V 14 N. 67 Oklahoma State 4x880 World Record Holders (1965) Finally Inducted into OSU Hall of Honor

 

                              Dave Perry (kneeling), Tom Von Ruden, James Metcalf, John Perry

After 59 years, James Metcalf, John Perry, Tom Von Ruden, and Dave Perry were inducted into the OSU Hall of Honor recently.  The Perry brothers and Jim Metcalf were present.  Tom Von Ruden passed away in 2018.   When I was at the University of Oklahoma we frequently ate their cinders in various races.  It was always a great rivalry.  Coming from Ohio, I didn't fully understand the origins of that rivalry. We referred to them as 'The Damned Aggies' and we were known to them as 'the Tea Sippers'.   I just knew we better be ready whether it was at a cross country meet, indoor track, or outdoor track, or a spelling bee.  We had an annual outdoor dual meet and again, both teams knew they best be ready to do extra service for a team victory.  In typical dual meet fashion, some of the lesser lights on the team often played a huge role by getting a third place in the Triple Jump or the Discus throw to add to the team's point total.  I sort of recall that Von Ruden occasionally filled in during the Triple Jump.  Running three races was not unheard of in those meets.  

But this honor is really about the Cowboys raising the bar to the international level when they set the World Record back in 1965.  The Sooners first became aware that there was something in the making for the OSU quartet in 1964 when we met them at the Albequerque Invitational Indoors in the Two Mile Relay.  We hung tough with them for two legs with Long Beach State in the mix and Darryl Taylor of LBSU can attest to that, as he was in that race.  On that third leg Von Ruden blew everyone away with  a 1:51.6 leg and their fourth runner had the track to himself the rest of the way.  A 1:51 in those days was national caliber.  We felt pretty good getting second in that meet.   We were also lucky to win another indoor Two Mile Relay at Texas Tech when the Cowboys got caught in a snowstorm on the way to the meet and didn't get there in time.  We still had to beat Texas, Houston, and Abilene Christian that night.  If it hadn't snowed, we probably would have had another second place trophy.  We had to come over the same roads as they did.  I never heard exactly why they didn't make it.  We may have left campus a few hours earlier.

Remarkably those four guys came to OSU with less than stellar credentials.  Von Ruden was a walk on from Coeur d'Alene, ID,  Metcalf was a fair to middlin' half miler out of Altus, OK.  His older brother Danny had been a very good distance runner for the Cowboys and had graduated by the time Jim arrived.  The Perry brothers, a year apart came to the university from Muskogee, OK with 49-50 second 440 PR's.  I think one of the things that helped them was that Coach Ralph Higgins kept them out of cross country for the most part and made them into half milers, focusing on a lot of repeat 220's in the Fall season.  I think only Von Ruden occasionally ran cross country.  In 1968 he would qualify for the finals of the Olympic 1500 meters.  They also raced a flat out 440 each Friday in an intrasquad relay during that Fall training period.  John shared their workouts with me and Bill Blewett a few years ago and we were astounded.  I was also impressed with how slow those 220's were run in the early Fall and then very gradually built up speed as Winter approached.  By the time Indoor season came along, they were pretty well tuned.  They showed that in that first 1964 race in Albequerque.  

The following youtube link is a 7 minute presentation played at the induction ceremony.

History of the World Record Team

Dave Smith is the main narrator of this video. Dave is old school and understands how important the relays were to all of the colleges and universities. Dave ran for Michigan State and was a Big 10 Champion. I think he ran three events in the Big 10 Championships and won 2.  So he knows what we used to go thru at the relays and doubling and tripling. 

That’s the assistant AD  holding the plaque.  Tom’s wife was in Europe for a long planned trip with girl friends. 

An older  correspondence with John Perry gave more backdrop on their team history beginning with that Albequerque race in 1964 and their World Record with the splits.  

