To all of you who read this blog and to those who stumble across it while looking for a cheap motel or washing machine repairman. This is to let you know we have reached a milestone.
Beginning our 14th year and 1,200+ postings. A blog for athletes and fans of 20th century Track and Field culled from articles in sports journals of the day, original articles, book reviews, and commentaries from readers who lived and ran and coached in that era. We're equivalent to an Amer. Legion post of Track and Field but without cheap beer. You may contact us directly at irathermediate@gmail.com or write a comment below. George Brose, Courtenay, BC ed.
Once Upon a Time in the Vest
Friday, July 26, 2024
V 14 N. 51 The Track Blog Gets It's One Millionth Hit Today July 27, 2024
To all of you who read this blog and to those who stumble across it while looking for a cheap motel or washing machine repairman. This is to let you know we have reached a milestone.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
V 14 N. 50 When Track Guys Doubled and Tripled and Did Odd Jobs For a Point
Recently I received a note from Russ Reabold who creates the website Trojan Force for the U. of Southern California track team. You can find it way down below right on this page under a heading Our Favorite Running Sites (Quick link, it's hard to find) I did a quick review of Trojan Force and noticed that they have a section that has historical results of a number of conferences' outdoor and indoor meets. For fun I turned to my senior year (1965) and the Big Eight Conference. Of course the Big Eight evolved over the years to the Big Twelve and now I don't know what, and don't much care, because my alma mater Oklahoma is now in the SEC and USC is in the Big Ten along with The University of Beijing for all I know.
I opened that outdoor result held at the University of Nebraska which is now in the Big Ten or is it Twelve? Why did they ever change it from the Western Conference when the University of Chicago played with the big schools? Anyway my old eyes were drawn to the Triple Jump aka Hop Step and Jump in those days and noticed that Tom Von Ruden, one of Oklahoma State's all time great milers placed sixth in the TJ and got a point for the Cowpokes in the conference meet. He had already gotten a second place in the mile that year. Why in the name of God's Green Apples was Von Ruden risking limb if not life in that event? Then I remembered that once upon a time it was not uncommon to be asked to take one for the team in those conference and especially those dual and triangular meets.
Tom Von Ruden
Big Eight Outdoors 1965
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I once was asked to triple in the three mile after having run the mile and 880 in a dual meet at Arizona. It was a close meet and it was rare that we had a chance against those warm weather teams in our first outdoor meet of the year. By the seventh or eighth lap, I was about to be over taken and dropped out ending my race and crawled back into the stands with my tail between my legs. Fortunately for me our 880 guy Walter Mizell managed to hold off a very good anchorman for Arizona Dave Murray in the mile relay that night and we won the meet. Mizell was not a quarter miler, but he stood up to the challenge giving up 17 and 15/16ths yards of an 18 yard lead but held on to win the relay and as a consequence also the meet.
Want to hear the real story about this photo above. Read this from the guy on the inside lane, Walt Mizell.
Thanks, Walt, for this 'in house' account. This was when the whole team travelled together to the same meet and didn't scatter around the country trying to get a qualifying time to get into the NCAA championships. After that Arizona dual meet victory we were rewarded with getting three new convertibles from a rental agency in Tucson and driving down to Nogales, Mexico. This was on the Oklahoma university tab. A number of my teammates came back from that adventure needing penicillin to 'cure a runny nose'* as our erudite coach put it into words at the next team meeting.
Thinking back on those days and the way college track meets were conducted, I sent out a note to a few of my old teammates:
l"Talk about the good old days when the coach would come up and say, I know you just ran the mile and doubled back in the 880 but I think you might get us a point in the shot. Get in there. Feel free to forward this to any of the old guys."
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We'd be interested to hear your experiences with doing the odd job during a track meet.
Getting points for the team was fun but also enabled such an athlete to appreciate the sport even more. In my early years at UC we had a meet at Marshall and the Thundering Herd was on their way to victory. Lewis Johnson (Lewis is current NBC post race announcer) was upset over his 400 race and asked if he could enter the triple jump. He did so without any training whatsoever, jumped 44' 11", placed second, and scored what was to be the deciding points. He served as a model for that type of selflessness for years to come. Bill Schnier U. of Cincinnati coach ret'd.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
V 14 N. 49 When Transgender Awareness Began in Sport
from L.A. Times Dec. 30, 1935
The following article appeared in the June 1, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.
