In 1968 they had 2 Olympic Trials and guys who won the first one thought they were on team but weren’t

October 2, 1968

VILLANOVA, Pa. (AP) Villanova track coach Jim "Jumbo" Elliott gave up his fight yesterday to get his star miler Dave Patrick on the U. S. Olympic track and field team.

He said Patrick was the victim of a selfish vote by the athletes. Patrick finished fourth in the final Olympic trials at Lake Tahoe. The first three in the race made the team. Elliott contended Patrick still should have been selected, because of a victory in what had been billed as final Olympic trials earlier in Los Angeles. After the Los Angeles meet, however, the athletes, including Patrick, voted not to count that competition, and to make the Lake Tahoe races the deciding events, since they could be run at an altitude comparable to Mexico City.

Referring to the vote, Elliott said Patrick shouldn't have been placed in the position of voting to change the rules for making the team after he ostensibly had earned a berth in the 1,500 meter event. In a letter to the Olympic Track and Field Committee, Elliott said, "I claim that a group of committeemen equal to one quarter of the total committee had no right to be intimidated by the selfish vote of the athletes who requested eliminating winners in Los Angeles." The committee went along with the athletes decision.

I vaguely remember this (I was very young) but got a refresher from "The Track in the Forest" and it seemed to suggest that at least before it bit him in the butt, Patrick willingly supported the rule change that nerfed his Olympic berth, as the second post says. He wasn't coerced or anything so it's hard to have full sympathy, though his irritation after the fact is understandable, and changing the rules midway is dumb no matter how it came about. If memory serves it was just Patrick and one other guy who got screwed by the change but I can't remember who it was now, every other winner from LA finished third or higher at Echo Summit, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Given how much one's fitness can change and all that can happen in a race, only having two guys lose out is kind of surprising.

"Always Young" has a good story about the Marathon Trials that year. Ron Daws also writes about the race in "The Self-Made Olympian."

It was a brutal race apparently. Young won in 2:30.

Alan

I might also add that granting spots for an October Olympics from the results of a meet in June is also a little crazy for anything other than the marathon, so probably the rule about the Echo Summit meet determining the entire team was the right one, had it clearly been the rule and announced before the LA "semifinal" Trials meet.

Yes. Bill Clark won the first 10,000 and came fourth at Tahoe. He was something like 32 seconds or 23 seconds out of fourth. I just read an interview with him and he said that he actually didn't believe he had made the team at the LA Trial so maybe the disappointment of missing the team wasn't as bad for him as it was for Dave Patrick. He did say he made a mistake in his preparation for the altitude trials. He'd come second at Boston that year and decided to try to make the team at both the 10,000 and marathon. In retrospect he said he'd have just picked one event to prepare for.

I attended a running camp a few times outside Pittsburgh in the late-80s/early-90s and Sam Bair was always one of the presenters. At the time, I heard stories that he made the '68 team but then a second Trials was held and he failed to duplicate his performance and therefore didn't go to Mexico City. I was too young and this was long before the internet existed where I could just Google it and learn how this occurred. I don't believe I've thought about it over the last 30+ years until just now. I see Bair's name in second place in the results of Trial #1 and 7th in Trial #2. The article explains the unusual situation well.

Thread from 2019. There is an indication that Dave Patrick posted here as justthefacts.

Wejo, your headline is very poorly worded. You're not good at this, are you?

very poorly worded:
In 1968 they had 2 Olympic Trials and guys who won the first one thought they were on team but weren’t

Sure malmo, piss on the grave of a war hero. What is this, Disrespect The Godfathers of US Running week?

How is this guy still allowed to be a moderator?

dude what is wrong with you?

I have heard both sides of the story about if people actually thought they made the team and stories that the LA meet was just branded as trials to help sell tickets. I wouldn’t be surprised if people were told different stories..

seriously

he's not right in the head

You mean the man who pissed on his athletes in the shower? The Bowerman Award shouldn't be. It should be the Payton Jordan Award.

Bowerman is only a godfather in the mafioso sense