Me between 1964 Tokyo Olympians, Billy Mills and Andras Toro
One of the biggest sports stories of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was the come-from-behind sprint by Billy Mills to win the 10,000 meter finals.
For nearly two years, I’ve been hoping to meet the man. And last week, I met Billy Mills!
Thanks to fellow ’64 Olympian, Andras Toro, I enjoyed a couple of hours with Mills and his wife Pat. There’s so much to write about, but let me tell this story first.
On September 7, 2013, the International Olympic Committee gathered in Buenos Aires, Argentina to vote on the final three contenders to hose the 2020 Summer Olympics. The three cities up for selection were Istanbul, Turkey, Madrid, Spain and Tokyo, Japan.
A few months prior to the vote, Billy Mills and Pat Mills thought they could not remain silent, that Japan had a special place in their heart, and that if anyone could pull off a great Olympics, it was Japan. They very quickly produced a 1-minute video explaining why Japan should host the 2020 Games. They were not asked to do so, but based on phone calls he received from Japanese government and Tokyo2020 officials, Mills’ endorsement was a tremendous boost of confidence. It may have even played a role in the decision making.
Here’s the video – a rousing endorsement of Tokyo, Japan – from one of the brightest stars of the first Olympics held in Japan.
Of the three cities today that are bidding to host the 2020 Olympic Games, they’re all enchanting, they’re magical. They all could host a very successful Olympic Games. However when you consider the world today, there’s only one city that could truly capture the full potential and the spirit that the Olympic Games has to offer to the world. And that’s Tokyo. My vote? Tokyo, Japan 2020.
Andras Toro and me.Andras Toro, four-time Olympian, was one of the most dramatic stories of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. At the age of 24, as his dream of realizing a medal in the 1000-meter singles canoeing event evaporated on Lake Sagami in the semi-finals, the Hungarian made the fateful decision to defect from his homeland, Hungary, to a new land, the United States.
Toro is writing a book on his life and times, and I had the great honor of meeting him in Northern California a few days ago. I will write more detailed posts on his life in the future….but first, let me share some of the memorabilia of an Olympian.
The first photo is of Toro’s bronze medal and jersey he won at the 1960 Rome Olympics in the 500-meter doubles canoeing competition.
The next is a certificate of his fourth place finish in his canoeing event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. It has the signatures of the head of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee, Daigoro Yasukawa, and the head of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage. There must have been thousands of these documents. I wonder if they actually signed each one…
Here is a gift sent to him and other Olympians, a traditional Japanese wooden doll, known as “kokeshi“, which was a gift of a student’s association. You can see this particular doll was sent to Toro from a junior high school in Miyagi Prefecture.
The fairly large silk “furoshiki” below was likely handed to many visiting Olympians to the Tokyo Games. A furoshiki is a piece of square material which is a traditional way of wrapping items, like a bento box, with the corners coming together in a knot. This particular furoshiki was also a way for sporting goods manufacturer to market their company.
How about this lovely bottle opener that states it’s a gift of Shinjuku, which is an area where the Olympic Games were being held. The back of the box explains that currency in the time of the Edo Period (some 400 to 500 years ago) were oval in shape and made of gold, and that this particular bottle opener was a talisman of luck. Strangely, the item is called a “can opener”, so luck will definitely be needed if that’s what you’re trying to open.
And of course, there are pins galore. As I have written about previously, trading pins is a common activity at the Olympics. Toro appears to have hundreds if not thousands of pins accumulated over decades of Olympics.
After Toro gained American citizenship, he went on to compete in canoeing as a member of Team USA, as well as fulfill other roles as a canoeing coach for a Team USA and as an executive within the US Olympic Committee.
As a child, summer was hell for Bob Schul. Working on the farm, with the air hanging hot and heavy with dust, Schul did his best to do his chores on the farm, but there was no clear remedy for his asthma. As Schul wrote in his autobiography, In The Long Run, he resorted to wearing his grandfather’s WWI gas mask, but nothing could stop the wheezing. One of his brothers admitted to Schul that his ragged breathing was so bad at night that he feared he might not last the night.
