I'm 76 years old today. Where did the time go? We've been slowing down this year with postings in the blog but once in a while I think about it. Today this is my birthday gift. Watched the Prefontaine meet this past weekend held temporarily in Palo Alto. Some good events and some good performances, but for some reason not as exciting as the sport used to be. The Diamond League for purposes of brevity (read TV rubes can't take more than two hours of track and they like to repeat the same Nike commercial 20 times so the zombies will buy their Zoom Shoe. There I said it.) have now dropped races of 5000 and 10,000 meters from the program. We're going the way of NASCAR. Instead we get a 3000m steeplechase from both sexes and a couple of 2 mile races from the gals and guys. Michael Norman is a stud. Christian Coleman is one too. Did anyone notice that Justin Gatlin almost stole the show from Coleman. He appears to have white hair on his head and in his beard? It sure looked that way. Whatever he has been taking to stay young, I think I would too these days. Thank the organizer who decided not to have a mixed relay. Although back in the old days they occasionally had a weightman's relay indoors. They stopped doing that weightman stuff at the Chicago Sun Times meet when a behemoth went through the track in one of the turns and delayed the meet by an hour while repairs were made. Some friends recently talked about an 8 man mile relay that was held regularly in L.A. California high schools.
Here's that conversation: (We're a little bit off track and field but that's our perogative. GB
Pete Brown and I had been talking about the 1954 Rose Bowl. I mentioned that Howard Hopalong Cassidy was the man, for Ohio State. Pete reminded me that it was USC who they played in a rainstorm, not Oregon State. Somehow I mentioned that I thought Jon Arnett was the best running back for USC in those days.
George,
Jon Arnett's best year was 1955---captain of team and All American for Trojans. He was born in 1935. I remember him as good in long jump. He went to Manuel Arts HS, right next to USC campus. I saw him in the LA city meet which was held on north side of Coliseum in conjunction with the Coliseum Relays. Like so many, he bolted California for Oregon later in life, tired of traffic and smog. He played for Rams and Bears in NFL. Went to pro bowl most every year.
LA City schools ran the 8 man mile relay, an event that upstaged the world famous track stars of the day. It was hilarious and everybody stood (often over 60,000) and cheered for the whole thing. Ask Roy or Dennis. Arnett ran on Manual Arts relay team. Jefferson HS would win it more often than not. There were always dropped batons and lots of physical contact. Blazing speed. That meet was so good that in the early 1950’s the LA schools snubbed the state meet. This meet had better marks than state and they had no interest in going to Fresno or anywhere else for lesser competition. They finally got over that.
George,
It rained at least two inches during the Rose Bowl game and us Californians were used to sunshine. Plus it was cold, at least to us pansies. Pete Brown
Pete, Woody was AD then at Ohio State. If you ran track at OSU, the only way you could get to the NCAA meet was to win the Big Ten meet. Otherwise Woody wouldn't let you go.
By the way, did you know that Knute Rockne came to Notre Dame as the track coach then eventually became the football coach? He used to take his football players to compete at the Drake Relays and helped attract big crowds to see them. He was eventually inducted into the Drake Relays Hall of Fame.
Pete,
Well said about the 8 man mile relay. They were so much fun to watch.
Jon Arnett was 6th in the California state meet in the long jump at 22’ 2 3/4 in 1952. I don’t see any state meets where an LA runner or broad jumper didn’t make it to the state finals from 1947 on. Bill Peck’s book on the state meets (1915-2006) is invaluable. You weren’t able to find a copy, Pete; were you? Apparently there has been a copy available in the past on Amazon or Abe Books, but not now. I think that John Pagliano had a copy; but he passed away about ten years ago. I don’t know what would have happened to it. His wife probably tossed it. ☹
When was the last major indoor or outdoor meet held in California? (Not counting the upcoming Pre meet moved from U of Oregon). Dennis Kavanaugh
It was a stinker all right, but with USC and not Oregon State. Bucks won 20-7 over Trojans. It poured like holy hell. My dad and I went to the game and got the car stuck in the mud along with thousands of others who parked on Brookside Golf Course which is immediately north of the Rose Bowl. We did not get the car back for days, pulled out with a tow truck. Ohio State won easily. The OSU band, about 350 strong, tore hell out of the turf at half time and it was the first time we had seen Woody Hayes in person. I hated his guts, but over the years came to appreciate what a unique character he was. He was wonderful with kids, teaching them words and history and more---in the football dorm on Sunday mornings in off season. I was sad when he punched the kid from Clemson and lost his job.