A Forgotten Athlete, a Nazi Official, and the Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics
A Chapter in this book is quoted in the June 1, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.
It covers the experience of the Czech athlete Zdenek Koubek and his odyssey in the world
of transgender sport in the 1930's. He competed initially in the Women's Games 1934
in London, setting a world record of 2:12 for the 800 meters. The IOC feared these games for women
might be too much competition for the Olympic Games and did everything in their power to stop them.
He had female sex characteristics but
considered himself a male and eventually and openly underwent one of the first transition surgeries or
phalloplasty (ouch). The public reaction was minimal at first until the Nazis began getting into the act with
the 1936 Olympics. The article fails to mention the Nazis substituting a male high jumper into the women's
competition after removing their own national record women's high jumper Gretel Bergmann, because of her
being Jewish. The Koubek story gained lots of press in the US and I've included some of those pieces
below A very interesting read. Here is the link. https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/a-forgotten-athlete-a-nazi-official-and-the-origins-of-sex-testing-at-the-olympics
Gretel Bergmann's story can be seen in an earlier post from this blog at the follwing link: https://onceuponatimeinthevest.blogspot.com/2017/07/v-7-n-50-margaret-gretel-bergmann.html
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
V 14 N. 47 When Ethiopia Tried to Go to the Olympics and Europe Said No
This story appeared to day on the Historical News Network (HNN)
Afraid of an Inspiring Olympics Story
Hannah Borenstein is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Florida International University. She is working on a book about long-distance women runners from Ethiopia.
African Games, Lagos, 1973. [Wikimedia Commons]
In 1924, athletes from 44 countries came to France to take part in the 8th Summer Olympics. Paris last hosted the games in 1900, a much smaller event that mainly served as an introduction to what would become a new global sporting tradition. The 1924 games, held not long after the end of the Great War, were framed as a testament to peace and cultural cohesion, even as the event served as codification of the organization’s commitment to segregation and omission. As was the case in 1924, the 2024 Paris Olympic games purport to be a “peoples’ Olympics,” despite continued overt exclusion. A hijab ban remains in place, the carbon footprint will be significant, and thousands of African immigrants living in informal housing have been displaced to build facilities. The paradox of Olympic ideology cemented in 1924 remains in new ways; while it claims to be “for all,” it has always been an institution of exclusion.
A clear representation of this irony took place at the 1924 Paris Games, when organizers hosted and celebrated the presence of the Ethiopian regent, Ras Tafari Makonnen (later coronated as Emperor Haile Selassie), despite rejecting Ethiopia’s entrance into the Olympic movement and systematically excluding African colonies from participating in sport as nation states.
Between 1900 and 1924, European sport administrators spent a great deal of time debating the role institutional sport should play in African and Asian colonies. At the first Olympic Games, 14 nations competed — all were European except the United States and Chile (which brought one athlete). By 1924, the IOC invited a few more African and American countries, alongside two African (Egypt and South Africa) and three Asian states, but they were still invested in keeping sporting spaces racially and continentally separate. Inviting more African athletes to compete in Europe’s own competitions was viewed as a dangerous precedent they assiduously avoided, lest empowering Africans athletically bolster them politically as well.
At the time of the 1924 Olympics, Ethiopia was one of a few African countries not under colonial rule. Because it was the only African country to have never been colonized and one of two that remained independent during the Scramble for Africa, it also occupied a special place of symbolic and political exception.
Tafari came from the same royal blood line as Emperor Menelik II, who ruled from 1889 to 1913, and is often credited for leading Ethiopia out of potential conquest. After the Berlin Conference the Ethiopian Empire recognized Italy’s control over Eritrea in 1889, and Menelik II negotiated with Count Pietro Antonelli of Italy to halt its imperial expansion further into Ethiopia. The treaty, however, had 20 articles written in Amharic and Italian. The document promised starkly different ends in the respective languages. In Article 17 of the Italian version of the treaty, Italy imposed a protectorate of Ethiopia; in the Amharic version Ethiopia claimed the article allowed international diplomacy to be negotiated through Italy only at Ethiopia’s behest. The mistranslation led Menelik II to denounce the treaty in 1893, and Italy retaliated by trying to forcefully impose its rule. At the 1896 Battle of Adwa, regional leaders from around Ethiopia successfully stopped the invasion.
