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Get to know Wilma Rudolph, Mohammed Ali (as Cassius Clay), and Rafer Johnson as you never have before. David Maraniss has been chronicling our world for some time now, and has been especially successful at finding the nexus between politics, values, and sport. And relive the drama of one of the great sporting events of the 20th century. See how each one of them played a big role in shaping American culture and values today. "When Pride Still Mattered" and "Clemente" are excellent examples. In "Rome 1960" Maraniss takes on the cold war, civil rights, and the Rome Olympics and illustrate major issues of our time and the way sport figures into the mix.
He tells the tale of the 1960 Olympics in Rome just fifteen years after the Italians lost the Second World War, when the Italians were hiding the remains of their fascist regime from the hundreds of thousands of spectators who came to Italy to view the games.This was a time when the US and the Soviets were fighting to show the world which nation was a superior regime; when the Soviets seemed to be superior to the US in science and physical strength. The issue of drugs came to the front at this Olympics: a cyclist died during a race because of the drugs he took to help him win, and officials tried to cover up the truth.President Eisenhower tried to beat the Soviet's Nikita Khrushchev's warm greeting to the athletes, but failed dismally.Blacks discriminated against in the US were winners at the Olympics, but many returned to the US to face continued discrimination and abuse.Black girls on their way to the Olympics were not allowed to pee in white establishments in the south. This led the new American president Kennedy to speak about "the soft American." The US began to become interested in health and many studies confirmed the president's assessment. David Maraniss is an associate editor at the Washington Post and a 1993 and 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner. Studies showed that American children fared far worse in strength and flexibility than their European counterparts. People tried to stop him from talking by giving him sleeping pills, but they didn't work.The Americans tried to entice one of the Soviet stars to defect, without success. The move to improve children's health was one of many changes that occurred as a result of the 1960 Olympics.
The year 1960 was a terrible year when American blacks and women faced daily discrimination.Maraniss tells what seem to be well over two hundred fascinating incidences that occurred at the Olympics, just before it and just after, incidences that began to open the eyes of the world to how badly too-many people were being treated. For example, the legend that the marathon race of 26 plus miles commemorates the run of an Athenian man from Marathon to Athens to alert his countrymen of impending danger, is not true; Lord Byron fabricated the story in the nineteenth century.The soviets beat the US in metals achieved. The officials declared the person who came in second as the winner.One of the most dramatic events was when a short black man from Ethiopia ran the 26 plus mile marathon against the best men that the world could produce without shoes, bare foot because he could not find shoes that fit him, and won.Maraniss gives his readers many pieces of information. For instance:The Olympic committee stressed verbally that all people may participate and that there should be no discrimination based on religion or color, but the head of the Olympic Committee was a vicious anti-Semite and bigot. The crowd applauded loudly.However, the Soviets drew greater applause from the crowd by marching only their prettiest girls dressed in their most fetching attire.While a great power, the US was clearly cheated out of winning a swim contest.
He is not only a very good writer, but also a very entertaining one. They had to do so in the fields, beside the road they took to the plane that would fly them to fame outside the US.The US trying to belie what everyone knew, that its people discriminated against blacks, had a black man lead their athletes and carry the American flag in the initial march at the Olympics. He talked all the time. These were the days when there was a heated dispute over two Chinas - the mainland and Taiwan - and the blacks in South Africa were beginning to stir and express their human rights. He called the great athlete Jesse Owens "boy." He accepted the ridiculous statement of the white South Africans that there were no blacks in all of South Africa who could qualify for the Olympics.One of the American participants was Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, who was eighteen at the time.
There is very little of that here, but what there is, including Wilma Rudolph's battle with polio and the exposure of the rampant drug use by East German athletes were some of the most compelling sections of the book. Frankly it is hard to understand why Maranis picked these particular Olympics over say Mexico City 68 or Munich 72, as an epochal event. Even if the book were to focus on a specific Olympic competition, the focus could have been broader, encompassing athletes pre event training and post event reactions back home. I picked this up after being very impressed with another Maranis book about the 60s, They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967. Maranis attributes to his subject Olympics some consequences that don't really play out fully on the confined stage of the 18 days in Rome. While this had its moments, it is nowhere near as fully realized a book as his Vietnam book. He makes the point that many trends that have become commonplace in the Olympics, the rise of black and women athletes; the importance of television over print media; exposure of what one sportswriter called "shamateurism" and the use of anabolic steroids all first came to the surface in the 1960 Olympics, but they were still in the growth stages by the time the closing ceremonies put an end to the events in Rome.
Clay was a hero as well in boxing, though Maraniss correctly points out that his subsequent fame tends to exaggerate his importance to the 1960 games. And the games were first politicized by the Nazis in 1936. In fact, Hitler planned to build an obscenely large arena in Berlin to host the games in perpetuity once he won the war.Thus, the Anglo-Soviet and now the Chinese use of the games for political purposes was nothing new. Maraniss can tell a compelling narrative, as he demonstrated in his terrific treatment of the Vietnam era, "They Marched into Sunlight." He uses his talents well to tell the story of the now-forgotten 1960 Olympics in Rome. Nonetheless, the 1960 games are worth writing about for more than just the great personal stories. These games did not "change the world." The Soviets had already won the medal count in 1956 -- and in fact the Americans made a comeback by winning the games in 1964 and 1968, after which the Soviets dominated until their demise in the 1990s. Maraniss is right to stress the advances in women's sports and in racial relations brought on by these personalities as well as the way in which the games mirror the increasingly dangerous rivalry between the Americans and the Soviets.
Maraniss is at his best in capturing the shifting cultural and political ground of the day -- the tensions between the two Germanies, the Soviet politicization of the games, the start of drug scandals, the infamous Soviet trick of questionable calls through biased Eastern bloc officials, and the monumental hypocrisy of the "amateur" ideals of Brundage and the Olympic brass. After that, the Japanese planned to do the same thing in 1940 and the Italians in 1944 -- only to be interrupted by the inconvenience of World War II. The 1936 Olympics were the games that changed the world. No one can miss the "good old days" of amateurism after reading this book. It was Hitler who brought the pageantry of the torch relay, heavy government spending on infrastructure, and the equation of sports performance with societal merit.
He is able to capture the two great American stars of those Olympics, decathlete Rafer Johnson and sprinter Wilma Rudolph, in all their complexity; both come off as likable and graceful heroes. Before Hitler, the games were just another track meet. The sub-title of the book is unfortunate. Maraniss is not entirely focused on the Americans and spends considerable time telling the story of the great Soviet Olympic team that dominated the medal count, the fine unified German team, and the barefoot Ethiopian Bikila, who won the Marathon. Essentially, everyone made money off the games except the athletes -- and a double standard was applied to Western atheletes because they were vulnerable, as opposed to Soviet athletes who were professional, full time paid athletes in every sense of the word.
ihave enjoyed all his books. I grew up in the 1960's, some of the things he wrote about I remember. The writer did a excellent job telling about the background of the atheletes who partipated in the games. The storyof Rufus Johnson and Wilma Randolph were excellent examples.
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