Olympic Gold -Frank Shorter

I have nothing to add but I also have read this book.

Before reading it I was not aware that Mr. Shorter had those severe foot injuries that ended his competitive days. In the late 70s and early 80s I remember thinking that he no longer entered races due to age. He was in his 30s. Back then I thought that was very old, too old to compete.

full disclosure: I am old enough to remember the 1972 marathon on television. I believe ABC only showed highlights and not the entire race. I remember the imposter and the announcer saying, "You won, Frank, you won."

I also remember Jim McKay saying the imposter was a West German college student and Mr. McKay wouldn't say his name so as to not encourage this type of behavior.

You sneaky liar! You did indeed have something to add! And I thank you for it!

Jon Ulm wrote:

full disclosure: I am old enough to remember the 1972 marathon on television. I believe ABC only showed highlights and not the entire race. I remember the imposter and the announcer saying, "You won, Frank, you won."

Not quite. I remember getting up very early that morning because Jim McKay said an American had a good chance to win. It started at something like 5 or 6 AM, but as I recall they showed the whole thing. Another thing that people who didn't see it might not know about it was that Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story" was the color commentator for the TV broadcast. Segal had been one of Frank's professors at Yale.

And when the imposter came out Erich and Jim McKay absolutely went crazy.

“That’s not Frank, it’s an imposter, get that guy off the track! It’s a fraud, Frank!”

You had to be there. They probably only showed highlights later in the day, but I believe they showed the whole marathon early.

coach d wrote:

[quote]Jon Ulm wrote:

full disclosure: I am old enough to remember the 1972 marathon on television. I believe ABC only showed highlights and not the entire race. I remember the imposter and the announcer saying, "You won, Frank, you won."

Not quite. I remember getting up very early that morning because Jim McKay said an American had a good chance to win. It started at something like 5 or 6 AM, but as I recall they showed the whole thing. Another thing that people who didn't see it might not know about it was that Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story" was the color commentator for the TV broadcast. Segal had been one of Frank's professors at Yale.

And when the imposter came out Erich and Jim McKay absolutely went crazy.

“That’s not Frank, it’s an imposter, get that guy off the track! It’s a fraud, Frank!”

I did watch it on television. They did show the entire race. Shorter broke away early (I believe it was around 15K) and was never challenged. I remember the imposter sprinting into the stadium and Erich Segal just went nuts screaming for the imposter to get off the track and for Frank not to pay attention. I think Segal also said something about this is the kind of thing you might have seen years ago at other marathons, but not in the Olympics (I could be wrong.) I also remember Shorter saying that that he was so pissed off at the fumes the vehicle in front of him on the course was leaving that he just spat on it. Don't know where I read that. In August of 1972 I was in London on vacation. The British press had put a tremendous amount of pressure on Ron Hill to win the Gold Medal. Hill was a chemist by trade, and had coated his uniform with a substance to reflect the suns rays. Didn't help.

interesting. Back in 1972 and 1976 there were many fewer hours devoted to the Olympics. I don't remember it being early morning so I must have seen the highlights later in the day. I thought they only showed it because an American won and if an American didn't win ABC would have ignored the event. I'm surprised ABC showed the whole thing.

There were many exciting events in 1972. I will always remember the Dave Wottle semi-final and final 800 meter races where he came from behind both times. Also, the basketball game for the gold medal was tremendously exciting. Even though they lost, the Doug Collins two free throws to put team USA ahead for the first time in the game was beyond exciting.

full disclosure: watching as a young man I thought Mr. Shorter was much older than the 25 years he was that day. At that age, I thought any guy with facial hair was old. Plus, Frank, and the other distance runners looked like they needed a meal. They were so skinny that it looked painful and it seemed that they wouldn't have any energy to even run a couple laps.

That race helped motivate me to turn out for XC; 40 years later I thank Frank!

I'd love to read the book.

- out of my price range but it is available at half.com or amazon.