Following Menelik II’s reign, Lij Iyasu — his 13-year-old grandson — served as the designated emperor for three years. However, Iyasu’s behavior, particularly his interest in Islam, was a concern for the royal family; they deposed the teenager three years later. Then, Menelik II’s daughter, Empress Zewditu took the throne, and brought on Tafari as regent and de facto leader of the empire. Although Ras Tafari Makonnen would not be officially coronated as emperor of Ethiopia until 1930, officially being named Haile Selassie, by 1916 he was the central figure head of Ethiopian political diplomacy. He made significant strides in modernizing Ethiopia’s economy, institutions, and image, and was eager to earn his country more of a stake in international affairs.
After World War I, the Allied nations formed the League of Nations, hoping to contain political movements inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917. While the 42 initial founding members — including Haiti and Liberia — represented a new type of international organization, unequal forms of membership formed the basis of the League. Article 1 of the League’s charter stipulated that self-governing dominions stuck in the web of European empires could become members, but their status always compromised their diplomatic autonomy. (For example, India was represented by the British raj.) The mandates system in the League postulated that some territories would occupy a position as neither colony nor full state due to their governance structures
Despite some resistance, Selassie remained interested in securing Ethiopia’s entrance into the League to expand Ethiopia’s options in international trade and diplomacy. Member representatives contested Ethiopia’s acceptance into the League due to the practices of slavery within the country. While European empires had systems of colonial labor in Africa akin to slavery, they distinguished between their own racialized systems of brutal exploitation to the institutions of slavery in Ethiopia and Liberia. These explanations were used, as political scientist Adom Getachew has outlined, “not to exclude … but instead to justify their unequal integration.” While Ethiopia was accepted in 1923, Getachew notes it was as a type of “burdened membership.” While not governed by mandates, Ethiopia’s membership was “a form of inclusion in international society where responsibilities and obligations were onerous and rights and entitlements limited and conditional.”
Ethiopia was thus on the international stage on paper, but it was treated differently than other member nations. Ethiopia and Liberia were required to make additional reports to the League and open their economies to global markets according to leading member nations’ interests. Perhaps the most egregious form of differential treatment came in 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia. Selassie’s pleas to the League to stop the invasion fell on deaf ears.
Once in the League Selassie travelled to Europe in the spring of 1924 hoping to negotiate with other members to attain access to the Red Sea. Additionally on this trip he sought a new type of international recognition: a place in the Olympics.
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Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator who had helped found the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, also had big plans in 1924. He saw the 1924 Games as a chance to situate Paris as a major center for sporting innovation — and cement his legacy in sports history. The same year the IOC was founded, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck hosted the Berlin Conference, where European empires met to decide on where they would extend their empires throughout Africa. Coubertin, like these colonial leaders, was driven by a desire to maintain European cultural and territorial domination.
Coubertin began championing the revival of the Olympic Games a few decades earlier. In his early twenties he studied physical education abroad in England; his course of study convinced him that disciplining individual bodies was an essential prerequisite of projecting imperial might.
The English taught the young Frenchman about the ideology of Muscular Christianity — a 19th century philosophical movement that that displayed a commitment to Christian manliness, in which bulging muscles were correlated with greater religious purity.
As Coubertin refined his ideas about how organized sport could lead to moral and social strength, he also wanted to promote sport in France for the good of its empire. He was intent on bringing European sport to the African continent to “educate and discipline indigenous people in Africa.” He believed sport would help Africans “adapt … to the instabilities of the new industrial society” and make them more compliant in working toward a vision of modernity laid out by European officials.
While being paraded around the events his athletes were kept from competing in, Selassie discussed the possibility of Ethiopia joining the Olympic movement with Coubertin, with the aim of competing in 1928. Selassie then formally applied to the IOC for Ethiopia’s participation in the next Olympics. He was promptly denied. Newly appointed president of the IOC Henri de Baillet-Latour told him that Ethiopia would have “neither the ability nor facilities to participate in or to host the Olympic Games” — a supposed requirement for new entrants. Statements like these mirrored others made by European ethnologists and sporting officials who visited the continent earlier and declared there were “no real sports” there. Despite the racialized treatment Selassie received in attempting to join both the League of Nations and the Olympic movement, he still thought it better to work within the system rather than from outside of it. He left Paris in 1924 with a commitment to expanding modern sport and Ethiopian recognition globally.
