Last lap of the Tokyo 10,000 1964 live TV
The Edited Tokyo 64 Version
This clip is 2 min 14 seconds. It covers the race as it was seen on TV. If you clik on the next link, a second film comes up; covering the race from the Japanese film on the 64 Olympics. It is in color and better photography, but of course Dick Bank was not on their team.
That day I was in the TV lounge on the second floor at Jefferson House on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. Billy wasn't a Sooner, but we knew who he was. He was from our conference, the Big 8.
He had PR'd in the first 5,000 meters of that 10,000 meter race. He became the fourth Jayhawk in recent times to win an Olympic medal in track and field. The others were Al Oerter, Bill Neider, and Cliff Cushman. Bill Griffin, a sprinter on our team and a member of the Kiowa First Nation was staring in disbelief. He knew Billy, a Lakota Sioux from the numerous times the Sooners and Jayhawks ran against each other every year, in dual meets indoors, outdoors and cross country. They were brothers of the first order. I want to believe that there were tears in my eyes that afternoon.
Dick Bank though made that race indelible in our minds with his enthusiasm and willingness to take the risk to step in front of the talking heads and tell it like it was. It eventually cost him his job, but I don't believe he ever grieved for one moment his decision to fill the void. The only other person who can compare in telling this tale is Billy Mills. If you ever have a chance to hear him.....don't miss the opportunity.
I once called Dick Bank on a whim, to get some information on the location of some track legend. He was skeptical for a few moments with this cold caller. I was afraid he would hang up on me. But he warmed up very quickly coming up with some obscure track trivia related to my school, who the coach was and his placing in the NCAA meet in the polevault in 1949. I thought he had an incredibly fast computer, but he didn't use computers, he used his brain to store all those numbers and stories. I learned too that if Dick did not know the information that I was seeking, there was only one other human to contact, Ron Morris.
Yes, we've lost two legends this week with Harry and Dick, oh jeez did I say that? I hope you guys are entertaining the daylights out of each other in heaven or hell or somewhere in between.
Tom Trumpler brought this story to our attention this afternoon. It is the obit from the L.A. Daily News by Scott Reid, this 25th day of February, 2020. I have not attempted to edit this piece as you will see in the first line. George Brose
OBITUARY -- Dick Banks
by Scott Reid, columnist
BANK, THE VOICE OF MILLS EPIC OLYMPIC UPSET CALL, DIES AT 90
In the days leading up to the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo there was a long line of track athletes waiting to get into a small shoe stand adidas set up in the Olympic Village.
The whole world, it seemed, wanted a pair of Adi Dassler’s soon to be famous blue suede shoes. Dassler, the founder and genius behind the three-stripe brand, had created ground breaking track spikes before both the 1956 and 1960 Olympic Games, each edition named after the host city. His latest creation was just as revolutionary. Dassler’s “Tokyo” It was much lighter than anything Puma, Dassler’s brother Rudolph’s brand, had to offer.
And it “fit like a glove,” Dick Bank recalled more than a half century later.
Bank, a broadcaster, jazz producer, constant on the Los Angeles sports scene for decades who died Sunday night at the age of 90, also spent much of the 1960s working as a rep for adidas. Bank was busy handing out free pairs of Tokyos to other athletes when an unknown American distance runner named Billy Mills showed up at the adidas shoe stand.
Unknown to most but not Bank.
In the 1950s, 60s and early 70s, few were more plugged in to the track and field than Bank. While preparing to broadcast the historic U.S.-Soviet Union meet at Stanford in 1962, Soviet coach Gavriil Korobkov told Bank “you know more about my athletes than I do.”
In the spring of 1964, Mills, who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and was then a U.S. Marine Lt. stationed at Camp Pendleton, caught Bank’s eye. Keep your eye on the Marine, Bank told friends.
But another adidas rep, the company’s U.S. distributor, had no idea who Mills was and turned him away shoeless.