Years later, Schul had battled through asthma with his running regimen, but he had not conquered it. And so, in October 1964, Schul was grateful. The “Summer” Olympics in Japan were actually held in the Fall to avoid the monsoon season. And when Schul stood at the starting line for the finals of the 5,000 meter run, the constant rain had cleared the air. “I knew this was the only chance I had for immortality in the athletic world, for it hit me one last time that Tokyo was the only place I could have run in the Olympics. My allergies would never have remained dormant anywhere else with the pollen and air pollution that was prevalent in big cities of the world.”
But it was wet and cold in the stadium, with the temperature at 21°C (51℉). This was particularly uncomfortable because, as Schul told me, the Japanese officials were so conscious of time, they wanted to make sure all runners were gathered so that they could start the event on time. All they could do was sit and wait in the cool air. Twenty minutes prior to the start of the race, Schul could feel the tension.
“No one in the room was talking, not even the Japanese officials. Everyone was deep in his own thoughts. You could feel the tension as we sat, side by side. I was leaning forward and glanced to my right, Jazy was looking my way and our eyes made a brief contact then he immediately turned his head. Still no sound. The tension was unreal.”
Schul was referring to Michel Jazy of France, who had broken the world record in the 5,000 in New York just before coming to Japan. And there were other strong competitors in the finals: his teammate, Bill Dellinger, Harald Norpoth of Germany, and the Australian, Ron Clarke, who only a few days earlier took bronze in the 10,000 meters. But Schul believed Jazy was his biggest threat.
As you can see in the video of the last three laps of the 5,000 meter finals, Jazy was in the lead with three laps to go, heading a tight pack of nine. Schul stayed back in seventh, and was under threat of being boxed in. Schul wasn’t in the best position considering he was the favorite to become the first American to win the 5,000 race at the Olympics.
With one lap to go, Jazy was still leading a pack of six, but the Russian Nikolay Dutov was on his right shoulder, Dellinger was third and Norpoth was just behind Dellinger. Schul was fifth…but that would change dramatically. Norpoth shot ahead of Dellinger and Dutov. But at the same time, Schul was running wide and passed Dellinger and Dutov as well. And as they made the final turn, Schul passed Norporth and was bearing down hard on Jazy.
You can see Jazy swing his head furiously, looking back to see Schul getting closer and closer. And then suddenly, Schul blew past the Frenchman in a burst that sent the crowd and the broadcaster into a frenzy. “Schul is coming in! Schul is going to win it! Schul is winning the 5,000 and he’s the first American ever to win the 5,000!”
It wasn’t just that Jazy was slowing down. After nearly 5,000 meters, Schul was speeding up. He told me that he ran his last lap in 54 seconds, and in fact his last 300 meters was in 38.7 seconds, which would translate to a 50-second pace for a full lap. A few days later Peter Snell of New Zealand would win the 1,500 meters with a final 300-meter sprint of 38.7 seconds too…on a dry track.
You can see it in the video….the cinder track was a muddy mess. And you can see it in the picture, mud was flying everywhere. But Schul didn’t care. “I felt as if somehow out-of-body, as if I was sitting on my own shoulder, observing how my body performed,” he said. On that muddy and chilly Autumn day in Tokyo, Schul was above it all. He was an Olympic champion.
Bob Schul victorious_The Olympic Century – XVIII Olympiad – Volume 16
When Bob Schul, a member of the US Air Force met Hungarian coach, Mihaly Igloi for the first time, Schul was familiar with Igloi’s challenging training regimen. But he was not prepared for it. Schul was on a limited two-week assignment in San Jose so he could train under Igloi. In order to maximize his time, Schul and Igloi decided they would do two a days, training in the morning and then again in the afternoon.
The first day, Schul was assigned to Laszlo Tabori, a world recorder holder in the 1500, and like Igloi, a Hungarian who defected after the Soviet Union ended a bloody rebellion by sending troops into Hungary. Thus Tabori was the man who introduced Schul to a level of interval training that for many would be considered punishing. Tabori, who resented having to babysit a newcomer, never told Schul how far they were going to run or how many times, which left Schul unclear when to save and use up energy.