(Albequerque)     Jim Metcalf was a freshman and thus not eligible to run varsity in those days. Here is a recap of those days in John Perry's words:

"We ran John Winingham, John Perry, Tom Von Ruden and Dave Perry in that order. Don’t have the splits except the race was even until Von Ruden got the baton, New Mexico was also in the race and was the pre-meet favorite. This was Tom’s breakthrough race and he ran a 1:51.6, destroyed the field and gave Dave a huge lead. Our winning time was 7:42.8, Oklahoma ran 7:47.4 and Long Beach ran 7:48.4.  George Brose was on the Oklahoma team. Darryl Taylor and Tom Jennings were on the Long Beach team and Darryl also ran the 1000. He was third behind Jim Dupree. OSU also won the mile relay in 3:16.1, Striders were second in 3:16.3 with Adolph Plummer running a great sub 47 anchor leg. We ran Jack Miller, Ray Bothwell, Dave Perry and John Perry in that order. Jack Milller was the Big 8 indoor 440 Champion that year and was unbeatable on the first leg. Our mile relay team was better than our two Mile relay team. The mile relay team won every indoor race including the Big 8 and USTFF in Milwaukee. I’m not counting Chicago where Bothwell got knocked down. However, we changed the order: Jack Miller, John Perry, Ray Bothwell and Dave Perry."

"We only ran one more two Mile relay Indoors in 1964, a winning 7:32.4 over Drake who had just won the Indoor USTFF. The meet was at Kansas State on 220 indoor dirt. Our splits were John Winingham 1:53.9, John Perry 1:53.1, Tom Von Ruden 1:51.5, Dave Perry 1:53.9. We also won the Mile relay in 3:15.2 (David anchored in 47.8)."

"Outdoors, Higgins decided to concentrate on the Mile relay because Missouri could beat everyone in the Midwest relay circuit in the 2 mile and DMR. They had 4 good 880 runners: Larry Ray, Bill Rawson, Charlie Conrad and Robin Lingle at anchor. Lingle was a lot faster than any of us in 1964 and Rawson and Conrad were 1:50.0 runners.  Our Mile relay team got third at Kansas and then went to Penn instead of Drake for the final big relay meet. We got two close thirds at Penn. Villanova beat us without Noel Carroll (Tom Sullivan anchored and beat me)  in the two mile and Morgan State and St. John’s beat us in the Mile relay. That’s about it for 1964, we took a lot of road trips after school was out including Stillwater-Houston-Corvallis. We lost our edge and didn’t run that well. David made the NCAA finals in the 800m and qualified for the Olympic Trials where he was eliminated in the semis. I made it through the  first round of the NCAA but got knocked out in the semis."

"We waited until 1965 to race Missouri and beat them at the Texas Relays  in 1965. Now we were faster on every leg than Missouri (Jim Metcalf, John Perry, Tom Von Ruden and David Perry) and they never raced us again. That’s the year that we ran 7:18.3 at Fresno for the official outdoor World Record. It could have been faster but David hadn’t fully recovered from Strep throat. Our best individual times in 1965 were Metcalf 1:48.5, John Perry 1:48.5, Tom Von Ruden 1:49.2 (relay) and Dave Perry 1:47.7."

The official splits in the WR race were  James Metcalf  1:50.6 ,    John Perry  1:47.5 ,   Tom Von Ruden, 1:49.2 ,   David Perry  1:51.0 .    David was recovering from a bout with strep throat.  Three weeks later he ran a 1:47.7  at the Federation meet in Houston.  

from Darryl Taylor:

"It is beyond incredible that this former LBSC 49er was allowed to receive and pass the baton both indoors and out with such stellar athletes in the       1960s..I believe I ran 5 indoor races and 3-4 outdoor races. In an open 800/880 I could not finish anywhere near these  amazing runners. But with the pressure of not letting the team down, of those 8-9 2MR  races, only once did I have the slowest split.  And THAT  is the highlight of my middle distance  running career . So PROUD, so HONORED and so much respect to Tom Jennings for having the faith in me!  RIP TVR!"

George-Thanks for sharing!

49ER Forever!

Very nice.  It's so interesting that the WR 2-mile relay was made up of ordinary runners who eventually became extraordinary.  It is equally interesting that their times of 1:51 were exceptional at that time, allowing me to believe that my 1:54.6 and 48.6 (R) were not as bad as I have thought in recent years.  Bill Schnier

V 14 N. 66 What The Future May Hold For Human Performance

I'm reading a book titled  "The Coming Wave" by Mustafa Suleyman co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence firms Deepmind and Inflection AI.  I predict it will replace Fred Wilt's "How They Train". 

