to hold or even care about, and he let it drift past him with the cloud.

Is it reference to Basho? This was one of

Continue reading →

Kamekura’s Olympic Emblem Design

Yusaku Kamekura's first Tokyo Olympics poster
Yusaku Kamekura’s first Tokyo Olympics poster
Red sun over Olympic gold – a striking design that won over the Olympic organizers instantly. As explained by this article in pingmag.jp, the 1964 Olympics emblem was designed by Yusaku Kamekura in what might seem a flash of genius.

“Legend has it that Kamekura forgot when he had to submit his design and on the day of the deadline got a phone fall. He dashed this out in less than two hours. Of course, that’s not to say that he just did it off the cuff – clearly he had been mulling over the concept for a long time in his head. The design has real impact and perhaps cannot be better for its striking minimalism. It was

Continue reading →

To Cut or Not to Cut – A Tale of Two Appendices (Diver Soren Svejstrup and Swimmer Dick Roth)

Soren Svejstrup, greeted in Tokyo upon arrival (from the collection of Soren Svejstrup)
Soren Svejstrup, greeted in Tokyo upon arrival (from the collection of Soren Svejstrup)

Diver, Søren Svejstrup of Denmark, was performing well after the first round of the ten-meter dive competition in 1964. In the second round, Svejstrup was in fourth place and closing in on a medal opportunity. But in the end, despite error-free dives, he could not make it to the finals.

Without the pressure of the competition, the next day, Svejstrup took a ride in a car around Tokyo with friends, enjoying life as a tourist for a change. The following day, however, the 19-year old woke up in a world of pain. First the Danish team doctor told him to rest, before being taken to a hospital, where the doctors could not figure out the issue. Finally, Svejstrup was taken to a university hospital where they told the diver that his appendix was rotten, and had to be removed right away.

“At the theatre they gave me an injection in my spine, and a mirror so I could watch the whole operation. The doctor was very nice, and said ‘we will give you the smallest mark on your stomach possible, so you can look nice when you dive from the 10 meter back in Denmark’.”

It was as if his body told him, “I was patient with you. Now you need to listen to me.” As Svejstrup explained to me, “my appendix knew what to do, and what not to do.”

DickRoth_display_imageOn the other hand, swimmer, Dick Roth, simply did not listen to his body.

Roth had had a long day after the opening ceremony at the National Stadium. He went to bed around 9pm but couldn’t fall asleep, feeling pain in his stomach. He threw up several times during the night, and finally at 6am he woke up and was taken to the infirmary.

They probed and tested the 17-year old, and then sent him to a hospital at a US military base a couple of hours away. They told him they had to cut out his appendix. The surgical team was ready to operate. All he had to do was sign a paper allowing the surgery.

Roth said “No”. Several hours later, Roth’s parents were located and brought in. They were ready to sign the form – they did not even want to imagine the possibility of their son’s appendix bursting in the middle of a competition, lifetime opportunity or not.

Roth insisted on delaying the surgery, somehow convinced his parents not to authorize the surgery.

And that was it. Roth went on to set world record in the 400-meter individual medley, and take gold for the US.

Continue reading →