The Gesture

Going through my recent small stack of clippings meant for trimming, and eventually putting on top of the pile, I came across the obit I saved for Kenny Moore, 78, Athlete With 'Real Literary Bent.'

I immediately knew who this was, and was taken back by what I perceived to be a young age, 78, myself being not far behind at 73. They're calling our class.

One of the photos in the obit threw me. I didn't realize how much Moore looked like Frank Shorter, the winner of that 1972 Olympic marathon. I remember watching the race live and remembered Moore finishing fourth. For a bit, I thought they printed the wrong picture. But Frank was wearing bib number 1014, and Moore was wearing 1001, so they didn't mix up the photos.

It was the early '70s and I had really gotten back into running after having run track and cross-country in high school. My goal was to run a sub-5 minute mile. I only had myself for a trainer, and not a very good pair of shoes. I ran maybe 25 miles a week, with some speed training on a quarter mile cinder track at Bayside High School.

I self-timed myself for the mile, but the best I could do was 5:36. I was never going to break five minutes. I just concentrated on races in Central Park, where we were an oddity running in the Six Mile Winter Series races.  

I think it was 1972 and my father an I were at a track meet at the Garden. It might have been an A.A.U. meet, or an I.C.4-A meet. In that era, there were as many as six track meets at the Garden in a season. I distinctly remember watching the 10,000 meter race and seeing this guy with a ponytail wearing a University of Florida top.

It was Frank Shorter. He didn't win, or even come close, but it was the ponytail that made him stand out. I think Frank at that time had won six A.A.U. National Cross-Country titles. Later that year Frank of course won the Olympic Marathon at Munich, and Kenny Moore finished fourth. The running boom had arrived.

Also in the 1972 Olympics was the American champion Steve Prefontaine, the running phenom from the University of Oregon. Watching the Olympics I wanted to be Pre. I even grew a mustache that I still have because he had one. Turns out Frank and Kenny sported a mustache as well.

I distinctly remember whoever the pre-race commentator was telling us that he didn't think Pre was going to get the gold medal. He tried valiantly, but tired in the end and finished fourth. Lasse Virén of Finland took the 5,000 meter race, as well as the 10,000 meter race. It is a fantastic race to watch on YouTube.

I also remember that after the race there were revelations that Virén used a "blood-doping" technique of receiving highly-oxygenated blood via transfusions just before the race. There was no disqualification because it was either allowed, or was just a rumor. I remember seeing Virén striding near the front in a New York City Marathon as they ran through Long Island City, the first or second year the NYC Marathon went borough-wide.

I don't think it was long after the 1972 Olympics that Kenny Moore started writing for Sports Illustrated, a magazine I read avidly at the time, especially anything by Moore.

There was one article he wrote that I will never forget. It was about Emil Zátopek and Ron Clarke, pre-eminent long-distance and middle-distance runners. Emil Zátopek, from Czechoslovakia, famously won the 5,000 and  10,000 meter races, and the marathon, his first, as a last-minute entry at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Norway.  He is the only man to ever pull off that  triple.

Ron Clarke was also a pre-eminent middle-distance runner from Australia who held 17 world records at all kinds of distance, even an event to see how far one could go in an hour. At the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Clarke was an obvious favorite for the 10,000 meter race.

At that point, distance winners were not Americans. They competed, but couldn't hold a candle to the European and Australian and New Zealand runners. Billy Mills, a native American whose Oglala Lakota Sioux tribal name was Tamackoce Te'Hila (loves his country) was a complete unknown—before the race.

Up till then, Clarke, even with all this various records, didn't have an Olympic medal. Kenny Moore describes the race, and tells us that Billy Mills sees Clarke up ahead, close to finish, but looks like he's binding up, the lactic acid is slowing him down and he's struggling. Again, a YouTube replay of the race shows how exciting it was.

Mills figures, what the hell, he just plain goes for it and wins, denying Clarke the expected gold medal,  who gets the bronze. Mills then, and now, is one of the great upset winners in Olympic history.

Kenny Moore writes of the meeting of Zátopek and Clarke many years after each of them is out of competition. I don't have the article, and don't know where the visit took place, but at the end of the visit Moore tells us as the two men are set to say good-bye at the airport, Zátopek presses one of his gold medals into Clarke's hand as he's leaving, insisting he keep it.

I've always remembered the story, and the thought of a world class gesture between two world class runners.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com