Hearing of the incident an enraged Bank shouted “where’s Billy” and ran out of the stand in search of Mills. Bank found him, apologized for his co-worker’s ignorance and rudeness and made sure that Mills would be wearing adidas when he stepped to the starting line for the Olympic 10,000 meter final.
“Of course he got his shoes size 12, if memory serve me correctly,” Bank wrote to me in 2015, one of the letters he faxed to me on an almost daily basis for several years.
A few days after the shoe stand incident, Mills pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history, storming out of nowhere down the chaotic homestretch of the 10,000 meter final, perhaps distance running’s most unlikely gold medalist ever, Bank providing the soundtrack that carried him across the finish line.
Broadcaster Bud Palmer convinced his bosses at NBC to hire Bank as an analyst for the network’s track coverage in Tokyo. Bank was at Palmer’s side when the bell rang out signaling the final lap of the 10,000.
“And here we go into the final lap of the Olympic gold medal in the 10,000,” Palmer announced.
Australia’s Ron Clarke, the pre-Olympic favorite, bumped Mills staggering into lane 3 as they passed a lap runner. At the top backstretch Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia charged into the lead. Clarke took off after him, also opening a gap on Mills. Around the turn it looked like Gammoudi might run away with the gold medal. But coming off the final turn, Clarke pulled up
alongside the Tunisian as they sprinted through track full of lapped runners on either side of them.
And then like Paul Revere, Bank shouted out a warning.
“Look at Mills!”
“Look at Mills!”
Clarke and Gammoudi had no response as Mills flew by them, Bank unleashing a whoop that chased his final steps.
“It has been written that I was giggling with glee,” Bank wrote to me in 2015 not long after his close friend Clarke’s death. “It was more like unrestrained euphoria that quickly became tears.”
The suits at NBC, however, did not share Bank’s joy.
“They said I was very unprofessional,” Bank recalled.
The network turned off his mike for two days.
On the third day he received a message to call NBC producer Dick Auerbach at his Tokyo hotel.
“I have some bad news,” Auerbach said.
Bank immediately thought something had happened to his father back in Los Angeles. The elder Bank had suffered a heart attack three years earlier.
“From today on, you are no longer working for NBC,” Auerbach said.
“So what’s the bad news,” Bank said without missing a beat.
In the following decades and with the emergence of YouTube, “Look at Mills! Look at Mills!” would become track’s equivalent of Al Michael’s exclamation point on another Olympic miracle. Dick Bank didn’t suffer fools—or sometimes even friends. I think whoever coined the phrase “brutally honest” did so with Dick in mind. I was on the receiving end of both his sharp critiques and his kindness, sometimes in the same day. To the end he was unapologetic about that golden day in Tokyo and in the rare occasions when he let his guard down you could sense his pride that his Tokyo call had been embraced by a new generation. More than once he told me how much it tickled him that my sons found the “Look at Mills! Look at Mills” T-shirts they bought online as hip.
He could even laugh at the incident at the Olympic Village shoe stand.
“I would have been absolutely mortified had he won in Puma.”
Guys:
I was at home in S. Cal. watching the games and watching the 10K.
I would hardly call Dick Bank's call "Memorable".
It was harsh and shrill which, God bless him! was the voice that God had given to Dick Bank.
"The wrong guy at the right time".
Dick Bank was a guy that you would admire for his depth of knowledge about track and field
but, he also could be quite elitist, arrogant, snobbish and downright cruel back - if you did not meet with his high standards, back in the day! -
I know that I take a risk by saying these things "Over his Grave". But, it's not easy to stand back
and hear praise heeped on "his call" - as Billy Mills drove home Olympic Victory.
I was not surprised when NBC removed him from the broadcast booth. John Bork
I never tire of hearing about any aspect of this race. Truly an inspiration to never give up. Run to the end. Give it more than you have to give. When he got bumped on the back stretch and lost his balance. When the last turn his opponents begin to really push to the finish Billy had to push even harder to overcome those steps from behind. As well as push through all the other runners they were lapping. It puts a lump in my throat and a tear to my eye every time. And the enthusiasm and joy heard in Dick Bank's voice just elevates that moment.