In 1935, Ethiopia fell to Italian occupation for a few years and Haile Selassie was exiled. He returned in 1941 and continued to develop a modern sporting protocol. In 1948, Selassie helped form the Ethiopian Olympic Committee, however it did not receive recognition until 1954. The IOC only came to accept Ethiopia’s place by negotiating with Onni Niskanen as a representative — a Swedish soldier who moved to Ethiopia for a military mission and became the coach of Abebe Bikila — the first Black African to win an Olympic Gold at the Rome Marathon in 1960 while working for the Ethiopian Imperial Guard. Throughout the 1960s many African countries came to win their independence from colonizers and inspire new cultures of sporting excellence on at the international stage. Though Selassie’s sporting modernization efforts were met with mixed responses, he was delighted to fulfill his ambitions, which he delivered in a speech in 1947 while laying the foundation for the first stadium in Addis Ababa, for “Ethiopia [to] participate in world sports and athletic organizations.”
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When Baillet-Latour told Selassie Ethiopia was not institutionally prepared to participate in the Olympic movement, there is far more evidence suggesting that the European committees feared what the country’s athletes could inspire throughout the continent. Before World War I, the IOC thought that an African Games — separate from the Olympic Games but similar in structure — would help serve a civilizing mission. After the war the impetus for such an event became even stronger for German, British, Italian, and French empires. In a 1919 meeting in Lausanne, administrators noted that bringing western sport to Africa and East Asia was the “last battle to join in order to conclude the sporting conquest of the world.” They believed the imposition of an African Games would rectify this gap and further disseminate the ideals of Muscular Christianity.
The IOC agreed that the first African Games would take place in 1925 in Algeria, and then two years later in Alexandria. Why then, did the first African Games not take place until 1965 in Brazzaville, Congo?
In 1924, the IOC held a session around the Olympic Games to discuss the matter. Several political authorities commented that the African games could inspire “pro-independence agitation” and “anti-colonialist demonstrations.” In other words, the IOC feared that if Africans could come to identify physically and morally as constitutive members of a nation, they might try and revolt against their colonizers. The minutes of the meetings reveal that French, British, and Spanish officials disavowed the idea of an African Games because they feared pro-independence movements.
A few decades later, as countries around the world gained independence and sought their own sporting recognition, the idea of an African Games was again broached. African Ministers of Youth and Sport staged an African Friendship Games in 1962, independent of the IOC, where 24 independent countries competed. Meanwhile, Indonesia established the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), which sought to disrupt the European control over international sport.
In correspondences found at the Olympic Archives in 1964, leaders at the IOC directly addressed fears about “GANEFO agents” being “very active on the African continent” and that Africans should “not be influenced by the clever propaganda of another movement.” Instead, the IOC believed they should absorb and support the formation of an African Games, “to control the operation and dictate its instructions for both the present and future,” and allow more nations to take part in the Olympic movement.
By the 1960s, the IOC realized that including African countries and assisting in a semi-regular African Games would bolster the overall control and ideology of the Olympic movement. The Olympic movement was able to expand and keep control and influence in the hands of mostly European autocrats, similar to its structure today.
Saturday, July 13, 2024
V 14 N. 46 Are Aussies Coming Back in the Middle Distances?
Remember 1968, Ralph Doubell in the Mexico City 800 meters, 1964, Ron Clarke going down to the wire in the 10,000 meters with Billy Mills and Mohammed Gammoudi and Ron's string of World Records, Herb Elliott in 1958-1960 in the Mile/1500 meters, John Landy 1954-56 in the mile/1500 meters, Rob De Castella in the marathon in the 1970's, Kerry O'Brien and others I've neglected to mention? For years the Aussies were always a factor on the track and then they faded somewhat as the Kenyans and Ethiopans, Eritrean, even the occasional Somali and South African came to the fore. Then too the occasional Brit, Coe, Cram, Wightman, Kerr, and of course Jakob Ingebrigtsen began taking over the headlines. They (the Aussies) also put a ban on their athletes coming to America on athletic scholarships in the 1960's. They thought there was a 'leg drain'. Big mistake. Those days of glory seemed to have gotten away from the lads down under. For a moment in the Sydney Olympics, Cathy Freeman brought the green and yellow back to the forefront, but that was short lived, and it was 400 meters.
