WASHINGTON — The death this week of Al Oerter, four-time
Olympic gold medalist in the discus throw, prompts some thoughts on
the great generation of field-event athletes that is now passing.
Oerter is the only Olympian to win four gold medals in his event
(1956, 1960, 1964, 1968) with an Olympic record every time.
Sprinter and long-jumper Carl Lewis won golds in four straight
Olympics but he did not set Olympic records in each win. And Lewis,
though one of the greatest athletes of his era, competed in a
different era, an era after the Olympic ideal of amateur sport had
been maculated by professional sports contracts.
In Oerter’s day there was no money in amateur sport, but there
were plenty of great athletes and not coincidentally great
characters. Another who passed away a few months back was
shot-putter Parry O’Brien, winner of two consecutive Olympic golds
and in his third attempt in 1960 a bronze. In 1964 O’Brien finished
fourth. Both of these athletes were innovators in their events and
legendary competitors, without displaying the guff we often see
today. They were also life-long athletes who exemplified the
athlete’s highest ideals: character, competitiveness, health. On
this last point Oerter’s experience might not be totally
convincing. He died at 71, but he died after overcoming a life of
high blood pressure since youth and cardiovascular problems. He
also was often afflicted with injuries in competition, injuries
that he usually overcame, often heroically.
His first two golds were the easy product of a prodigiously
gifted young athlete, but in 1964 and 1968 his feats amazed. Both
times he was injured, and in 1964 the injuries were appalling. Six
days before his event the 6’4” athlete, who weighed nearly 300
pounds, had fallen on a wet pavement and torn rib cartilage on his
throwing side while also damaging his neck. Team doctors advised
him not to compete and to lay off for six weeks. His response was,
“These are the Olympics. You die before you quit.” Calculating that
he could only throw in five of the allowed six efforts he let fly
with a tremendous heave on his last effort sending the discus far
enough to beat his great Czech rival, Ludvik Danek. By the time
Oerter’s discus landed he was convulsed in agony.
Harold Connolly, another Olympic gold medalist from Oerter’s era
— Connolly was a hammer thrower — esteemed Oerter “the greatest
field-event athlete of the century. There’s a magic about him when
he’s competing. He’s nervous before the meet. He doesn’t eat well
and his hands shake. But once the event is about to start, a
calmness settles over him. The other athletes see it, and it
intimidates them. They watch him, and they are afraid of what he
might do.” Well, whatever he did it would always be by the book. He
competed until 1987, after reaching the finals in the Olympic
trials of 1984 at the age of 47. When he quit he observed, “The
drug culture had taken over.”
I suspect the “drug culture” is a concomitant of the big money
that has been injected into sports at the highest level today. The
Olympic ideal of amateurism is long dead. With its passing has gone
the love of sport for its own sake, the sheer fun of competition.
After visiting an Olympic training facility in the 1990s, Oerter
rendered his judgment of the professionalism that has subverted the
amateurism of his day. According to the New York Times, he
lamented, “I saw these athletes in their 30s training full
time….That’s their life. What happened to the rest of it? I’m
happy that I had a normal life, with a career and family. That
makes a person whole.”
The pure amateurism of the Olympics was a 19th century liberal
ideal. I have always wondered how the liberals could allow this
ideal to fall victim to the mercenary impulse. It was one of the
ideals that they got right, and I have not heard a peep of protest
from them as the Giant Corporations and the super patriots
subverted that ideal. Well, here I stand waving the banner of
amateurism. Why is a modern Eleanor Roosevelt or Bertrand Russell
not standing here with me? It is because — as I have been saying
for years — modern liberalism no longer produces such liberal
paragons, just hustlers and the Clintons?
