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201 pages

English

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The X Olympiad, the tenth volume in The Olympic Century series, begins with the Games of Los Angeles, 1932. With the entire world locked in the depths of the Great Depression, the book describes the thrills of the world's greatest festival of sport played out against the backdrop of Hollywood's Golden Era.With famous movie stars watching from the stands of the legendary Memorial Coliseum, the 1932 Olympics created its own cast of legends. The book tells the story of Babe Didrikson, perhaps the greatest female athlete of the 20th Century, who won two golds and one silver in track and field in Los Angeles before going on to even greater fame as a pro golfer; Kusuo Kitamma of Japan, not yet 15, who became, and remains, the youngest ever Olympic swimming champion; and the American swimmer Buster Crabbe, who won gold in the pool and later went on to Hollywood stardom in the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s and 40s.Following Los Angeles, the focus of the book shifts to 1936 and the Winter Olympics in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany, the first to feature Alpine, as well as Nordic, skiing events. Against the backdrop of Hitler's rising Third Reich, the book follows the exploits of athletes like Sweden's Sonja Henie as she claims her third consecutive figure skating gold; and the unlikely British ice hockey team, which upset the dominant Canadians in their quest for a fifth-straight Olympic gold.Juan Antonio Samaranch, former President of the International Olympic Committee, called The Olympic Century, "The most comprehensive history of the Olympic games ever published".

