Dick Fosbury of Oregon State U. not only won the Mexico
City Olympics high jump, he reinvented the event.
Okay, so he lifted himself fifteen inches higher than I
ever did. When that bar got to eye level, it began to glare at me. And when a college
locker room sign advertised an all-comers intramural track meet, I laughed. Me?
Run? I did trot a quarter mile once to catch a bus.
But the next day when a fellow who was quitting college gave
me his ultra-light, sponge-soled shoes, I remembered the intramural meet and
began to wonder if I might try an event. Not a sprint. I was quick, but I sure
wasn’t fast. I’d learned that in grade school, when I couldn't beat Bill Harris
even after he loaned me his spikes. I’d done 19 feet in the long jump in basketball
shoes. But the coach wanted twenty before he'd even let one try out for track.
I was about to skip the whole idea when a fellow in my
history class saw the shoes. He said, “You’re entering in the intramural?"
I said I wasn’t sure. He said he was going to enter the shot put. The shot put!!! He weighed maybe 150 pounds and was about
five six.
I guess he read my face, because he smiled and said,
“I’ll never get another chance to even pick a shot put up. I'll spend a whole Saturday standing around
with real athletes.”
So I signed up for the only non-running event the high
jump. It started after lunch. Then I looked for a morning event. I might as
well blow the whole day, I thought. The
only one with no heats, just a final, was the hurdles. Maybe with these neat new shoes I could run
120 yards. I'd run a string of two
hurdles in high school. So......
Saturday morning there were plenty of fake track men and
a few real ones lounging around. And the day was nice, especially for San
Francisco. The hurdle event was
scheduled for the middle of the morning.
Not too soon, not too late.
When it was called, we four went to the blocks. Next to me was a tall, blonde, slender fellow wearing
classy trunks and shiny new spiked running shoes. Just his shoes were obviously
faster than I was. He also looked very
competent.
To my right were two others in ordinary gym clothes, one
wearing sneakers, the other spikes, but unlike the tall fellow's shoes, his
didn't fit too well. Neither looked like a runner any more than I must have.
At the gun, I got a good start, taking off even with the
blonde and well ahead of the others. Over
the first hurdle the blonde and I were even.
I cleared the second hurdle, too.
But the blonde was smoother, and he had those spikes. Also, he could RUN!!!
Then the third hurdle caught my trailing foot, and I
tumbled into a somersault. Having
sense enough not to sprawl, I tucked, spun over, and came up facing hurdle #4. It was there, so I simply went over it. The blonde was
clearing #5, but I figured I might as well keep running. I was half way, so why not?
At the end of the 120 yards, the track coach had run out
and shook my hand. He offered to put me on the track team. Clearly, he hadn’t noticed how slow I was.
Somehow, I’d become something of a celebrity. Later, when
the high jump started, upper classmen, some who had already made the track
team, began “coaching” me. One loaned me
his “jumping” shoes. When I missed at
five eight, two of them took me aside to give me tips. The effect was enough
for me to make five nine, and got a lot of cheers. So I invited them to Monday lunch on me at
the college cafeteria. They accepted, and I found that I could help them with
Contemporary European history. (This was 1939 when Adolph, Benito, Broz, and
Francisco were strutting this way and that.)
As we sat around a table, one of the fellows said, “You
don’t run; but you’re some kind of athlete.
What do you do?”
'Water polo,” I told him.
“That’s great!” he
said. “What is it?”
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