Ethiopian Abebe Bikila famously won the marathon at the 1960 Summer Olympics while running barefoot through Rome, Italy but author David Maraniss puts the improbability of the moment in perspective with a great anecdote.
When Bikila took the lead, an Italian woman working in Sports Illustrated's Rome office started shouting, "We're winning! We're winning!" The back story: the Italian woman had lived in Ethiopia following Italy's invasion of that African nation during the Mussolini era and somehow considered Bikila an honorary Italian.
The major takeaways from Maraniss' highly entertaining Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (Simon & Schuster), released this week, is that performance-enhancing drugs, questionable officiating and shady corporate sponsorship deals are old news. Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning associate editor at The Washington Post, will be promoting his latest project on Tuesday, July 8 at 7:30 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle, 66th Street at Broadway, Manhattan.
Long Islanders may remember discus thrower Al Oerter (1936-2007), who grew up in New Hyde Park. Oerter won the second of his four consecutive gold medals in that event at the 1960 Olympics, although his remarkable achievements receive only a passing mention in the book.
One of the reasons for this is that the topic, the 1960 Summer Olympics in the context of world history, is so ambitious even someone with Maraniss' outstanding narrative skills has a tough time getting his arms around the story. For instance, the men's 100-meter dash is expertly described and brings to life the unscripted drama that resulted in the top two finishers being clocked in the same exact time. Yet the equally detailed analysis of the political posturing between the White House and the Soviet Union's Kremlin in late August and early September 1960 offers less of a thrill.
The book does, however, shine a light on the gold-medal accomplishments of American athletes whose names have faded from the headlines, such as decathlon champion Rafer Johnson and the late Wilma Rudolph, a sprinter who won three gold medals in Rome. And Donna de Varona, who was 13 years of age and the youngest member of the U.S. women's swimming team in 1960, even makes a cameo appearance. Four years later, de Varona would win two gold medals at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and later became a TV sports broadcaster.
The 1960 Olympics also showcased athletes who would go on to much bigger things, such as light-heavyweight boxing gold medalist Cassius Clay, better known today as Muhammad Ali. The U.S. men's basketball team won the gold medal in Rome, too, and their roster included future NBA stars such as Oscar Robertson, Jerry West and Jerry Lucas.
Every good tale, however, needs a villain and that role is played in these pages by Avery Brundage (1887-1975), president of the International Olympic Committee between 1952 and 1972. Brundage's papers are housed at his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Maraniss pored through the collection and portrays the moralizing Brundage, quite accurately it would appear, as a pompous hypocrite. Brundage himself was on the 1912 U.S. Olympic team as a decathlete but he picked the wrong year to compete. Jim Thorpe won the gold medal in that event in 1912.
