Elliot Denman is our most senior writer, having written for American Athletics, American Track & Field, RunningNetwork and RunBlogRun over the past thirty-five years. At 91, Elliott Denman has covered (and attended most ) the Olympics since 1956 and World Athletics Championships since 1983.
This is Elliott’s thoughtful piece on Grand Slam Track, puts the new series into historical perspective.
GOOD ON GRANDSLAM TRACK
BUT LET’S LOOK BACK BACK
ON TRACK’S BAD OLD DAYS
By ELLIOTT DENMAN
GOOD ON Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. Good on Kenny Bednarek. Good on Grant Fisher. Good on Gabby Thomas. Good on Alison Dos Santos.
Good on all of them for earning a pair of one-hundred-thousand-buck paychecks over the first two three-day weekends of Grand Slam Track. They deserve it. They earned it. They’ll (hopefully) put it so such good purposes as mortgage payments, grocery bills and building real lives.
Especially good on Michael Johnson for translating this Grand Slam vision into reality, for snagging the sponsors, for building a three million–plus dollar budget, for snaring the TV deals and the venues and everything else involved into putting the whole show onto the track and into the consciousness of track fans around the planet.
From one man’s TV room (mine), at the Jersey Shore, Grand Slam Track’s kicking-it-all-off Kingston visit looked OK and the second stop Miami a whole lot better.
And now it’s on to Philadelphia and what better site can there be but storied Franklin Field ? We all know it’s the nation’s most continually-running collegiate venue and home of the classic Penn Relays and an array of other events – National AAUs. Dream Miles, IC4A, Heps, etc etc etc.
Obviously, it will be a collision of track and field’s past and future, and let’s just see if it really gets there. Michael Johnson & Team are already telling us the answer will be “yes.” Others say “maybe.”
Chopping the slate from three days to two is a good move. Even the most intense fans must have felt three days was a stretch. Two days of action will surely deliver more bang for Philly fans’ bucks.
So let’s just wait and see where all this leads.
BUT AT THIS SAME MOMENT in track and field time, let’s also take a look back at the long list of occasions where dollar bills represented not reality, progress and enlightenment, but the exact opposite.
There were long and dark years in the sport’s amateurism-clinging history when an array of track’s all-time greats (and lots other not-really greats) saw their careers called to the finish line long-long before they coulda-woulda-shoulda delivered a heap of hugely remarkable deeds. Money meant the end, not the beginning.
SO THE FOLLOWING is aimed at all you later-comers out there.
(And as a nonagenarian, almost everybody I see these days is a later-comer.) Today’s Grand Slammers may have trouble grasping all these happenings of antiquity. But good on them if they even try. At the top of my head, here’s my list:
BOSTON UNIVERSITY’S Thomas Burke won both the 100 and 400 (a still unmatched feat) at the historic Athens Olympic Games of 1896, but “voluntarily” – a point many still doubt – gave up his amateur athlete’s status. Burke went on to a career in law and military heroism as a World War One aviator. The 1900/1904 Games? Definite possibilities for him – but just weren’t.
STATEN ISLAND’S Abel Kiviat was the world one-mile record-setter, the first man to beat four minutes for 1500 meters, and 1912 Stockholm silver medalist. But he was tossed from the sport “for life” by the AAU at age 24 – his alleged crime: accepting “a moderate amount of money” and never to reach his amazing potential, He did gain reinstatement at age 32 – but his best years were gone.
THE IMMORTAL JIM THORPE was Abel Kiviat’s roommate in Stockholm. After he won both the 1912 decathlon and pentathlon, he was called (by King Gustav V) “The World’s Greatest Athlete.” But that world collapsed after they discovered he’d played minor league baseball for a minuscule sum under an assumed name. He never lived to see the day those medals were eventually rescinded.
FINLAND’S PAAVO NURMI was the absolute king of the distances, with 22 world records, nine Olympic gold medals and three silvers to his credit, before his planned finale on the Olympic stage as a marathoner at the 1932 LA Games. But it never happened – he was tossed a week before the Games for taking “excessive expenses.”
MILDRED (BABE) DIDRIKSON was the great home heroine of the 1932 LA Cames, taking golds in the 80 hurdles and javelin, and a silver in the high jump – but soon made the mistake of getting her photo into an automobile ad and her Olympic days were done. Instead, her future turned to golf, where – as Babe Didrikson Zaharias – she carved out a career as a queen of the LPGA tour, at one point winning a record 14 straight tournaments.