At the end of his first morning session under Igloi’s training techniques, Schul returned to the house he was staying at and collapsed on the floor. Another runner staying at the house was Joe Douglas, who would go on to coach Carl Lewis at the Santa Monica Track Club. According to Schul, in his autobiography, In The Long Run, Douglas was heading out the door.
“Igloi a little rough on you this morning?” he asked between mouthfuls of cereal.
“I’ve never worked so hard in my life.” I wearily answered. “Will it be this hard every day?”
Joe looked up from the table and a smile crossed his face. “No,” he said. “Somedays will be much harder.” With that he took his last bite and headed out the door.
Schul of course got through those two weeks. And a few months later, he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Igloi had moved to the University of Southern California, which was now only an hour away by car, not six. This allowed Schul, as well as Max Truex (Schul’s commanding officer and Rome Olympian) to embark on an even more grueling work/train schedule. As he told me, he “had never trained that hard.”
Mihaly Igloi
Twice a day, and once on Sunday. 5:30 in the morning. Work out for an hour. All speed work. Repeat 100s. repeat 150s. Lots of sprinting. Then we’d go back to the base. Work Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Go back to the base. We’d stay there Wednesday night. All day Thursday. Friday night through Monday morning. And come back the next night, and return Wednesday morning. And leave to the university Saturday morning.
But for these three years, from the time Schul first met Igloi in May, 1961, to October 1964, Schul employed interval training to get him to world-class levels. In fact, entering the Tokyo Olympics, Bob Schul was so dominant that it was a foregone conclusion in the press that he was going to be the first American to win the 5,000 meters.
But victory and glory would be built on the punishing interval techniques developed and refined by Igloi. And Schul would go on to coach “good athletes who ran well in college and within a short time, six months to a year, had them running at a national level.” He did so using Igloi’s techniques. What would it be like to train under the Schul-Igloi interval training methodology? Below is an excerpt from Schul’s self-published book, “A Training Manual: A Method for Runners From Beginners to Olympic Contenders”, with an example of what a “hard day” of training might look like.
Set Series
10 X 200 meters (fresh); 50-meter walk between each
400-meter easy jog
5 minutes stretching and situps
8 X 100 meters (fresh) alternating 1 forward and 1 backward, with the last two forward
12 X 160 meters 1 fresh, 1 good guild up, 1 good; 40-meter walk between each
6 X 400 meters at specific times depending on the speed of the runner (around 63-64 seconds for faster runners, or 72-82 seconds for slower runners); 180 meter walk between
Set Series
10 X 200 meters (fresh); 50-meter walk between each
400-meter easy jog
5 minutes stretching and situps
8 X 100 meters (fresh) alternating 1 forward and 1 backward, with the last two forward
12 X 160 meters 1 fresh, 1 good guild up, 1 good; 40-meter walk between each
For better athletes:
An additional 8 X 160 meters (fresh); 40-meter walk between
Set Series
10 X 200 meters (fresh); 50-meter walk between each
400-meter easy jog
5 minutes stretching and situps
8 X 100 meters (fresh) alternating 1 forward and 1 backward, with the last two forward
12 X 160 meters 1 fresh, 1 good guild up, 1 good; 40-meter walk between each
9 X 200 meters (2 fresh, 1 good buildup); 50-meter walk between
10 X 100 meter shakeup (very easy, shaking the arms loose to relax the body)
According to Schul, this workout is over 12 miles of actual running and more importantly the heart rate is elevated for about two and a half hours.
Me, I’d rather write about it.
Igloi Glossary:
“Fresh”: relaxed state, no or little tension in the shoulders
“Good”: shoulders are under tension, while rest of the body is relaxed
Ollan Cassell signing the 1964 Tokyo Olympics poster in Rio; from the collection of Ollan Cassell
The doomsayers had their say – the Rio Olympics, under the crushing weight of the poor economy, scandals, environmental and health scares, worries of security, would fail.
Ollan Cassell has seen it all. As a member of the 4X400 US men’s track relay team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as well as in his role as the executive director of the Amateur Athletic Union, the American governing body for 17 sports in his time, Cassell has been to every Olympics since 1964, excepting the Athens Olympics in 2004.