Pete, Woody was AD then at Ohio State. If you ran track at OSU, the only way you could get to the NCAA meet was to win the Big Ten meet. Otherwise Woody wouldn't let you go.
By the way, did you know that Knute Rockne came to Notre Dame as the track coach then eventually became the football coach? He used to take his football players to compete at the Drake Relays and helped attract big crowds to see them. He was eventually inducted into the Drake Relays Hall of Fame.
Mondo Duplantis is another stud and he is not even twenty years old yet. The Brazilian shotputter, Darlan Romani, what a set of Trapezius muscles. They are bigger than a flank steak on a bull. Seventy-four feet, holy shazam!
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| Darlan Romani |
What will the Pre be like when we go back to Eugene? Will it still have that homey comfort and closeness to the track that we had at the old Hayward Field, or will it be filled with modern conveniences, Jumbotrons, animated advertising boards going around the track like we see at the world cup soccer stadium? And will that loud mouth British lady still be doing color commentary from the infield? Will the fans of Eugene come back in droves? Will they be able to fill the larger capacity stadium when the only other track stadium on the West Coast seems to hold about 7000 or 8000 people. The Pre should have been held at Cal Berkeley. Would have held more people, if they would have come. Be sure to check out the crowd in Helsinki in the article below. Of course that full house was in 1940 and there weren't many diversions to draw away the sporting public other than World War II.
Another Cool Find in a Junk Store
Yesterday while going through my favorite second hand store in Courtenay, British Columbia, I found a WWII era German propaganda book which seized my interest, because it made reference to track and field. It is called Hier Ist Suomi in Wort und Bild published in 1943 by Werner Sonderstrom Osakeyhtio. In English , Here is Finland in Word and Picture. Though the publication date is not specific, I think it's about 1943. I had to look at some online history to see why the Finns are shown wearing German helmets in some military pictures in this book. The German-USSR non-aggression pact in 1939 had left Finland wide open to Russian assault on the strategic Karelian peninsula. The Finns as we may all know, were able to beat the Russians back in a brutal winter campaign but used up all their reserves in so doing. So when the Germans finally prepared to go after the Russians, ignoring the old non aggression pact, the Finns were more than happy to allow some cooperation on their homefront with the Germans. They must have been re-supplied by the Germans and then allowed the Wehrmacht onto their soil to prepare for their assault on Russia. Anyway there was a brief era of good feeling between the countries building up to the German drive East.
Forty years ago when I was posted in the US Army in Europe I remember Baltic soldiers ie. Estonians in my unit saying when the Russians invaded, they executed everyone in power or decision making capacity. But when the Germans invaded, the citizens were given an option, "Fight for the Germans, or be executed. Therefore the Germans had better public relations in those difficult days than did the Russians.
Forty years ago when I was posted in the US Army in Europe I remember Baltic soldiers ie. Estonians in my unit saying when the Russians invaded, they executed everyone in power or decision making capacity. But when the Germans invaded, the citizens were given an option, "Fight for the Germans, or be executed. Therefore the Germans had better public relations in those difficult days than did the Russians.
This book promotes that sentiment in glorifing Finnish life, culture, architecture, and in this case sport. It's a classic piece of psychological warfare. How better to let a country know you really like them and respect them and want to use their backyard as a jumping off site to kill their neighbors than to publish a nice picture book about their country?