JESSE OWENS’ four Olympic gold-medal spree at the 1936 Olympic Games was a well-deserved spit in the face of Adolf Hitler and his crackpot Aryan supremacy visions. But Owens never ran another real race after those Games – tossed by his federation (the stodgies of the AAU) after nixing a potentially lucrative (to the AAU) European tour.
THE USA (AND CANADIAN) indoor track circuit was big business all the way until the mid-1990s, filling major arenas with big meets, big stars and large headlines. Many of the greats excelled in both the indoor and outdoor versions of the sport. But a few – such as Martin McGrady, John Borican and Jimmy Herbert, had their best days on the undercover circuit. Legendary is this era of under-the-table payments is the story of Jimmy Herbert, the multi-time National 600-yard champion from NYU and the Grand Street Boys Club. “My price is a dollar a yard,” Herbert is said to have told a promoter on the eve of a big 600- yard race. “I can only pay $500,” he was told. Herbert reluctantly agreed, then “pulled up” after the 500-yard mark.
HIS UCLA EXPLOITS – as brilliant performer in track, football, basketball and baseball – never got Jackie Robinson the national attention they deserved. After winning the 1939 NCAA long (then broad) jump tItle, he’d have been considered a top candidate to succeed Owens in the LJ at the 1940 Games. But WWII cancelled them and Robinson waited until 1946 to make his biggest off all marks, signing the Brooklyn Dodgers contract that changed the face of major league baseball – as well as every other pro sport – forever.
WITH WORLD WAR TWO and its horrors raging in Europe, Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson took turns lowering records in neutral Sweden. Andersson got the world mile record down to 4:01.6 in 1944, then Hagg ran 4.01.4 in 1945. Would either one or the other have been the first to break four minutes? Almost surely. But both were tossed by the Swedish federation and it was nine more years before Dr Roger Bannister finally ran his epic 3:59.4, May 6, 1954.
ELMORE HARRIS of Morgan State and Shore AC was a premier great of the mid-1940s who was picked by many to win the 400 (or even the 400 hurdles) at the first post-WWII Olympics, at London 1948. But the impoverished Harris never got there; his track career ended with a very brief, unsuccessful fling at pro football with the new All-American Conference’s Buffalo Bills.
SAN FRANCISCO’S Ollie Matson ran off with the silver medal in the 400 (plus a relay silver) at the 1952 Helsinki Games, but his track career ended the day he signed with the NFL Cardinals (then finishing a Pro Football Hall of Fame career with the Rams.)
TULARE, CALIFORNIA’S Bob Mathias was the boy wonder of the decathlon, taking gold medals at 17 at London 1948 and 21 at Helsinki 1952. He surely had the prowess to go on and on and on, and as a US Marine officer was breaking inter-service meet records, only to be AAU-bounced for accepting an endorsement contract.
WITH Andersson and Hagg out of the picture, the assault on a four-minute mile took a respite for eight or nine years. By the spring of 1954, three men from three nations oceans apart – England’s Bannister, Australia’s John Landy and Kansan Wes Santee – seemed to have it within range. But Marine officer Santee’s bid was abruptly halted when he was tossed by AAU officials for accepting extra travel money – which had been dealt out by AAU officials themselves. Santee did set a world 1500-meter record before his dreams were extinguished.
PLAINFIELD, New Jersey’s Milton Campbell took the deca-silver back of Mathias as a high schooler in 1952 and then the gold as a US Navy man by a record victory margin at Melbourne in 1956. He’d easily have added to all those scores in the years ahead – until signing the Cleveland Browns contract that ended his track career.
TEXAS A&M’s Walter (Buddy) Davis was the first man to high jump seven feet – but it came in an unofficial exhibition. He did win the gold at Helsinki 1952, but never got that official seven-footer, instead going on to a productive NBA basketball career. USC’s Charley Dumas finally got that first 7-plus at the USA Trials and then Melbourne 1956 gold.