So when he arrived in Rio, he read all the stories about the problems. He certainly noticed the empty stands. And he put up with the traffic snarls that paralyzed the city during the Games. But Cassell knew that once the Games started, the problems would fade to the background.
The org committee was broke, the country is in a mess. They threw their president out. They didn’t have the finances to get things done. But like all the other Olympics, for the athletes with medals on the line, they‘re ready to compete. Regardless of what the situation is, once the Olympics roll around the athletes are ready. The athletes are focused on competing and wining regardless of what’s going on. When the lights go on, and the gun goes off, the press writes about how great the games are.
And what was the most amazing event Cassell witnessed? “The most spectacular event I saw in Brazil was that 400 meter world record (set by Wayde van Niekerk). I couldn’t imagine anyone could go 43.3 seconds. It’s like going 21.5 for two 200s!”
Ollan Cassell at Christ the Redeemer; from the collection of Ollan Cassell
As was true with the world cup in Brazil, there were about 75000 to 80000 soldiers. I felt safe. No one in my group had been robbed or held up. The military was patrolling all the time. When you went out into the streets, sightseeing, you would see the military trucks with open beds and machines guns driving through the area. It was like an armed camp, but you felt safe. They had barriers in the sightseeing areas, big steel barriers the kind police use when they want to direct car and foot traffic into certain area. They were imposing. But that’s been true at all the Games. In London, they had barriers to make sure you went where they wanted you to go.
As for the environmental or health issues, to Cassell, it wasn’t an issue. “I didn’t hear of anyone getting sick because of the water. And I saw only one mosquito, which my granddaughter killed.”
But perhaps, one of the most satisfying parts of an Olympian’s life is to re-connect with the Olympian fraternity.
It’s a special feeling – being an Olympian. There are so few of us compared to the population of the world. In Olympic Villages there are about 10,000 Olympians, which is a select group. In the United States, there are about 5,000 living Olympians, with quite a few in their 90s. So it’s wonderful to see old friends and Olympians at these events.
Tragedies in our lives often change our lives, for the better or for the worse.
Olympian great, Bob Schul, at the age of 22 figured his track career was done. His grandfather, whom he adored, had been killed in a car accident. Schul went back to school at Miami University of Ohio near his hometown of West Milton, but could not muster the energy to study and get passing grades, and ended up dropping out.
Schul decided it was time to grow up, so he joined the United States Air Force where he studied electronics. Based in Detroit, Michigan, where the lack of track competitions and cold weather gave little incentive for training, Schul wrote in his autobiography, In the Long Run, that “I figured my running career was finished before it had ever begun.”
But only a few months after his time in the cold at Selfridge Air Force Base, his heart warmed when he saw a notice on a bulletin board asking for applicants to a special Air Force track team that, if good enough, could go to the Olympics in Rome. Schul applied, and after anxious weeks of waiting, he got the word that he was in. It was off to sunny and warm California, where he would be based at Oxnard Air Force Base not far north of LA.
Mihaly Igloi
Mihaly Igloi, was a very good miler for Hungary, and was on the Hungarian team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. While not a champion miler, he eventually became an effective track coach for the Hungarian army track club, Honved Budapest. In the 1950s, Igloi’s runners were commonly breaking world records in various middle and long distance categories, and were heavily favored to break more records and win medals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
But Igloi’s tragedy was a national tragedy. Over a decade prior to the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia and subsequent Soviet invasion in 1968, there was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a time when Hungarians revolted against their government and the Soviet puppet policies they lived under. Student protests led to police retaliation, which led to the forming of resistance militia across the country, which led to the Soviet leadership decision to crush the rebellion, which they did. On November 4, 1956, only 18 days prior to the start of the Melbourne Olympics, Soviet forces poured into Budapest. Over 2,500 Hungarians were killed, and over 200,000 fled their homeland.
Igloi and his track team were in Budapest, and saw the chaos of the Soviet invasion, but were fortunate to leave the country and arrive in Melbourne. Understandably, the Hungarians performed poorly at the Games. After the competition, Igloi, and one of his top runners, Laszlo Tabori, made the fateful decision to forgo their return to Hungary and defect to the United States.