Jessica HullNow a new generation is cropping up in the headlines. And some are back in US universities. The past two years Stewart McSweyn has been showing a lot of promise as well as Ollie Hoare, the Oregon transplant. But crickey this week another Oregon transplant Jessica Hull demonstrated in two incredible performances that she is a power on the world stage. Last weekend at Paris she ran a 3:50.83 1500 meters staying in the wake of Faith Kipyegon, as Faith again took down her own World Record to 3:49.04. But Friday July 12 at Monaco Jessica Hull claimed her own World Record in the 2000 meters, bettering Burundian Francine Niyonsaba's record by almost 2 seconds. Admittedly this is a seldom run race, but the way in which Hull on her own ran that race after the pacers dropped out and with a 63 second last lap after running even 64's most of the way, strongly indicates that there is a lot left for her to display in the coming weeks at Paris. And she was carrying the effects of that 1500 a week earlier in her legs.
from Wikipedia: "After high school, Hull went to the United States where she studied at University of Oregon, completing a degree in human physiology.[8] As a student-athlete, she represented Oregon Ducks. She was coached by Maurica Powell for three years and Helen Lehman-Winters in her senior year."
"Hull was the NCAA Division I indoor 3000 m bronze medallist in 2018 and over the next two years added six podium finishes on the indoor and outdoor track and in cross country, including four collegiate titles. She was the individual NCAA champion in the 1500 m in 2018 and in the indoor 3000 m in 2019, earning seven All-American honors."
Splits on that 2000 were as follows: (from letsrun.com)
Lap
Hull Niyonsaba*
1 64.2 64.5
2 64.2 64.7
3 64.1 64.7
4 63.2 66.3
5 63.0 61.3
5:19.70 5:21.56
Other finishers in the race:
PLACE | ATHLETE | COUNTRY | RESULT | PB/SB/WR |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | HULL Jessica | AUS | 5:19.70 | WR |
2 | COURTNEY-BRYANT Melissa | GBR | 5:26.08 | NR |
3 | JEBITOK Edinah | KEN | 5:26.09 | NR |
4 | McGEE Cory Ann | USA | 5:28.78 | AR |
5 | GRIFFITH Georgia | AUS | 5:28.82 | |
6 | STAFFORD Lucia | CAN | 5:31.18 | NR |
7 | GUILLEMOT Agathe | FRA | 5:32.63 | NR |
8 | GARCÍA Marta | ESP | 5:32.86 | NR |
9 | EMBAYE Axumawit | ETH | 5:34.99 | |
10 | MAGEEAN Ciara | IRL | 5:43.06 | |
11 | FERNÁNDEZ María Pía | URU | 5:50.21 | AR |
Why bring this up in the first place?
The Sydney Times Herald carried an interesting article on the rebirth of Australian running on June 22 which was prior to the above events. It was in a Sunday supplement called "GoodWeekend" by Konrad Marshall. A good friend John Cobley who had received a clipped copy from his brother in Australia sent it on to me. I am putting the article in its entirety below on our blog. It is some interesting reading about how this Aussie Renaissance has come about. Jessica Hull came on so quickly that she is not even mentioned in the article.
This is available by subscription only and looking at past offerings from GoodWeekend it seems to be a very good journal with excellent sports writing. I'm tempted to take a short subscription.
Please note that the right hand column does not fit our space, so I've typed that column in after each page. Ed.
V14 N. 58 In Parts of Africa Violence Against Women Is A Not Uncommon Way of Life Even For Olympians
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In the April 1962 posting that covered some of the big Relays meets, there was mention of a remarkable performance by Jerry Dyes of...
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Jerry Siebert leading Peter Snell in an Olympic Prelim 1964 We received a note from Walt Murphy this morning that Jerry Siebert, one of ...