 Fascinating read about what AI , Bio-Technology, robotics, and DNA research are up to and capable of doing and will do in the near future.  The advances are so huge and mind boggling.  A couple of paragraphs on pages 85 and 86 caught my attention in relation to athletic performance.  In it Suleyman talks about altering humans with Biotech and even creating new humans with genetically altered DNA.   Here is what he says, highlights are mine:

Alongside a host of other promising interventions, the inevitability of physical aging--what seems like a fundamental part of human life--is called into question.  A world where life spans are set to average a hundred years or more is achievable in the next decades.  Nor is this just about longer life; it's about healthier lives as we get older.

    Success would have major societal repercussions.  At the same time cognitive, aesthetic, physical, and performance-related enhancements are also plausible and would be as disruptive and reviled as they are desired.  Either way, serious physical and self-modifications are going to happen.  Initial work suggests memory can be improved and muscle strength enhanced.  It won't be long before "gene doping" becomes a live issue in sports, education, and professional life.  

    Wow, are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Yep.  And Suleyman goes on:

Already the first children with edited genomes have been born in China after a rogue professor embarked on a series of live experiments with young couples, eventually leading, in 2018 to the birth of twins, known as Lulu and Nana, with edited genomes.  His work shocked the scientific community, breaching all ethical norms.  

It would be interesting to know what the experiments that went wrong looked like.    They are probably pickling  in a jar of formaldahyde as I write this.   Makes you wonder what gene edits might have been applied to those Chinese twins.  Will they be adapted to run a marathon in an hour and thirty minutes or high jump nine feet with a two step approach and a scissor kick?   

And with technology advancing so rapidly,  you can now acquire a work bench gene splicing  tool for under $25,000 and start rebuilding  yourself or your grand kids in your garage.  Just have to park the Tesla in the driveway. There is no telling what some 'smart' folks may be cooking up in their home labs right now, and eventually Frankenstein-like athletes may, correction, will be appearing on sports fields.  If it is considered unethical or immoral to do such work on others, it doesn't mean someone won't be able to experiment on themselves.  There are plenty of examples in science of people who did such things on themselves or on family and friends.

“In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one's face.”

― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

In his book Bryson describes a number of other 'experimenters.

If interested I suggest this article by Josh Clark on 'How Stuff Works'

10 Scientists who experimented on themselves

My hypothesis for how we should deal with these issues as well as the challenges of global warming and the need to reduce carbon emissions is as follows.

Instead of using AI and Biotechnology to make humans bigger and stronger, we should revamp them into smaller and more efficient beings.  This could be done over about three generations.  Of course this will be a reversal of the evolutionary process in some ways. Possibly makes visiting the 'Creation Museum' in Petersburg, Kentucky, more interesting.   

But realize that a smaller more efficient body will take less energy to exist.   If we can reduce the average height of humans to say 24 inches  or 0.6 meters we could reduce the demand for energy down by 67%, just for human consumption alone.  We could abandon cities like NYC, Dallas,  Paducah, Vancouver, and Medicine Hat and rebuild new ones at one third scale. Might need immigrant labor to pull this off.   But we would need fewer fields under cultivation, fewer factories producing small cars, trucks, and airplanes.  We could go from singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall to 32.67 Bottles of Beer.   The Indy 500 would become the Indy 165.  Our running tracks would go from 400 meters down to 132 meters.  I know you say this is too difficult for the human mind to make such adaptations, but we did it once before  when we went from tracks measuring 440 yards down to 400 meters. I admit we still can't do the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion in our heads  But we must for the sake of humanity.  FYI, you convert Celsius to Fahrenheit by doubling Celsius temps and adding 30 degrees.  So 10 degrees Celsius is 2x10 + 30 = 50 F.  That is why Canadian six packs have 42 beers according to the McKenzie Brothers, Doug and Bob.

In all honesty,  I did not come up with this concept on my own.  I owe a tremendous debt to Steve Martin for blazing the path to this hypothesis.    See link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOrdzCHnpw4

 And of course we'd have to get Putin to go along with it and do the same for the Russian people.  'You go first, Vladimir.'  Nyet, nyet, you go first, while I have a vodka tonic.'  

