Rhetoric & the Olympics: In the Age of Water Sports & sports near the water

Michael Phelps: "World's Greatest Olympian"

Such words contribute to the usual bombast spewing from American media whenever someone excels in his or her sport. Give credit to Michael Phelps, a seemingly unpretentious young man, prodigious swimmer, and winner of eight gold medals in one Olympics. We're not saying the boy can't swim. We're not saying "greatness" should not be associated with his name. We are saying to American commentators: Go to the history books, recover your memory, and develop a sense of proportion.

(For further commentary on the media commentary, please read after the listing)

Compare the athletes named below, all Track & Field Olympians. I borrow liberally from a piece by David Powell from TheTimesOnline. These athletes should be included among the greatest Olympic athletes. Key qualifying phrases as to their greatness are put in bold:

Carl Lewis

King Carl – to use the popular headline - was officially named IAAF world male athlete of the 20th Century and deservedly so. Although his fame was driven largely by his position as the world’s fastest man, it was as a long jumper that Lewis delivered his greatest Olympic feat. One of only three athletes – Ray Ewry and Al Oerter were the others – to win the same individual event at four Olympics, Lewis claimed his last long jump gold against all odds. His best days over, he scraped the last place in the US team, was 15th after two of the three qualifying rounds, with only the top 12 making the final, then produced his best jump for four years to retain the title. Lewis was cleared of drug-taking before the 1988 Olympics when he was one of eight athletes found to have low stimulant levels in his system.

Lasse Viren

As if doing the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres double twice was not enough, Lasse Viren wrote his place in Olympic history in dramatic fashion. During his first final, the 10,000 metres in 1972, he stumbled and fell just before halfway but got up to win in a world record time.

Fanny Blankers-Koen

Named IAAF world woman athlete of the 20th Century, Blankers-Koen is the only woman to win four gold medals at one Olympics. How many more she was denied one can only guess as the Second World War robbed her of two Games. At 18, she did not win a medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where her highlight was collecting Jesse Owens’s autograph. By the time the Olympics resumed after a 12-year-break, she held six world records.

Jesse Owens

Unimaginable as it may seem now, Jesse Owens set six world records in 45 minutes on one May afternoon in 1935. Yet he is better known for his four Olympic gold medals in 1936. Owens, an African-American sprinter/jumper, embarrassed Hitler’s attempt to use the Games in Berlin to prove his theories of Aryan racial superiority. Aged 22, it was his only Olympics, as he turned professional soon afterwards.

Rafer Johnson

Rafer Johnson, especially considering the dramatic circumstances of his achievement (one also thinks of Mark Spitz, Jesse Owens, and Lasse Viren for "circumstances" in which they achieved) but also because Johnson was a decathlete. After all, the decathlon includes ten events measuring agility, strength, finesse, endurance. By this measure other decathlon Olympic champions could be included. But I choose Johnson for reasons stated below from Wikipedia:

Due to injury, Johnson missed the 1957 and 1959 seasons (the latter due to a car accident), but in 1958 and 1960, he improved the world record two more times. The crown on his career came in 1960, at the Rome Olympics. His most important opponent was Yang Chuan-Kwang of Taiwan. Yang also studied at UCLA, and the two were training together and had become friends. After nine events, Johnson led Yang, but Yang was thought to be capable of overcoming this gap in the final event, the 1500 m. Johnson however managed to cling on to Yang, and won the gold.

When was the last time anyone took interest in the final event of a decathlon at the Olympic Games? The conclusion to this event on a warm Roman evening remains one of the most stunning performances in Olympic history.

At UCLA, Johnson also played basketball under legendary coach John Wooden, and was a starter on the 1959-60 Men's Basketball team.

Johnson was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year in 1958 and won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1960, breaking that award's color barrier. In 1994, he was elected into the first class of the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame. In 1998, he was named one of ESPN's 100 Greatest North American Athletes of the 20th Century. In 2006, the NCAA named him one of the 100 Most Influential Student Athletes of the past 100 years.


Al Oerter

One of only three men to win the same event at four successive Olympics – Carl Lewis and Ray Ewry are the others – Al Oerter broke the Olympic discus record on each occasion. In other words, he kept getting better. And, just to prove the point, after a decade out of competition, Oerter made a comeback in 1980, aged 43, with a lifetime best distance.

Peter Snell

The surprise winner of the Olympic 800 metres in 1960, Peter Snell won the 800 metres and 1,500 metres in 1964 by handsome margins. (Think of Usain Bolt magnified). Prior to Tokyo, Snell had never run a 1,500 metres race, although he had competed many times over the mile. He came to international attention when he won the gold medal and set a new record for 800 m at the Rome Olympics in 1960. He was particularly dominant four years later at the Tokyo Olympics where he won the gold and set a new record in the 800 m, and won gold in the 1500 m. His time in the 800 m would have been good enough to win silver, and only fractionally miss gold, 36 years later at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The 800-1500 m double was not achieved again by a male athlete in open global championship until Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain won both golds at the 2005 World Championships at Helsinki.

Snell's 800 m time from 1962 remains the fastest ever run over that distance on a grass track. (Note: superlative well-used here). It is also the oldest national record recognized by the IAAF for a standard track and field event.

Bob Beamon

One Olympics, one medal, one giant leap into the Olympic hall of fame. Only** Michael Johnson’s world record 200 metres at the 1996 Olympics can be spoken of in the same breath as Beamon’s extraordinary first-round leap in Mexico City. Beamon bypassed 28 feet on the way to taking the world record from 27ft 5in to 29ft 2½in. “You’ve destroyed this event,” Lynn Davies, the defending champion, said of Beamon’s winning jump in his only Olympic appearance.

What we ask is that commentators on these matters use as a critical measure the concept of proportion before making haughty statements about good, better, best, and of course "Best of all Time," a favored American phrase since the glory days of post World War 2. Let us remember that more people run than swim; therefore, to excel in Track and Field--a sport gone missing from American media coverage in the past quarter century*,--is to achieve on a greater scale.

Historically, Track and Field signified the Olympic Games to most people for more than a century since the advent of the modern Olympic Games. That was before American television together with its advertising in the last quarter century began delivering viewers to select markets* subsequently corrupting what should have been an inviolate tradition. But we know how American popular culture when tied to commercial markets can corrupt most formerly inviolate traditions. Presently, we are living in the apex of that inglorious period.

Let us also include the concept of longevity when assessing achievement. Over how long a period and under what circumstances does an athlete achieve?

*Because they perceive no market exists for their advertisers better than, for example: baseball, basketball, and beach volleyball.

**Perhaps Usain Bolt's achievement makes the grade.

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