Track and Field in This Turbulant Time
I never realized that when Tokyo lost the 1940 Olympic Games it was their own decision to pull out due to their entry into the Sino Japanese War in 1938. Then Helsinki was given the 1940 games, but by then the world was too deep into WWII to go on with an Olympics. Here is how the events unfolded per Wikipedia.
The 1940 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XII Olympiad, were originally scheduled to be held from September 21 to October 6, 1940, in Tokyo, Japan. They were rescheduled for Helsinki, Finland, to be held from July 20 to August 4, 1940, but were ultimately cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II. Helsinki eventually hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics and Tokyo the 1964 Summer Olympics.
The campaign to choose a city for 1940 began in 1932, with Barcelona, Rome, Helsinki, and Tokyo participating. Tokyo city officials suggested a campaign as a means of international diplomacy following Japan's alienation from the League of Nations due to the Mukden Incident, in which Japan occupied Manchuria and created the puppet state of Manchukuo.
While both Tokyo officials and International Olympic Committee (IOC) representatives were behind the campaign, the national government, which was ever more interested in military matters, did not have any strong supporters for such a diplomatic gesture.[1] In 1936, Tokyo was chosen in a surprise move, making it the first non-Western city to win an Olympic bid.
1930s Japan and international sports
During the 1930 Far Eastern Games in Tokyo, Indian participants were spotted flying the flag of their independence movement rather than the flag of British India. This caused a complaint from the British Olympic Association. In 1934 Japan attempted to invite European colonies to the Far Eastern Games.[2]
Forfeiture of Games
When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out on July 7, 1937, Kono Ichiro, a member of the Diet (legislature), immediately requested that the Olympics be forfeited.[4] The 1938 Far Eastern Games were also cancelled, but Japan's IOC delegates persisted under a belief that the war would soon be over.[5] Amid the intensification of the war, the feasibility of both the Summer Olympics and the 1940 Winter Olympics grew increasingly questionable to other countries, who suggested a different site be chosen and spoke of the possibility of boycotting the Games were they to proceed in Japan.[6]
In March 1938, the Japanese provided reassurances to the IOC at the organization's Cairo conference that Tokyo would still be able to serve as the host city. However, many Diet members in Japan had already openly questioned hosting the Olympics in wartime, and the military was unreasonably demanding that the organizers build the venues from wood because they needed metals for the war front.[7] In July, a legislative session was held to decide the matters of the Summer and Winter Olympics and the planned 1940 World's Fair all at once. The World's Fair was only "postponed", under a belief that Japan would be able to wrap up the war, but the Olympics could not be moved and was canceled.[8]
Kōichi Kido, who would later be instrumental in the surrender of Japan in 1945, announced the forfeiture on July 16, 1938. He closed his speech saying, "When peace reigns again in the Far East, we can then invite the Games to Tokyo and take that opportunity to prove to the people of the world the true Japanese spirit."[3] This would come to pass in 1964.
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| The Olympics That Never Were |
How Helsinkians Coped with the Cancellation of the 1940 Olympics
In 1940 a triangular athletics meeting between Germany, Finland and Sweden was held in Helsinki. Attached are some pictures from that meet. I'll try to translate the captions with my long dormant German.
To date I've not found any results from this meet but will add them here when I do.
GB
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| This is the book cover |
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| 1940 Helsinki Olympic Stadium, 12 years before it hosted the 1952 Olympics Emil Zatopek was still learning to make shoes in the Bata factory in Czechoslovakia at this time. |
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| Helsinki is a sea of flags on the Mannerheimintie during the three nation competition Germany Finland, and Sweden in 1940. "We've got the flags, let's use them." ed. |
To date I've not found any results from this meet but will add them here when I do.