 I would also love to hear the responses of the presidential candidates if this question were thrown at them in another debate.  

Get ready for the next fifty, no, make that ten years and don't say I didn't warn you.   George

P.S.   After running this piece past my daughter, her response was, "Oh Dad, Matt Damon already did this in a film called Downsizing.  

  George,

Have you read anything by Ray Kurzweil, futurist author, who has been predicting this type of stuff for years. Saw him interviewed on tv, but haven't read anything by him. Says people will "merge" with AI, for better intelligence, health, longevity, etc. Sort of already happening when you see the younger generation basically having phone attached to their ear. People walking around staring at their phones, oblivious to the world around them.

Bruce

   I am looking for AI to invent a kindness gene, or a truthful gene, or a happy gene.  Bill Schnier

V 14 N. 65 Thoughts and Musings About Promoting Track and Field

This week I was almost intrigued by the promotion of the meet called Athlos, in the old Randall's Island stadium now called the Icahn Stadium in NYC.   However I wasn't intrigued enough to remember to watch it.  Gettin' old, I guess.  But I did read about it  and wondered how someone dreamed up this promotion.  Personally I'm on burn out after the Olympics and Diamond League wrap ups.  This concept of sharing a waning sportlight with Megan Thee Stallion or whomever to draw in the non-track fans reminds me of TV shows like Dancing With The Stars or The Masked Singer or America's Got Talent.  Throw in some B celebrity, add a bit of  pizazz with fireworks and try to get athletes already well on the downward slope after a hard season of competition to race for money.  That's probably the answer,  money.  If the sponsor had thrown in a million dollars or so for a world record performance and scheduled the meet a week or two before or after the Paris Olympics, it might have gotten some traction with me.  Consider when some kids in college can do much better on the current NIL revenues than world class athletes could do at Athlos ($60,000 for a win). In comparison, players in the WNBA receive an average annual pay of $119,590 or   ($2,989.75/game in a forty game season) with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around $252,000 or $6,250/game.   Men in the NBA have a minimum salary of $1,157,153 for an 82 game season or an average of $14,111.62 per game.   The median NBA salary is a wopping $6,696,429.00.   You're right, women's sport pay sucks, but in track and field, men's pay sucks equally.    A noble effort by the Athlos organizers, but they were working with a tired product at a time when football, Major League Baseball, and even cross country might be of more interest to a lot of the the track and field public.  My mistake, they were going after people who had little or no knowledge in the sport by promoting it with Megan T S.  You're right again, the Super Bowl at half time does that too.  Maybe they could have gotten Snoop Dog going against Jay Zee in a pole vault competition  or better still Sean Diddy Combs against  R. Kelly both out on  recognisance bonds for a go at a broad jump. 

 This also reminds me of some past attempts to promote the sport in a somewhat unconventional way linked to other activities.  In 1954 in Toronto, Canada, an organization supporting track and field for young athletes held a training camp and brought in some American coaching talent including Fred Wilt, Ken Doherty,  and Brutus Hamilton to conduct a clinic.  In conjunction a track meet was put on at the Canadian National Exposition grounds while a circus was camped in the infield for a performance later that evening.  

Several well known athletes were brought in to run some exhibition races.  Among them was Wes Santee there to race a mile.  Indeed it was special.  When the gun went off several elephants got excited and bolted from their handlers.  As Wes was rounding the last turn of the race he found the elephants blocking his path and had to run around them.  He won the race in  a pedestrian 4:25 obviously not going all out, or perhaps he stepped in something.  After this elephantine performance Wes came back in an equally slow 880 in 1:58. Sort like the old saying of 'all of a sudden there was a piano or an elephant on his back'.

Another event that I recall where Track and Field was promoted on television in the 1950's

was a decathlon dual mano a mano between Rev. Bob Richards the 1952 and 1956 Olympic

pole vault champ and Bob Mathias the 1948 and 1952 Olympic decathlon champion.

Richards was also a noted decathlete, so the event was somewhat evenly matched, although

Mathias may have had to come out of retirement. I recall that the meet was televised and

held indoors at the Naval Academy. Correct me if I'm wrong on this as I have not been able

to find a report on the event. I do recall that Richards won the 1500 meters and the decathlon.