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Publié par	Warwick Press Inc.
Date de parution	18 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781987944099
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	10 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0262€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE OLYMPIC CENTURY THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE MODERN OLYMPIC MOVEMENT VOLUME 10
THE X OLYMPIAD
LOS ANGELES 1932 GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN 1936
by Ellen Galford
W
Warwick Press Inc. Toronto
Copyright 1996 WSRP
The Olympic Century series was produced as a joint effort among the International Olympic Committee, the United States Olympic Committee, and World Sport Research Publications, to provide an official continuity series that will serve as a permanent on-line Olympic education program for individuals, schools, and public libraries.
Published by:
Warwick Press Inc., Toronto
www.olympicbooks.com
1st Century Project: Charles Gary Allison
Publishers: Robert G. Rossi, Jim Williamson, Rona Wooley
Editors: Christian D. Kinney, Laura Forman
Art Director: Christopher M. Register
Picture Editors: Lisa Bruno, Debora Lemmons
Digital Imaging: Richard P. Majeske
Associate Editor, Research: Mark Brewin
Associate Editor, Appendix: Elsa Ramirez
Designers: Kimberley Davison, Diane Myers, Chris Conlee
Staff Researchers: Brad Haynes, Alexandra Hesse, Pauline Ploquin
Copy Editor: Harry Endrulat
Venue Map Artist: Dave Hader, Studio Conceptions, Toronto
Fact Verification: Carl and Liselott Diem Archives of the German Sport University at Cologne, Germany
Statistics: Bill Mallon, Walter Teutenberg
Memorabilia Consultants: Manfred Bergman, James D. Greensfelder, John P. Kelly, James B. Lally, Ingrid O Neil
Office Staff: Diana Fakiola, Brian M. Heath, Edward J. Messier, Brian P. Rand, Robert S. Vassallo, Chris Waters
Senior Consultant: Dr. Dietrich Quanz (Germany)
Special Consultants: Walter Borgers, Dr. Karl Lennartz, Dr. Dietrich Quanz, Dr. Norbert Mueller (Germany), Ian Buchanan (United Kingdom), Wolf Lyberg (Sweden), Dr. Nicholas Yalouris (Greece).
International Contributors: Jean Durry (France), Dr. Fernand Landry (Canada), Dr. Antonio Lombardo (Italy), Dr. John A. MacAloon (U.S.A.), Dr. Jujiro Narita (Japan), C. Robert Paul (U.S.A.), Dr. Roland Renson (Belgium), Anthony Th. Bijkirk (Netherlands), Dr. James Walston (Ombudsman)
International Research and Assistance: John S. Baick (New York), Matthieu Brocart (Paris), Alexander Fakiolas (Athens), Bob Miyakawa (Tokyo), Rona Lester (London), Dominic LoTempio (Columbia), George Kostas Mazareas (Boston), Georgia McDonald (Colorado Springs), Wendy Nolan (Princeton), Alexander Ratner (Moscow), Jon Simon (Washington, D.C.), Frank Strasser (Cologne), Val ry Turco (Lausanne), Laura Walden (Rome), Jorge Zocchi (Mexico City)
All rights reserved. No part of The Olympic Century book series may be copied, republished, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without the prior written consent of the IOC, the USOC, and WSRP.
eBook Conversion: eBook Partnership, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-987944-24-2 (24 Volume Series)
ISBN 978-1-987944-09-9 (Volume 10)
CONTENTS
THE BABE AND BAD TIMES LOS ANGELES 1932
HOPE ON THE HORIZON LOS ANGELES 1932
FOR LOVE OR MONEY THE X OLYMPIAD
Bibliography
Index
THE BABE AND BAD TIMES
LOS ANGELES 1932
It was 1932, deep in the aching heart of the Great Depression, and most of the news was bad. The world, or such parts of it that read the daily papers, hungered for something to cheer about. And one summer day it arrived. Out of southeast Texas burst a pint-size Amazon with limbs like pounding pistons and an attitude 10 times as tall as the young woman herself.
The press and the public couldn t get enough of her. Every sportswriter in Los Angeles jostled for a look at this rawboned Texas tomboy. Mildred Didriksen, better known as Babe, had swaggered into town as if she had the 1932 Olympic Games in the back pocket of her jeans. Before she even stepped off the train at Union Station, she was already a star. Female athletes, in a world where ladies still wore white gloves to go downtown, remained objects of curiosity, whatever their abilities. Female athletes who could wipe out the cream of the competition in half a dozen different events without stopping for breath became the stuff of lore and legend. Babe Didriksen was billed as legend material, and the tales of her prowess turned out to be mostly true-even though she would never win any medals for humility.
I came out here to beat everybody in sight, she announced, and that is exactly what I m going to do. How many world records are you going to break? asked one reporter. I d break em all if they d let me, came the answer. I can do anything.
The sports-page pundits who had seen Didriksen in action at the Olympic trials at Evanston, Illinois, didn t doubt that she could. She had entered eight of the 10 women s track and field events at the meet, won five outright, and tied for first place in a sixth. She would also claim, apocryphally, that she had set some world records at that meet; but then Babe was fond of exaggeration, and sportswriters, then and later, often took her word when they should have known better. Even without the hyperbole, though, her showing at Evanston was glorious. George Kirksey of United Press called it the most amazing series of performances ever accomplished by any individual, male or female, in track and field history.
If Didriksen had any say in the matter, she would also be glorious at Los Angeles. At the trials she had won five different events, though she would end up competing in three. As she would tell it in her autobiography, this was because Olympic rules limited her to only three events. In fact, there was no such limitation. More likely, Babe set her own boundaries to maximize her chances of success. She chose the javelin, the 80- meter hurdles, and the high jump.
Cocky Babe didn t look like somebody who would suffer from stage fright. But excitement, adrenaline, the thrill of the chase, can make an athlete s hand shake just as surely as the fear of failure. And the knowledge of how outrageously she had been hyped by herself and others cranked the pressure even higher. Her first event was the javelin, making its debut as an Olympic event for women, and she took the field for it at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with her nerves laced tighter than a Victorian corset.
Just before the start, the Babe found herself hemmed in by a crowd of fellow competitors. The crush cramped her style-literally. Her usual practice technique was to hurl the javelin the same way she threw it in competition, letting it fly as far as it could go. But there was no way to manage a long throw amid the mob. If she wanted to loosen up at all, she would have to aim for the ground instead of the horizon, with short downward thrusts of the spear. Most javelin throwers warmed up this way, but it had never suited Didriksen. Today, though, it was downward thrusts or nothing. Down went the javelin, and the result was a whisker away from disaster. She almost skewered one of the German women javelin throwers, Ellen Braumuller, through the foot. Under these circumstances, even the mighty Babe felt a little shaky.
Didriksen went into her run and launched the first throw. But then her hand slipped. She felt something pop in her shoulder. Instead of soaring up and outward into its usual curved trajectory, Babe s javelin shot out in a straight line. Miraculously, this low-flying missile stayed airborne. It zoomed on and on, finally coming to earth at 143 feet 4 inches (43.68 meters).
Babe s next two tries fell far short of the first. She realized later that the pop she had felt during that initial awkward throw had signified ripping cartilage. Not that it mattered. One after another, the strongest contenders in the field fought and failed to match Didriksen s first attempt. If anyone still believed the Babe was all bluff and bluster, they had to think again. In her hands even a fumble turned out better than anyone else s best shot. Ripped cartilage and all, Babe won the gold medal. Then, like a Texas tornado, she headed toward whatever else might lie in her path.
In her autobiography, Didriksen would go to great lengths to insist that, muscles and medals notwithstanding, she was just a normal, old-fashioned girl, with a first prize for dressmaking at the Texas State Fair to prove it. But whether she liked the idea or not, the Babe stood in the vanguard of a revolution. The modem Olympic movement had struggled since its inception over the question of female participation.
As early as Paris 1900, a few women had taken part in golf matches and tennis tournaments linked officially, if tenuously, with the Games. But golf and tennis were genteel sports, played by corset-clutched ladies who took care not to sweat. Track and field events were far more controversial. Some powerful figures within Olympic ranks blanched at the notion of women in shorts and singlets, straining their all-too-visible muscles. A woman s place in athletics, they cried, should be on the sidelines, applauding the men. If women wished to dedicate themselves to sport, let them become the wives and mothers of champions.
Women, some of them fresh from winning their fight for the right to vote, were not easily deflected. Pressure from feminists and their male allies within the Olympic movement turned the tide. The first track and field events for women joined the Olympic program at Amsterdam 1928. But the anti-female faction kept on fighting. Its leaders shuddered deliciously at the aftermath of the women s 800-meter race:
After crossing the finish line, some competitors had fallen to the ground, either in exhaustion or disappointment. Ignoring the fact that male runners had done the very same thing since time immemorial, the conservatives condemned the monstrous spectacle. Here, they crowed, was conclusive proof: The gentler sex was far too delicate to stand the heat of the Olympic kitchen. Women s track and field contests should be dropped from the Games forthwith.
(Below) Babe Didriksen, rearing back to throw her