Laszlo Tabori
With support from Sports Illustrated, Igloi and Tabori settled into life in the US, finding work in indoor track and meeting promoters, coaches and runners, according to this article in Runners World. Igloi eventually settled into a role as coach at San Joe State University in Northern California.
Max Truex, who finished sixth in the 10,000 meters race at the 1960 Rome Olympics, was in the Air Force. He had been trained by Igloi, who helped Truex to the best finish ever by an American in the 10K. And he happened to be Bob Schul’s commanding officer at Oxnard. Truex recommended that Schul get coached by Igloi. Truex arranged for temporary duty for Airman Schul in San Jose where Igloi was based at the time, so that Schul could train under Igloi in May, 1961.
And thus began a wonderful relationship, one that eventually resulted in Olympic gold.
Track & Field: US-Poland Meet: USA Max Truex in action, crossing finish line to win 5000M race vs Poland at 10th-Anniversary Stadium. Warsaw, Poland 7/30/1961 CREDIT: Neil Leifer (Photo by Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images) (Set Number: S441 )
It’s not an uncommon story. The shy or sickly child finds his way through sport. Bob Schul was not born with gregarious social graces, and tended to stick to himself. In the sixth grade, one of his few social interactions was playing tag with his fellow students, where he learned something important. “I found out I could get away and they couldn’t catch me.”
It was a childhood insight that would lead Schul to distance running, to the track team at Miami University of Ohio, a tutorship under Mihaly Igloi, the legendary track coach from Hungary, and gold medal glory at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Schul would become the first and only American to win the 5,000-meter race in Olympic history.
But first, Schul had to discover himself.
He knew he was a fast runner. But as he developed as an athlete, he and his coaches also learned he was tough, as well as toughminded. Schul addressed students his alma mater in 2014, and told them a couple of stories from his youth that spoke to a powerful internal drive.
In high school, Schul joined the football team – that’s American football, a sport in which you wear heavy padding and helmets and you launch yourself as projectiles into each other. As Schul told me, he was 155 cm tall and weighed only 59 kilos, and his teammates were 70 to 90 kilos heavy. “I had no business playing football.” He said that his high school was small, but his football team was very good, league champs in the previous five or so years.
There he was in a team practice, lined up in a Statue of Liberty, as a right end. The ball was snapped, he came off the line and back to the quarterback who handed him the ball. Schul swept left and tried to turn the corner when a defender crashed into Schul’s right side. Schul staggered to his feet, and likely in today’s game, might have sat down, if not for a play, for the rest of the game. Schul was back in the huddle, and played out the scrimmage, getting hit time and time again by the bigger boys. It was year’s later when talking with university football players that Schul actually had a hip pointer, and that players wore special foam protection for the hip, because “you can’t play with a hip pointer.” But Schul did, taking the punishment.
Bob Schul in high school
After graduating from high school, Schul enrolled at his neighborhood university, Miami of Ohio. He was not there on a scholarship. And in when he started, he was just fortunate to get a job washing dishes in the school dorm. But he was on the track team, and through the years, he worked himself into star status. It was April, 1964, only half a year from the Tokyo Olympics. Miami of Ohio was hosting a dual meet with a track team from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Schul decided that he would go for it, he would try to break the four-minute mile.
Roger Bannister had already accomplished that milestone, as it were, ten years previously, but no one had ever done it before in Ohio. So when Schul let it be known he was going for it on his home track, the buzz began. First things first, the track was a mess, particularly the inside track which had gotten messy due to the Spring rains. In the days before all-weather tracks, people ran on tracks that were composed of rocks or waste product formed into chunks and broken down more finely. The rain had washed bigger chunks of rock onto the inside track. The excess cinder had to be carted off and the track smoothed before the event. Schul told officials this needed to be done and volunteered to help.
As it turned out, nobody came out to clear the track, so he started doing it himself. He
She was born in cash-strapped Russia just before the fall of the Soviet Union with spina bifida, a situation that in Tatyana McFadden’s case left her paralyzed from the waist down in a broken-down institution in Leningrad known as “Orphanage 9.” Without funds for a wheelchair, Tatyana got around walking on her hands.