The whole thing was a promotion by one of the major TV networks possibly with a Wheaties

sponsorship.

I've never promoted a track meet but I have some ideas in case you are wondering.

This link will give you a hint of what I have in mind for an opening 'act'.

https://youtu.be/l3w4I-KElxQ We would try to arrange for elephants on this one as they did

in Toronto. That was 70 years ago. Some of those elephants might still be alive and living in

nursing homes. The Italians took this event a step or two further in Verona. Check this out

as well as the first violinst.

https://youtu.be/QDLOOpCEvo8

But couldn't you see Noah Lyles being inspired to come out in a tunic and 'perform' in

an event like this? The athletic ballet dancers in the second show leave little to the

imagination.

I rest my case.

George Brose

.George, George, George,

    You and I know that track will never be a spectator sport that people will pay money to see.  There are people I know here in EUGENE that don't know about the Diamond league.  The only time a significant number of people in this country watch track is the olympic trials .    

  We're a ball sport country         

Mike  Waters

..brings to mind the 4th place in the 1941 NAAU at Randall's Island that my mentor--the late  Bob Wingo of Wayne University, my alma mater--clocked with a 47.3 at 400 meters.  

Dr. John Telford

George:  Re: ways to generate interest in track and field:

I have always thought that having a mini track meet at halftime of a football game would not only be exciting, but could create some interesting competitions on a continuing basis for the school involved.  Consider:  a 4 by 100 relay, a half mile race, and a 4x400 relay with runners from the schools with the two teams playing football-- to kill that otherwise dead time filled by boring bands with mediocre music, performing meaningless maneuvers on the gridiron.  It could be extended to even more interesting field events, say pole vault and high and triple jump, which could go in simultaneously with the running events.  Kind of a mini Texas Relays in the 30 minutes between halves.  I don't think longer races would work.  The attention span of the average football fan might not tolerate it.    Oops I left out the 4 x 200 which is a real crowd pleaser.  And I realize that some schools, like the U. of Texas took out their tracks around their football field and moved them to a separate stadium.  So the only relays they could run would be the shuttle hurdles, which are somewhat of an oddity..   But for schools with tracks in their football stadium---and there are still lots of them around---it would be an exciting half-time show, and give those otherwise obscure runners, a chance to runbefore the largest crowd imaginable.     Walt 

Okay for high school I suppose, Walt.  But I'd hate for you to be present at the meeting of the Band Parents Club when your suggestion is put out there.  And the cheerleader moms are some of the most brutal people in the world. They make the Taliban look like a 4H Club.    Careful where you mention this idea.  Of course there probably is not a DI stadium with a track anymore, so it's not an option at college games.

When I was in high school in Dayton in the 1950s/60s we sometimes had a 2 mile cross country meet that started in the stadium a few minutes into halftime and finished ten minutes or so later.  We circled the track once and went out into the night along a highway basically in the dark and back to the stadium.  Started having problems when one of the schools finished ten runners after starting only seven.  The coach had three waiting out on the highway in the dark and they joined the race in the last mile.  But they forgot to remove their last three guys and got caught out.  George

V 14 N. 64 Darryl Taylor Tells Us About His Own Beach Run And A Lookback at the Good Old Daze

 A few weeks ago we published an article about a cross country race in Corpus Christi, Texas.   Darryl Taylor had his own story about an afternoon of racing in Long Beach, California back in the winter of 1962 on February 10.   First will be Darryl's explanation from memory then the newspaper clipping from the event as well as track news that occurred that same day in the indoor meet in Los Angeles.

Here is Darryl's note:  

Hello George & Roy-just a small addition to your "Beach Run" topic. Long Beach Press-Telegram

Double Duty:

This is winter of 1961/62, my first year at LBSC. This was a 4xMile relay between Long Beach's

Rainbow Pier and Belmont Pier. My team mates gave me a nice lead and we won. That same

night, I ran my first ever indoor meet at the Los Angeles Times Indoor Games. We won the

College division Mile Relay and took home an ELGIN Gold Watch! All great fun. This was an   

annual event that our coach, JACK ROSE, put on. More information if you are interested.

BTW-After the incredible Oly 800m, I do believe that I will live long enough to see a sub 1:40 800.

