I was 10 years old when Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics. This was the first summer games televised in the United States. Oh, perhaps not in the way you think. The technology wasn’t that advanced. But events were filmed and the film was flown back via jet to the United States and broadcast by CBS, frequently on the same day.
I was transfixed. For a couple of years I had been watching the ole Diz on the baseball game of the week, the Redskins on my local network, sailed with the pilot on Saturdays. I had some idea what was going on.
But this was different. So many countries, so many events. And of course, the Cold War, the USA versus the USSR a common sub-plot. Ralph Boston winning gold in the long jump, favored John Thomas finishing third behind two Russians in the high jump, Rafer Johnson winning the decathlon, sprinter Wilma Rudolph winning three golds and achieving the kind of adulation denied to all but a few Black women at the time.
And of course, the legendary 1960 USA Olympic basketball team, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West and Walt Bellamy and Jerry Lucas, winning all of its games by an average margin of 42.4 points per game.
Not a single ACC player to be seen.
It wasn’t just the USA. Ethiopian Abebe Bikila running barefoot through the cobblestone streets of Rome to capture the marathon a generation after Mussolini’s forces invaded him homeland and forced his family to relocate still resonates.
I was hooked on the Olympics and still plan my summer around watching them. Yes, I’m keenly aware of the venality of Avery Brundage, the backroom dealings of the IOC, the doping and all the other baggage.
I would place the 1972 Munich Massacre in a different category than “baggage.”
But not all the magic had worn off.
Joel Shankle was the first Duke Olympian.
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