As fate would have it, her eyes locked with a visitor from America, Deborah McFadden, who in 1995 was visiting in her capacity as Commissioner of Disabilities for the US Health Department. Deborah and her partner decided to adopt Tatyana and brought her to Baltimore, Maryland, where Tatyana got the medical care and the family support she was not fated to receive in her home country.
And thanks to the opportunities and clearly her indomitable drive, Tatyana would go on to become one of the most successful athletes in the world. Over a span of four Paralympics since 2004 in Athens, Tatyana has garnered 16 medals for TeamUSA, including 7 golds, in wheelchair racing. Not only that, she has shown incredible range, winning over the entire spectrum of track distance. At the Rio Paralympics, she took silver in the 100 meter sprint and silver in the 42.2 kilometer marathon, as well as gold medals in between in the 400 meters, 800 meters, 1500 meters and 5000 meters.
Tatyana has enormous capacity not only to train and triumph, but to forgive. She set her sites on returning to her homeland and competing at the Winter Paralympics in Sochi in a completely different sport – Nordic skiing. Part of her motivation to learn a new sport was to see her biological mother, Nina Pilevikova. In front of her adopted and biological mothers, Tatyana incredibly took silver in 1K sprint for those who skied while sitting. Her capacity for triumph was matched by her capacity to empathize, as she related to the BBC in Sochi.
“It is of course hard as a mother. You carry a child for nine months, but if you think about it, knowing you can’t take care of your child, what do you do? Do you selfishly keep it, knowing you can’t have the medical….I needed a lot of medical treatment. And I needed attention quickly. That’s the toughest decision she has to make.”
Said her biological mother, “I am very proud of Tatyana. I am very happy to be here with all our family. I think people look at Tatyana and they have hope.”
In Sochi
Tatyana, like many Paralympians, do not aim to be inspirations. In fact, some often feel patronized by the label. Tatyana had to fend for herself in the orphanage and was brought up by parents who value perseverance in the face of difficulty and self-sufficiency. Her adopted mother, Deborah, understands that as she herself was also confined to a wheelchair for years due to a condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
Here’s Tatyana in her own words, highlighted in “The Mighty“, a site devoted to telling the stories of people with disabilities, diseases and mental illness.
People have commented that they are “inspired” by my story. But these compliments, made with the best intentions, can sometimes miss the point. “Inspired” often means they feel sorry for my condition and what I went through in my early life, and feel they should count their own blessings for what they have. But what they are missing is that I am who I am today not in spite of my disabilities, but because of them.
All of us competing in the Olympics and Paralympics have had our own unique challenges, our own strengths and talents that we have nurtured, and our own weaknesses and disabilities that we have overcome. The games in Rio are a test of our ability to push physical and mental limitations, and a testament to humanity’s indomitable spirit to adapt and excel.
The 10,000 meter race is grueling race that grinds for close to 30 minutes, and yet short enough to still feature fantastic sprints to the finish line. The finals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics was no different…but this one has a bit of a stench.
Khalid Skah of Morocco was locked in a two-person duel with Richard Chelimo of Kenya with only three laps to go. Skah and Chelimo were quite familiar with each other. The year previously, Chelimo helped set the pace for fellow Kenyan, Moses Tanui, at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, which allowed Tanui to lengthen his lead against Skah, and eventually win gold. In a race for individuals, that is considered fairplay teamwork.
Hammou Boutayeb, Richard Chelimo and Khalid Skah in the 10,000-meter finals of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Back in Barcelona, at the 24-minute mark of the 10,000-meter finals, Chelimo was in the lead with Skah close behind. That’s when they came upon Hammou Boutayeb, the 10,000-meter gold medalist from the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Boutayeb was unceremoniously lapped, as Chelimo continued his lead over Skah. “This is one of the most exciting races I ever witnessed,” said one of the broadcasters. “The crowd has stayed behind. It’s 25 to 11 (pm) in the Barcelona, Spain and 60,000 people in the stadium still cheering on these two athletes.”