If the Gods are willing, perhaps at the '28 Games in LA. Just a thought. 

Darryl sent three photos, which I also found in that Press Telegram story and copy here.

Then that day there was additional news about the L.A. Times Indoor Games that night, two world records.

In two years this writer would have no trouble remembering "Rex" Cawley's first name.  Then if that wasn't enough for one sports page, this story on Don Bragg challenging John Uelses when the 

firberglass pole was just starting to appear at meets. 

All this in one edition of a newspaper in 1962.  What has become of the print media?   

V 14 N. 63 "Moses - Thirteen Steps" Documentary of Edwin Moses Debuted This Weekend

 

Scanning my hometown newspaper  The Dayton Daily News  yesterday I saw a story about Edwin Moses,  Dayton's third most famous, home towner after Orville and Wilbur Wright.  And most track nuts will give me a hard time about that statement.   A documentary on his life debuted last night at Moses' alma mater Morehouse College.  The title is  "Moses  -  Thirteen Steps" signifying his taking the 400 meter hurdles to a new level by reducing the number of steps between hurdles from fourteen to thirteen.  As you probably already know,  Edwin Moses was not sought after by college coaches as an athlete.  His accomplishments were modest at Fairview High School.  But his academics were not modest, they were outstanding.  Tom Archdeacon, a long time sports writer with The 'News covered the story in his usual manner, very well.  Tom tells the story much better than me, so....  Here is the link:

Moses - Thirteen Steps

Thirteen Steps Trailer

In the the article there is a picture of Edwin Moses sitting in a car with another person in a parade.  I believe that person is the actor Rob Lowe, another Dayton native.  

I watched Edwin Moses and a teammate clean up on our T-M (Trotwood-Madison HS) hurdlers at a meet at Trotwood in 1973.  He had ability but was uncoordinated.  He never qualified for the state meet in Ohio.  The next I heard of him was after spring break in 1976 when Fairview distance runner, Harvey Woodard, said he was tearing up the track at Morehouse College in Atlanta, running 13 steps between hurdles.  I saw him run at the Dogwood Relays in Knoxville that April and carefully counted his steps, and they were indeed 13.  This remarkable transformation catapulted him to an NCAA championship in Philadelphia in June and the Olympic gold in Montreal in July of 1976, following his freshman year in college.  

   What he said about the West Dayton of the 1960s was true.  It seemed as if all the kids were dressed up on Sundays after church in the morning and before more church in the evening.  Both Dunbar and Roosevelt had Ph.Ds on their faculties.  Many were disadvantaged but many were not including the Moses family.  A feeling of despair and eventually hate surfaced under the veneer of happiness as blacks tried to emerge and whites tried to keep them down.  The result was a devastation of both cultures.  Today both the black West Dayton and the white East Dayton are now a shell of their former selves, both a victim of racism but Edwin Moses and many like him continue to stand tall.   Bill Schnier   U. of Cincinnati

Bill,

I can't remember that he ever came back to Dayton to run after he won the O's.   You might have thought that the track folks of the time would have set up some kind of meet and draw a few names in to run against him.  But I don't think that ever happened.  They were capable as they had hosted the 1953  and 1957 national AAU meet there.  George

I don't think he ever came back to run in Dayton because he was always elsewhere and there were no meets in Welcome Stadium to challenge him.  He has been back from time to time but always for visiting family and friends or the usual activities related to one's hometown.  However, last year they renamed the Dayton Relays the Edwin C. Moses Relays and he was back for that, talking with the athletes and giving out awards.  The article you sent talked about a sold-out Dayton Relays when he ran (a bit of an exaggeration) but the one he attended last year was just one more track meet with him present.  The winners of the hurdles were short and looked slow, a far cry from the heyday of Dayton high school T&F.

V 14 N. 62 What Happened to C.K. Yang? Find Out Here.

 

A few weeks ago, thanks to Bob Darling, I was made aware of a Taiwanese produced documentary on C.K. Yang.  As you may recall,  C.K. was a native of Taiwan and competed for UCLA alongside his teammate Rafer Johnson.  The two of them were the best decathletes in the world in the early 1960's.  C.K. was also a world class pole vaulter when the fiberglass poles were coming into play in that era.  For a short time he held the indoor world record.  But together the two athletes are probably best remembered for their epic battle in the decathlon at the Rome Olympics in 1960.

