Olympics time again. Gabby, Usain, Misty and Carrie; and of course all those great swimmers. Diving I slightly get into. Basketball I love but haven’t figured out when they are on. I didn’t see much tennis but was pulling for Maria over Serena. Treason you say? Maybe, but I’ll stick with that choice.
I watched a little rowing, with the American women’s team winning their event. So far I’ve seen no fencing, or badminton for that matter, which I always thought was pronounced bad mitten, you know, like a lousy glove.
Before the Games officially begin, the Olympic flame is lit in front of the ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia. An actress playing a high priestess uses a curved mirror to focus the rays of the sun, igniting a flame. After that, a long relay of runners carrying torches brings it to the site of the Games, where it is used to light a cauldron that stays lit until the Closing Ceremonies. The flame travels by plane between cities and by foot within cities.
After the cauldron is lit, doves are released, as a symbol of peace. The order – first lighting the cauldron, then releasing the doves – is important. In the 1988 Seoul Games, they tried it the other way around. Unfortunately, many of the doves were in the area of the cauldron just before it burst into flames, leading to their unexpected demise.
Here are some other Olympic moments from over the years you may or may not know about:
1904 – Fred Lorz rides in a car for 11 miles during the marathon, but is briefly claimed as the winner until someone figures it out.
1912 – This was the year dominated by the great Jim Thorpe, who wins gold in the pentathlon and decathlon. (A year later his medals were taken away when it is discovered he was paid $25 a week to play baseball. His family got them back in 1982, 29 years after his death.) Women are allowed to compete in swimming events for the first time. None of them are from the U.S., which bars its female athletes from competing without long skirts.
1920 – Distance runner Paavo Nurmi wins three medals for Finland. (must not have been any Kenyans entered)
1924 – Johnny Weissmuller wins three golds and a bronze for swimming water polo. Paavo Nurmi wins five gold medals.
1928 – Women compete in track and field for the first time; however, so many of them collapse after the 800-meter race that it is banned until 1960. Luigina Giavotti becomes the youngest medallist of all time, picking up silver in gymnastics for Italy at the age of 11 years and 302 days. (Gymnasium comes from the Greek word gymnos, meaning naked. In fact, in ancient Games, athletes used to compete in the buff. Perhaps the Olympic Committee might consider bringing back this tradition, to revive attendance.) Paavo Nurmi picks up three more medals.
1932 – Paavo Nurmi is banned from the Los Angeles Games on grounds that he had claimed too much money in travel expenses. In the Winter Games this same year, Eddie Eagen wins a gold medal on the U.S. bobsled team. Twelve years earlier he won a gold in boxing, and is still the only person to have won gold in both the Summer and Winter Games.
1936 – Jesse Owens shows up Aryan superiority. Basketball is played for the first time on a dirt floor in the rain and the U.S. beats Canada 19-8.
1960 – 20-year old Wilma Rudolph, who didn’t walk until age 8 because of Polio and Scarlet Fever, wins three gold medals in track for the U.S.
1968 – Swedish pentathlete Hans-Grunner Lilgenwall is the first to be disqualified for drug use, having tested positive for excessive alcohol.
1980 – “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
Other tidbits –
The 1912 Greco-Roman wrestling match in Stockholm between Finn Alfred Askainen and Russian Martin Klein lasted more than 11 hours. Klein eventually won but was too exhausted to compete in the championship match, so he settled for silver.