Sport: End of the Affair

Komsomolskaya Pravda called it “the Golden Thursday of Soviet Sport.” During twelve gasping hours filled with 25 separate events—mostly such austere undertakings as Greco-Roman wrestling and long-horse vaulting—Russian Olympians won twelve gold medals and the U.S. none. With that, the race between the 16th Olympics’ two chief contenders was over. By their grim gleaning of points in the final days, the Russian team gave the U.S. its first beating since 1936 in the overall mathematics of the Olympic Games.

Wasted Words. The last U.S. hope was doused in the tepid water of the Olympic swimming pool, where the Australians turned out to be not only dangerous, as expected, but downright homicidal to U.S. hopes. The U.S. woman most dramatically in the swim was the Walter Reed Swim Club’s Shelley Mann, who led a U.S. sweep of the 100-meter “butterfly. U.S. men, expected to score heavily, were swamped in the foam of their hustling hosts. Murray Rose, a 17-year-old Aussie who tries a seaweed diet and even hypnotism to help him along, sliced through the water as if a shark were snapping at his toes, set a new Olympic record in the 400-meter freestyle, helped his teammates set a world record as they took the 800-meter relay, then came back to whip New York’s George Breen in the gut-wrenching 1,500-meter grind.

In platform diving, long the private preserve of U.S. athletes, some all-but-unbeatable competition came from an unexpected source. Time after time a Russian woman and a Hungarian man among the seven judges automatically gave lowest marks on every dive to Gary Tobian and Dick Connor of the U.S. and the highest marks to Russian divers. Even so, Tobian climbed to the platform for his last dive, nursing a slight lead over Mexico’s classy Joaquin Capilla. Tobian flipped through a running double-twisting for ward one-and-a-half somersault with such consummate grace that his detractors could only hold him down to a high 19.76 points. Then Capilla soared into an equally spectacular double-twisting forward one-and-a-half and scored enough to win the championship by .03 of a point. A protest from U.S. Diving Coach Karl Michael did not change the result.

Next day, overcoming the judges with a peerless exhibition, the women’s defending champion, comely Pat McCormick, 26, a California housewife, spun through intricate optional dives, performed a final running full-twisting forward one-and-a-half somersault that was good enough to add the platform title to her springboard victory and make her the first diver ever to win both titles in two Olympics. This was slim pickings, indeed, compared to Russia’s sweep of 11 of the 17 gold medals in gymnastics, three of which were won by lovely Larisa Latynina.

Running Rhubarb. Eliminated from most of the last-week surge of frenzy, the U.S. team relaxed and watched the Olympian orgy of “international good will” degenerate into a running international rhubarb. Having stored it up through most of the two weeks of sportsmanlike intimacy, competitors and fans alike began to let loose some of the bad temper induced by the Soviet repression of Hungary. The Russians’ popularity seemed to diminish as rapidly as their score rose. They were booed so lustily when they took their turn on the fencing mats that police had to escort them through the threatening crowds.

Almost inevitably, there was even some bloodshed. In the Olympic pool. Hungarians came face to face with Russians for the semifinals of water polo, indulged in an extra-rough version of one of the toughest of games. While Hungarian immigrants in the stands shouted insults at the Russians, both teams traded blows. One of the Russian players muttered a nasty word, “Fascist,” and a Russian haymaker almost flattened Hungary’s Antol Bolvari. In the closing minutes Russia’s Vladimir Prokopov brutally butted Hungarian Center Ervin Zador under the eye and the Hungarian climbed out of the water, streaming blood. The Russians were too far behind (4-0) to win anyway, so officials stopped the game rather than wait for a full-fledged riot.

Before the Hungarian water poloists went on to win the finals, they stood with some of their countrymen at Melbourne’s airport and sadly said goodbye to others who climbed into an airplane and headed back to Europe. The band played the stirring music of Isten Aldd Meg a Magyart (Lord of Heaven Bless Our Land) as the plane roared away, and those on the ground wondered whether to return home or start new lives elsewhere.

With that doleful epitaph to the Olympic ideal, the games ended. Using the system favored by U.S. sportswriters (10 points for first, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 for the subsequent places), the Soviets had won, with 722 points. Second: the U.S., with 593. Third: Australia, with 278½. (Under the European system of 7 points for first place, the score was 622½ to 497.) Melbourne’s largest funeral parlor took down its “Welcome to Olympic Visitors” sign, and airline flights were so solidly booked that one desperate spectator tried to get shipped home as freight. In the Olympic stadium, the gas was turned off and the Olympic flame, symbol of sporting competition, flickered out for another four years.