A Time Of Wonder, Joy And Glory For Losers

Neither my two friends nor I qualified for the Olympic trials the following weekend: we watched from the stands, engrossed by the drama below. We saw Jim Golliday pull up lame on his first stride out of the blocks in the 100 meters—and continue to the end, despite the pain in his leg. He finished last. Lindy Remigino, hopelessly outclassed in the previous two meets, surprised even himself by finishing second and qualifying for the team. A month later he was to surprise the world at large by winning the Olympic championship. The Ashen-felter brothers, Bill and Horace, edged out McMullen in the steeplechase, denying him his trip to Helsinki.

After the last event, all of the competing athletes, some in street clothes, some still in sweats, paraded to the center of the huge arena. Behind them fluttered a row of flags representing the nations whose athletes they would compete against in Helsinki. Somebody recited something appropriate over the public-address system, and then dozens of pigeons seemed to explode into the air from boxes placed around the track. As the band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner, the pigeons, as if by signal, assembled into formation, circled the field twice and finally came to roost at the scoreboard end of the stadium where the Olympic torch flamed.

That was a dozen years ago. The NCAA has now set up a meet for athletes hailing from small-pond colleges so they can compete among their own breed and not get in the way of the big boys. In order to compete in the National AAU championships an athlete must qualify by having attained a certain level of performance, such as running the mile in 4:07—a mark that might possibly have won the event back in 1952. The small-pond athlete (at least the not exceptionally talented one) has been legislated out of competing in the big meets. This is progress, I suppose, but I still look back warmly to the time when even a sandlotter could take part in his equivalent of the World Series.