The documentary is  about C.K.   and his friendship with Rafer Johnson.  It explains a bit about Taiwanese culture and its relationship to China. It also talks about the Cold War era when their rivalry took place.    I did not realise that some Taiwanese consider themselves an indigenous culture surrounded and threatened by assimilation from the mainland Chinese culture.   As you may know, a lot of ethnic Chinese retreated to Taiwan when Mao Tse Tung took over the rule of mainland China.  It's not just a question of land as we are led to believe in the press.  It goes deeper to the roots of the original people of Taiwan of which C.K Yang felt he was part.  

Here is the link to the documentary..  The C.K. Yang, Rafer Johnson Story

In an online intoduction to the film   C.K. is referred to as having Austronesian hertiage.  I had never heard the term and found this definition.

The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages.

For more information I refer you to the following Wikipedia link  Austronesian People

My only criticism of the film is that sometimes when people are speaking Chinese or another language there is not a complete translation in subtitles.  And sometimes some of the cartoon like drawings are used a bit too much.  

Another point that grabbed my attention was that the former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy is seen in the opening of the film and in several other parts.  When my family was living in Beijing in 1989 if we could get to a TV with an international feed we often saw him on the CNN reports from the city during the Tianamen Student Movement.   We would be in the Square in the morning or afternoon and then go back to our apartment block and hope to catch what was being said about the movement overseas.  At one point when being evacuated from Beijing after the crackdown, we were asked to smuggle out some news film by an Australian crew.  Our fight however got cancelled and we had to give back the film.  But two days later when we finally got to Tokyo we saw ourselves on TV there loading up our bags on a truck   In the following link Mike Chinoy describes some of the ways efforts were made to get the story out of Beijing.\

Mike Chinoy Video

George,

I pole vaulted against C.K. Yang when we (OU) went to Texas during the indoor season.  I believe it was in 1962 or 1963.  On one jump he missed the pit and landed on the concrete floor. He landed on his back and I thought he was hurt  badly.  However, he got up and shrugged a bit and kept on going.  What he lacked in form in vaulting, he made up in toughness.  I am not sure but I think Fred Hansen won that indoor meet at Texas Tech.  You probably remember that meet better than me.  

Your old roommate,

Pat Hennessee

Pat, 

I do remember that meet at Texas Tech.   I don't recall his bad landing , but I remember that he lost the World Record to someone who was jumping at another meet that same night.  I gave C.K. the newspaper at breakfast the next morning with the story.  He didn't smile when he saw that headline.  

I found the clippings of him getting the record and then losing it a week or so later.  Saw OU won the 2 mile relay, my first varsity race.  It was an unbelievably slow old board 11 lap to the mile track that was transported around the Southwest for various indoor meets.

George

                              This is where he got the record

                                               This is where he lost it.

Hey, George, 

Re: CK Yang and his interest in his racial origins 

I’m right now reading a book by Hampton Sides about sea captain James Cook, who discovered, among a lot of places, Polynesia. 

On p. 22-23 the author talks about supposed sources of the people who inhabited Polynesia   (Tahiti). He repeats the theory that by the time Cook got there, those that inhabited that area were thought to have migrated by maritime voyages from the island of Taiwan. 

So we have parallel beliefs:  That Tahitians came from Taiwan, and that Taiwanese came from Tahiti!

Walt Mizell

DNA doesn't lie.   Thor Hyerdahl tried to prove that maybe Inca's sailed from Peru to Tahiti and made the voyage on a raft with a sail 'the Kon Tiki'   only to learn fifty years later the DNA evidence proved the contrary.   George

I suspect Austoasian culture is fading away, just as 90% of the world becomes homogenized.

Meb Keflizegi is in town this evening for a talk at a brewery, 5k philantropy to provide beds to kids who sleep on floors. Plan to give him a copy of  Maura’s book with interviews of Eritrian refugees.  Bruce\

All of that is awesome.  You will enjoy Meb and he will enjoy Maura's book.  What a treat it will be to be present.