WODBURY, NEW JERSEY’S and Villanova’s Brownng Ross had been a 1948 and ’52 Olympc steeplechaser, and 1951 Pan Am champion, and beginning to make his mark as a marathoner. But he made the mistake of trying to to sell track shoes from the back of his van, as a way to solvency, a “crime” that got him burned by th AAU. But “Brownie” still had the spot’s best interests at heart, launching the Road Runners Club of America and “Long Distance Log,” America’s first running publication, and bringing all of LDR into its modern age.
OHIO STATE’S GLENN DAVIS was the first 400-meter hurdler to break 50 seconds and won Oly golds at Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960. But his signature on a Detroit Lions contract prematurely ended his track days.
ASBURY PARK, New Jersey’s and Villanova’s Frank Budd, after running at the Rome Games, reached amazing world-record 100 and 200 heights in a sizzling spree – topped by history’s first 9.2 100-yard dash at Randall’s Island in 1961. But the moment he signed wth the Philadelphia Eagles (and then the Redskins and then in the CFL) meant his track days were over.
NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL’S Lee Calhoun was one of the lucky ones. After winning the 110 hurdles at Melbourne 1956, he commtted the crime – as the AAU viewed it – of collecting a few wedding gifts on the “Bride and Groom” TV show. But somehow he regained his AAU status, and thus took another 110HH gold at Rome 1960.
FRUSTRATED AT JUST missing Olympic teams in 1948 and 1952, Detroit racewalker William Mihalo launched his own “Professional Walking League” in the late 1950s. And soon proceeded to set a long list of “pro walking records” – and hit the Associated Press wires weekly – at a dizzing array of distances. But Mihalo was to fade from his uphill chore as popularizing racewalking itself became an uphill chore, too.
FOREVER remembered – and now revered – for his podium stance at the 1968 Mexico City Games was San Joe State’s Tommie Smith.But he’d never run another race – instead, like so many others – taking a brief fling at pro football, as a Cincinnati Bengal.
BY LATE 1972, PRO BASKETBALL/HOCKEY promoter Mike O’Hara was ready to launch his International Track Association circuit – complete with pacing lights and other bells and whistles. And he lured such greats as Jim Ryun, Kip Keino, Bob Seagren, Brian Oldfield, Larry James. Lee Evans, and a lot more to his brave new world of play-for-pay track and field. It was to last until 1976, gone after a few highlights (such as Oldfield’s WR shot put) and a heap of unpaid bills. Years later, Larry James would tell you, “Mike O’Hara still owes me some money.”
THE STAWELL GIFT has been raging as a big-time professional happening in Australia since 1878. Its distances have ranged from 70 to 3000 meters and have attracted some of the speediest-ever Aussies, along with such late-in-their-career Olympians as Mel Patton, Barney Ewell and Herb McKenley. But just think of the great things some of those early Gift-winners might have achieved in the Games,if they’d stayed “amateur.” Australia’s Olympic record is superb. It could have been superb-er.
(And similar pro events have long been held in Scotland snd England.)
THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE HAS HAD a few run-ins with the system himself.
WITH ITS PICTURE-PERFECT campus at the Jersey Shore, Monmouth College (now University) began to be a presence in the sports world in the 1960s and athletic director Bill Boylan offered the first track head coaching job to yours truly. It was happily accepted – with a reservation. Still competing as a national-level racewalker, 1956 Olympian Denman couldn’t accept the $1000 annual salary, which would have been a big help to the family budget. But he took the job anyway and got Monmouth started in track – it would later produce national stars and Olympians. His total “salary” for those two years amounted to one stopwatch but lots of kind memories.
GUIDING A SHORE AC TOUR though Scandinavia in 1971, Denman’s lads got to the famed Bislett Games in Oslo. Scotch Plains-Fanwood’s Vince Cartier had set the national indoor mile record that winter and his reputation had reached Norway. But when Bislett promoters offered him a few bucks for his running services, Denman in clearest possible words insisted Cartier tell them “no.” “I could have used a few extra dollars way back then; no one would have known,” Cartier still tells you. But I still tell Cartier “I saved your amateur status and your four-year free scholarship to the University of Florida. You should thank me.” The friendly debate rages on to this day.
BOTTOM LINES:(1) Good on those who fought these early battles, almost always with unfortunate results. They coulda-would-shoulda in track and field. And then it was taken away.(2) Finally, a suggestion: Between events at Grand Slam Three at Franklin Field (and all those to follow), take a moment out to honor the struggles of these noble predecessors. They got you where you are today.