- price is still beyond my means but AbeBooks.com has it for sale for a more reasonable amount.

Jon Ulm wrote:

I have nothing to add but I also have read this book.

Before reading it I was not aware that Mr. Shorter had those severe foot injuries that ended his competitive days. In the late 70s and early 80s I remember thinking that he no longer entered races due to age. He was in his 30s. Back then I thought that was very old, too old to compete.

Shorter was still racing aplenty in the last 70s. Maybe by the early 80s he had backed off on the racing circuit.

I don't remember the exact time Shorter was on in 1972, but I do remember having to set the clock early on, I believe, Sunday morning.

But I do remember Bob Kennedy's 5000 final in 1996 being televised at precisely 1 AM. It was surely worth it to see an American in the lead over the Africans with 2 laps to go...

coach d wrote:

I don't remember the exact time Shorter was on in 1972, but I do remember having to set the clock early on, I believe, Sunday morning.

But I do remember Bob Kennedy's 5000 final in 1996 being televised at precisely 1 AM. It was surely worth it to see an American in the lead over the Africans with 2 laps to go...

Local start time was 3pm so it would have been 9am Eastern. I wanted to say I recall watching it at around 10am so this makes sense. I think the final finishers finished just before the 5000m began.

A lot of people don't realize that Shorter twice set the American record in the 10,000 at Munich, 27:58 and 27:51 in the final for 5th place, just days before the marathon. His 10,000 PR of 27:45.9 was just 2.3 seconds slower than Prefontaine's American record of 27:43.6. He had good speed for his day. I remember watching him at the 1976 Olympic Trials 10,000 at Hayward Field and he just seemed to float on the track as he dismantled a great field including Virgin, Bjorkland, Rodgers, and others.

aloha warrior wrote:

A lot of people don't realize that Shorter twice set the American record in the 10,000 at Munich, 27:58 and 27:51 in the final for 5th place, just days before the marathon. His 10,000 PR of 27:45.9 was just 2.3 seconds slower than Prefontaine's American record of 27:43.6. He had good speed for his day. I remember watching him at the 1976 Olympic Trials 10,000 at Hayward Field and he just seemed to float on the track as he dismantled a great field including Virgin, Bjorkland, Rodgers, and others.

http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/sh/frank-shorter-1.html

High Wire wrote:

That race helped motivate me to turn out for XC; 40 years later I thank Frank!

I'd love to read the book.

I remember it, too. I was going into 8th grade and was on the xc team. I had been running about a year.

I remember the race, I also remember Pre's race and Wottles.

Viren became a hero.

BUT

Shorter started the running boom. All of a sudden all these older people I knew were running.

I gotta read the book.

highlights of the race were put on youtube not long ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4NV4_5Wkic

Glad I found it at the library. Crazy prices.

There's a few other cool looking titles that I'm going to grab next. One is a Fixx book where his legs and shoes are painted gold. It looks like a series of journal entries. How is that?

There's another that's a collection of stories from Olympic Gold medalists. The only stories I recall wanting to read are Wotttle's 800 and Billy Mills' 10,000.

And the last one is a history of distance running by Bill Squires. Can't recall the title.

well that may be but, for this young man who wasn\'t plugged into sources with information, the only thing I had was Sports Illustrated which covered the Boston Marathon and NYC Marathon. Mr. Shorter never entered those races so I figured he was through with running.

The Jim Fixx book, The Complete book of Running was interesting to read. The way I remember it is that it was written by a guy who never ran, discovered running, got hooked, and wrote a book to try to convert others who never thought about running. This was a NY Times bestseller for months. It might have made it to #1.

not widely known: Mr. Fixx wrote another book a couple years later, The Second Book of Running. I remember there were people who poked fun at Mr. Fixx because The Complete Book of Running must not have been complete.

http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Fixxs-Second-Book-Running/dp/039450898X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356879958&sr=1-1&keywords=jim+fixx+second+book+of+running

- The Second Book of Running.