   I am about to head to UC for the Hall of Fame induction which will include three Olympians including hammer thrower, Annette Echiconwoke.  Kathy is about to head to the Shakespeare Theater so both of us will be where we need to be.

   I'll watch the C.K. Yang video tomorrow.  Bill Schnier

What ever happened to C.K. Yang?

C.K. now resides in Ventura, CA under a very (surprisingly) modest gravestone only noting his date of birth and death.

The cemetery is next to the 101 Freeway 

Tom Trumpler

V 14 N. 61 Carl Kaufmann , Born in the USA? Sang Opera? Won an Olympic Silver.

 

The previous post on the passing of Otis Davis, Olympic 400 champion and world record holder brought to our attention that the man who came in second in that race, with an almost identical time,  Carl Kaufmann, running for the combined East and West German teams was actually born in the USA and sang opera later in life.  Most of us remember that photo of the finish and Kaufmann reaching in vain for the tape but his chest a frog hair behind Davis.  It even looks as if his foot was over the line but that could be photographic deception and is not allowed by the rules in determining winners of races.  

Anyway it looks as if Herr Kaufmann was born in Brooklyn, New York. The fact that his first name is spelled with a C  rather than a K might be a giveaway that his family was in the process of americanizing in 1936.   But just prior to the outbreak of WWII he and family were visiting or gone back to Germany and thus spent the war years and the rest of his life in Karlsruhe, West Germany.  In his adult years he got into opera both as an impressario and as a singer having owned an opera house in his adopted hometown of Karlsruhe and as a performer.   I do not know if he got into singing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA".  

Carl died relatively early at age 72 in 2008.

Carl Kaufmann the Tenor

World Athletics has this info:

Carl (Charly) Kaufmann (GER) born 25 Mar 1936 Brooklyn, New York, died on 1 September 2008 at the age of 72.

Kaufmann had his greatest day in the Olympic 400m final in Rome 1960 when he won the silver medal, producing a sensational finish to come from behind the American Otis Davis (32.6 to 33.3) at 300m to almost catch him on the line, both men being given a hand time of 44.9 to smash the four year-old World record of 45.2. The auto-timing showed that Davis had won 45.07 to 45.08.

Mal Spence, South Africa 3rd, Otis Davis USA 1st, Earl Young USA 6th, Carl Kaufmann Ger 2nd and

does not look like the fastest of tracks with a lot of spike marks already on it.

Kaufmann then won a silver medal at 4x400m, running a 44.86 anchor leg.

After the Games Davis and Kaufmann tied in Cologne and Kaufmann won in Wuppertal but Kaufmann did not better 46.6 after that year.

Kaufmann had begun to concentrate on 400m from 1958, when he was 4th in the Europeans (and 2nd at 4x400m) and had a best of 46.9. He ran a European record 45.8 on 19 Sep 1959 in Cologne and improved that to 45.7 on 15 Jun 1960 and to 45.4 to win the German title in Berlin on 24 Jul 1960. He also won German titles at 200m 1955 and 400m 1958-9. pbs: 100m 10.5 (1955), 200m 20.9 (1960), and became a famous opera tenor, actor and theatre director.

Peter Matthews and Mel Watman - Athletics International - for the IAAF

I'm reminded that Kaufmann was not the only Olympic medallist who became a performer in the arts. Micheline Ostermeyer of France won three medals in the 1948 Olympics in the Shot Put, Discus, and High Jump and then became a concert pianist. George

And Martin Lauer West German WR holder in 110HH at 13.2 had almost 40 hits in Country and Western music singing in German. Not sure he made it to Nashville however.

Thank you George,

In the summer of 1972, my parents gave my wife Debby and me a belated honeymoon present by taking us to Europe, including a stop in Rome.  While in Rome, I remembered the 1960 Olympics and my dad and I drove out to the Olympic stadium.  Surprisingly, the gates to the track were wide open!   I walked down to the track; it had a reddish, all-weather Tartan surface instead of the cinder track from 1960.   I took off for a lap around the track and visualized that I was running on the same site as Otis Davis in 1960 when he won his gold medal.  It was a breathtakingly beautiful memory.

Sincerely,

Bruce Geelhoed
Muncie, IN

12:12 PM (3 hours ago)

Great Story, and very interesting history.

Thanks.

Joseph Rogers