GB
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| A packed house for the 3 Nations Meet 5000 meters being contested. I didn't know there were that many Finns in the world. |
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| A closer view of those 5000 runners being led by two Finns, then two Germans, and finally two Swedes. |
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| This looks like one of Heidi Reifenstahl's classic pictures of an Aryan male. However it is not.This is Kalevi Kotkas the Finnish record holder in the Discus and High Jump. interesting versatility Kalevi.That's what it says in the book. At first I thought it was Art Garfunkel of Simon and Garfunkel. |
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| These two guys are listed as Lauri Kilima now moving into the 2 meter high jump ranks and Nils Niklen the top European in the High Jump. |
Elsewhere there is a picture of Paavo Nurmi (see below) on a Laenderwettmarsch, an international competitive walk in which the winner was determined by the number of people signed up to participate in the walk. It doesn't say how far the walk was, but the Finns outscored the Swedes in registered walkers 1,507,111 to 943,952. It was a walkover. Anyway, thought you guys might find this of interest.
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Pic of Nurmi wearing madatory necktie. Looks like Daddy Warbucks is right behind him. Nurmi does not appearto be carrying his stopwatch anymore.
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| Check out Paavo's walking shoes. Are these what were known as 'Brogues"? |
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| This picture of runner Taisto Maki notes that he was the current wartime WR holder at 10,000m. Never heard of him but that's what it says in the book. To me he looks like a young Lazlo Tabori. Hey the Finns and Hungarians are linguistically related. |
Here is Maki's pedigree: Not too shabby (from Wikipedia)
Taisto Armas Mäki (2 December 1910 – 1 May 1979) was a Finnish long-distance runner – one of the so-called "Flying Finns".[2] Like his coach and close friend, Paavo Nurmi, Mäki broke world records over two miles, 5000 metres and 10,000 metres – holding the records simultaneously between 1939 and 1942.[2] Mäki was the first man to run 10,000 metres in less than 30 minutes, breaking his own world record in a time of 29:52.6 on 17 September 1939.[3]
Mäki was born in Rekola in the municipality of Vantaa. He was a shepherd by trade, earning him the nickname "Rekolan paimenpoika" (the "Rekola herdboy").[3] At a time when Finland dominated men's long-distance running, Mäki did not come to prominence until 1938. In September of that year, in what proved to be his only appearance at a major championships, he won the 5000 metres at the European Championships in Paris, beating Swede Henry Jonsson and fellow Finn Kauko Pekuri into second and third place with a time of 14:26.8.[4] On 29 September 1938, less than four weeks after winning in Paris, Mäki broke the 10,000 metres world record for the first time, beating Ilmari Salminen's old record by more than three seconds in a time of 30:02.0.[5] Mäki went on to break five world records during the following summer.[2] On 7 June he took close to three seconds off Miklós Szabó's two mile world record, running a time of 8:53.2 in the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.[6] Nine days later, in the same stadium, he took over eight seconds off Lauri Lehtinen's world record over 5000 metres.[7] He followed these performances by taking close to ten seconds off his own 10,000 m world record, running 29:52.6 on 17 September.[5]
The Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union broke out on 30 November 1939. Like many of his fellow Flying Finns, including Gunnar Höckert and Lauri Lehtinen, Mäki was initially deployed on the Karelian Isthmus.[2] However, along with Paavo Nurmi, he was sent on a tour of the United States in February 1940 in order to raise money for the Finnish Relief Fund. During the tour, which lasted for two months and culminated in an appearance in front of 14,000 people at Madison Square Garden, the two men raced against hand-picked American athletes. Mäki's times during the tour were well below those he had set the previous summer, the cause of which was a matter of much debate at the time.[2] Mäki's career was cut short by service in World War II. The conflict had also caused the cancellation of the 1940 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, and with it ending Mäki's hopes of representing his country at the Olympic Games.[8]
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| Matti Jarvinen many years world class in the javelin although he recently lost the WR to his countryman Yrjo Nikkanen. * Note: Matti is carrying back up spear in his long johns. Jockstraps were banned in Nordic countries in those days.