Thanks for another great moment in history. I truly love John Bork's input as well. There's always a story behind a story. This blog brings out those back stories one doesn't hear in the sports bylines! Susan Abuasba
]Tom Trumpler sent this comment:
- As a high school junior, I ran in the July 1964 Western Hemisphere Marathon in Culver City.
The race allotted two places in the marathon for the 1964 Olympic team. (The New York qualifying race allotted one place.)
It was 93 degrees, and, back then, no water tables. I finished, went in to the Municipal Building locker room, there they handed out a drink to finishers, which was a small carton of grapefruit juice.
I immediately gulped down that 6 ounce container of liquid, and then, just as quickly, leaned over a trash can to up-chuck it all.
Next I stumbled out to the park grass area at the back of the building, saw a patch of shade under a tree, and planted my face and torso in that cool green grass, savoring it and slowly recovering.
I noticed an athlete who was already showered and dressed sitting at the base of the tree leaning back on the trunk. I asked him how he had done in the race. He, very modestly, answered that he had finished in second place. Suddenly I sprung up and leaned towards him an exclaimed "That means you made the Olympic, you made the Olympic team!" In a soft voice, he answered, nodding with a slight smile on his face, "Yes." Still in awe that this runner a few feet away from me was now an Olympic marathoner, the conversation drifted to who he was -- he said that he ran for the Camp Pendleton Marines and that his name was Billy Mills!
- The October 1964 day after Mills' 10K win, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, which had the best horse racing dope sheets and track (the horse track, that is) coverage in L.A., ran a sports section banner headline:
"Longshot Mudder Wins 10,000 Meter Gold" -- after the rain dampened Tokyo track.
Needless to say, this newspaper page hung in a place of reverence on my bedroom wall.
George,
Your writeup of Dick Bank was possibly the best you have done. I felt as if I were actually there. Dick Bank did the right things by "butting in" and bringing the joyful message which needed to be brought. His call reminded me of Joe Nuxhall in the background, shouting over the mic of Marty Brennaman about a Reds home run. The Cincinnati listeners came to enjoy Joe's unabashed loyalty to his team and the same should have been said of Dick Bank. That the network fired him is no surprise because guys like that always make the wrong decision. As in the case of Billy Mills, they had their minds made up in advance. Ironically both Dick Bank and Billy Mills prevailed.
Bill Schnier
Oh gosh, sobbing over the Billy Mills victory! Thanks so much for that. Will write more soon; all's well. Good winter so far with my horse at a new winter quarters. "Track legends" photos still languishing on my to-do list. Soon(er or later) Grace Butcher
I first knew of him in 1961 after he had been instrumental in bringing Igloi to Los Angeles from Santa Clara.
After my NCAA 880 win, he wrote to me encouraging me to move to LA to compete for the New LATC.
I remember his call of Billy Mills homestretch drive. Dick was exceedingly harsh and shrill in his excitement. John Bork
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2:44 PM (2 minutes ago)
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Guys:
As I once again watched the Video attached to one of your emails, I was once both overjoyed and at the same time brought to tears
by Billy Mill's winning stretch drive at Toyko in the 10,000M!
Our great Olympics of all time:
100M - Bob Hayes
110 H - Hayes Jones
200M - Henry Carr
400M Mike Larabee
400MIH - Rex Cauley
5000M - Bob Schul
10,000M - Billy Mills
Discus - Al Oerter
Shot Put - Dallas Long, Randy Matson 2nd.
Long Jump - Lynn Davies, GBR defeated Ralph Boston in the Rain slicked runway.
Pole Vault - Fred Hansen
400M Relay - USA
4 x 400M Relay - USA
Buck
aka John Bork
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