Suddenly at the 25;10 mark, Boutayeb swung out wide and passed Chelimo, sliding into the innermost lane, placing Chelimo in a Moroccon sandwich. Chelimo at that point is very likely peeved that Boutayeb, a man he lapped, is playing tactics, but the Kenyan decides to push ahead of Boutayeb. Skah followed closely behind. After the announcer said “that was the dirtiest trick we’ve seen all night,” Boutayeb again sprinted out front, playing the pacemaker.
Official trying to stop Boutayeb.
And remarkably, as Chelimo and Skah pass Boutayeb, a Swedish official named Carl-Gustav Tollemar, came out onto the track in an attempt to grab and stop Boutayeb for nought. With one lap to go, Chelimo and Skah finally separated from Boutayeb and the two drove to an incredible back-and-forth sprint in the final 100 meters, ending with the Moroccan taking gold in a dramatic finish. Here’s how the announcers responded:
A: Listen to the crowd. They don’t like it.
B: I don’t like it. You don’t like it. The crowd of 60,000 people don’t like it.
A: They’re booing and whistling and throwing things here at Skah. It’s a bit unfortunate for him but he used Boutayeb for two or three laps and there will probably be a protest from the Kenyan group.
As it turns out, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) quickly disqualified Skah, making Chelimo the gold medal champion. Skah was informed that he was disqualified because he was seen talking with Boutayeb during the race, and was thus colluding with Skah to beat Chelimo. When Skah heard that, he exploded. According to The Complete Book of the Olympics 2012 Edition, Skah “had harsh words for Boutayeb, whom he accused of being an ‘animal, an imbecile’ who didn’t even know how to read or write.” Skah explained that he was actually telling Boutayeb to “go away and stop interfering”.
The next day, the IAAF Jury of Appeal ruled in favor of Skah, stating in the end that they could not prove any illegal assistance provided by Boutayeb to Skah, and that “Chelimo’s progress had not been physically impaired.” While the rulebook was eventually amended to penalize actions like the one Boutayeb took, Chelimo remained the silver medalist.
Daniel Dias winning 100-meter freestyle at the 2016 Rio Paralympics
Empty stands are a common photo-op at all Olympic Games, but they were particularly obvious at the Rio Olympics. A debilitating economy and high ticket prices made sure of that.
But the Rio Paralympics, following only a little over two weeks after the Rio Olympics, was under even greater threat due to the economic hardship of Brazil: funds to support the travel of athletes to Brazil from developing economies were delayed, and only 12% of tickets to all Paralympic events were sold. The organizers feared empty venues and death by embarrassment.
According to the Economist, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, borrowed funds from state-run companies to ensure all Paralympians were at the Games as planned, while cutting funds in other areas. He also took down big screens around Rio to encourage Brazilians to attend. To make it easier, organizers slashed the price of tickets, making entry as low as USD3, and made strong appeals to the public to pack the venues and cheer.
It worked. As the Guardian wrote, ticket sales for the Rio Paralympics had topped 2 million at the time of the article on September 10. in fact, that day welcomed attendance of 167,675, which was better than the best day at the Rio Olympics, by about 10,000. At the time of that writing, total attendance was approaching 2.4 million, which would make it the second-most attended Paralympics after the London Paralympics in 2012.
In those jam-packed venues, filled with the enthusiastic and raucous locals cheering on Team Brazil, emerged a star among stars. The day before the end of the Paralympics, a 28-year-old swimmer from Sao Paulo won his fourth gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle. Over the span of a 10-year career, Daniel Dias, who was born with malformed arms and legs, has won 24 medals in the Paralympics, including 14 gold medals.
Dias is a national hero, Brazil’s very own Michael Phelps and by the noise generated by the crowd inside the venue you could feel the weight of the nation’s hope on his shoulders. This would be pressure for some, but not Dias. “I try to enjoy everything. I feel it’s positive pressure and a great honour to represent this country with everybody watching on TV. I’m trying to do my best in the pool,” he said.
And how loud were the cheers for hometown hero, Daniel Dias, in his 100-meter freestyle final? Watch the clip below and listen to the roar of the crowd.
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