You may recall that during the war years in relatively peaceful Sweden, Gundar Haag and Arne Andersson were on the cusp of breaking the four minute mile.
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| Call Back Starter? Actually this is P.E. Svinhufvud 80 years old former President of the Republic of Finnland. Don't mess with this guy. His buddies call him "Old Lefty". |
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| Had to add this guy who appears a little further on in the sports section of the book. Caption to the picture follows: "Cross country skiing was always the favorite of the Finns, but in recent years Finland has moved forward in ski jumping. In 1941 in Cortina the winner in this discipline was a Finn, Paavo Vierto, who as a volunteer with the Waffen SS was killed in the Ukraine." Oh boy, I'm sure that is not on the family tombstone. |
Don't quote me on the historic references, I only searched briefly on Google.
Comments include:
Comments include:
What an interesting German picture about their friend, Suomi. The history of Scandinavia is peppered with threats and actual assaults of those countries by their nearby neighbor, Russia. When we visited Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Finland (Suomi) a few summers ago, time after time we noticed enmity with Russia. It was best expressed in an Estonian museum where they told their history, first being conquered by Czarist Russia, followed by the same brutal treatment by the Soviet USSR. When the Germans (Nazis) finally came they were seen as liberators from this Russian brutality so they were actually welcomed. In other words an enemy of my enemy is my friend. Finland remained faithful to Germany throughout WW II, hence this favorable book by the Nazis. Finland receive considerable worldwide criticism on that matter, even today, but still think the less brutal side was Germany. The UN prevented Soviet invasion of much of Scandinavia after the war but was unable to protect Baltic countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, and a few others which became soviets in the USSR. Our Swedish friends worry about Russia and said they thought Sweden could hold off Russia for nine days, then would be overcome unless the rest of NATO came to their aid.
Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941, the day my parents got married. Germany and Japan had signed a strange alliance so when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the US declared war on Japan and then Germany declared war on the US and the fight was on. Even today Russia takes major credit for defeating the Nazis and since their casualties were many times ours, they have a point. Russia considers the US minor players in WW II and the US considers Russia to be minor players in that same war, so I guess you write up the war any way you want. None of the Allies trusted Russia so one the war was over they divided up Berlin into four sections and the Cold War immediately started.
Bill Schnier
One of our readers who wishes to remain anonymous, noted that he ran in lane five on this track in a 440 yards not meters in 1960.
I share your thoughts about the future of the Pre meet. Only went to one about ten years ago and loved it-great atmosphere. Did go to its predecessor in 1960 . Went down to Eugene by bus from Vancouver BC to watch Harry Jerome run. Agree that the DL has lost its lustre. It may be something to do with advancing age ( mine not the meets). Glad to see the return of the blog. Long may it reign.
Some of your comments about odd additional events being run during track meets took me back to 1950s at White City in London. I recall that at times they had a Tug of War and that it was usually won by an outfit called Wimpey London Airport ( I think a construction company). We were also treated to 5 mile walking races-often getting a new world record. Another unusual item was a Paarlauf-which I seem to remember was a distance race with teams of two alternating at different intervals and I distinctly recall Steeplechase Olympic medallist John Disley being involved. I mentioned some time ago about the ill-conceived idea of having fireworks tied to the Hammer during night meets with the lights turned off. ( not advisable).
Best wishes to you.
Regards.
Geoff
Geoff, your mention of Paralauf (substitue run? Ger.) reminds me of a South African telling me about a 3 mile relay race they held on the track. Only two runners on the team, and they could run any distance for their relay leg, so long as the team covered 12 laps of the track. The most effiicient way of doing that proved to be the first runner going 330 yards, handing off, then jogging back 110 yards and taking the hand off from the second runner and continuing that way. Also made for a tough workout. George
