Rome 1960: The Olympics That changed the
World
By David Maraniss
(Simon & Schuster, 478 pages, $26.95)
Reviewed by Alan B. Somers
In 2004, NBC presented a program titled “1960: The Last Olympics
of Innocence,” and in 2008 David Maraniss gives us Rome 1960: The
Olympics That Changed the World. Why the fascination for this
Olympics exists escapes me, and I was there as a participant. I was
not aware either of our fleeting innocence or of our role in
changing the world.
As editor in chief Tyrrell has reported in these pages before, I
certainly tried to change the world, at least the world of
swimming. The 1960 Olympiad was the first in which swimmers shaved
their bodies. Competing in the 400-meter freestyle, I refused to
shave, insisting that it would have negligible consequences while
doing irreparable damage to my dignity. I qualified first and in
doing so set an Olympic record. Admittedly, something went wrong in
the finals, and I finished last. But I did make worldwide
headlines, and frankly I am disappointed that Maraniss, in the
welter of facts and anecdotes he brings to this book, never
mentions my heroics. Possibly that is because I figured outside his
theme.
Rather than change the world I endeavored to prevent change.
Maraniss makes clear that he is one of those liberals always eager
for change. As befits a longtime member of this magazine’s board of
directors, I am dubious of change.
Back to Maraniss. He does explode NBC’s view of the 1960
Olympics; Olympic innocence ended long before 1960. However, he
does not make a very good case for his thesis that this particular
Olympiad changed the world. The world was changing whether 1960 was
an Olympic year or not.
Actually, after reading this book I got to wondering why the
author became so intrigued by the 1960 Olympics. As I figure it, he
was 11 years old when these Games occurred. It was probably the
first Olympics he was aware of. Moreover, it was certainly the
first with any significant television exposure. That is a matter he
well documents. The images of the athletes (he mostly focuses on
track and field) were probably seared deeply into his bright
prepubescent mind and created a lifelong interest. Despite my
dissatisfaction that he missed my hairy performance, I am indebted
to him for stoking old memories. Moreover, he does provide
information that I either never knew or had forgotten, for instance
that my lifelong friend and Indiana University teammate, Mike Troy,
carried the American flag at the closing ceremony.
Maraniss suggests the Olympics had an impact on the Red
China–Nationalist China (aka Taiwan) issue, regarding rights to the
name China. He also believes that the Olympics affected South
African racial policies. In reality it is the other way around.
These were worldwide political and social issues that affected the
Olympics. The Red Chinese imposed on the International Olympic
Committee to force the Nationalist Chinese to adopt the name Taiwan
for their team. Equally powerful political forces prevailed on the
IOC to demand integration of the South African Olympic team. The
South Africans resisted and were banned from competition in 1964.
South Africa was not readmitted until 1992. A generation of South
African athletes, both black and white, bore the brunt of these
impotent policies, much as the 1980 United States and 1984 Soviet
teams would when a tough Jimmy Carter and even tougher Leonid
Brezhnev would prevent their countries’ teams from participating as
an extension of their foreign policies.
Maraniss states that “the contest shimmered with performances
that remain among the most golden in athletic history.” I recall
some great performances, but what Olympics does not abound with
great performances? That is why we watch them for two weeks every
four years. He sees some special poignancy with political overtones
in the great black athlete Rafer Johnson carrying the United States
flag at the opening ceremonies while civil right demonstrations
were agitating the home front. But why would Johnson not lead the
American contingent into the Games? This wonderfully genial and
accomplished athlete was a two-time Olympian, a world record
holder, and student body president at UCLA. Maraniss makes much of
the Soviet-USA rivalry. Rivalries have always existed and always
will, as witnessed by the current China-USA comparisons, or as we
might recollect from the rivalry between the USA and the Nazis in
the 1936 Games.
Baron De Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympics, tried to
deemphasize such chauvinism in the Games, but the combination of
the nationalistic press and the seemingly hard-wired nationalism of
the spectators will not allow the old baron’s transnational ideal
to take hold. Maraniss has uncovered antics worthy of the Keystone
Kops surrounding our State Department, the CIA, the KGB, and the
Soviets, which reveals some of the fatuousness of the Olympics as
an extension of the Cold War.
Avery Brundage, president of the IOC in 1960, is savaged by
Maraniss for allegedly being a Nazi sympathizer, an autocrat, a
plutocrat, delusional, and a philanderer of the sort that Maraniss
never found particularly offensive when he wrote his Clinton
biography. Brundage was a stickler for amateurism. Thanks to his
severity, young swimmers, like myself, were prevented from even
checking clothing baskets into swimming pools, as that would make
us professional athletes. Yet he accepted at face value Soviet
assurances that their state-supported athletes were amateurs.
Perhaps Brundage was just around too long. Back in 1912 his
simple interpretation of amateurism motivated him to turn in his
fellow competitor in the 1912 decathlon, Jim Thorpe, as a
professional. As the century wore on and totalitarian states
entered the Olympics, this old gent may have lost sense of how the
world was changing. Before he ignored the professionalism of Soviet
athletes, he ignored the heinousness of Nazism and allowed the
Games to go on in 1936 in Berlin. At least from those Games we now
have the stirring images of Jesse Owens displeasing Hitler.
To put Brundage into perspective, he graduated from the
University of Illinois in 1909 as a civil engineer. Three years
later he made the Olympic team in the decathlon and pentathlon,
finishing 16th and 6th respectively. He then competed for another
nine years, and one suspects he was not subsidized in any way, thus
contributing to his austere vision of amateurism.
Brundage then went on to become quite rich running a Chicago
construction firm. Wealthy people were necessary to manage the
Olympic movement. Today money abounds from television, commercial
endorsements, and government. These factors have had more to do
with changing the Games than anything, and Brundage might be more
deserving of the idealistic sports fan Maraniss’s admiration than
his contempt.
If the reader is expecting a comprehensive report of the 1960
Games, he will be disappointed. Many sports are reported
anecdotally. On track and field Maraniss writes vividly and the
book becomes a page-turner. On other sports the book frankly bores.
More importantly, on the large issues Maraniss want to take
up—politics, race, and Avery Brundage—the author is unpersuasive.
Unless you have a burning interest in the subject, your time could
be better spent on other pursuits. Like a biography of Avery
Brundage written by David Maraniss.
Alan B. Somers, a former American and World record holder,
was a Pan American Games champion and member of the 1960 Olympic
swimming team.
