5. Queen Helene
The world of 1932 was vastly changed from the 1924 Olympics.
On October 29, 1929, the Stock Market had crashed, sending stocks plummeting
from New York to Tokyo. Unlike previous recessions, this showed no signs of
stopping. With his poll numbers falling, President Herbert Hoover looked less
and less likely to win a second term. Thousands of Americans began to wander
the country’s highways and cities like John Steinbeck’s fictional Joad family.
Many simply gave up. Even the Olympics were not spared from the new economic
realities. By January of 1932, organizers in Los Angeles were in a panic. Seats
had been added to the massive Olympic Stadium and not a single country had said
they would take part in the games. In desperation, actors Douglas Fairbanks,
Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, and Mary Pickford had announced they would
perform at the games. Slowly other nations agreed to come, and ultimately 37
would participate.
At the games themselves, all round athlete Babe Didrikson
would go on to win three medals, including two gold. Track runner Eddie Tolan
would also get gold medals for both 100 and 200 meter races. But the greatest
American performance would come not on the track or the gym, but in the pool.
If Johnny Weissmuller had been arguably the best Olympic
male swimmer of his time, then 19 year old Helene Madison was definitely the
best female swimmer games, or for that matter, the entire sport, had ever seen.
Five years earlier, Madison had been playfully swimming in Seattle’s Green Lake
when Ray Daughters happened to walk by. Daughters had been a champion west
coast swimmer and though Madison had been swimming since she was 2, she still
lacked natural skills. Daughters thought that beyond the rough edges, he saw
the makings of a real star. Daughters
immediately offered to begin training her. She agreed.
After only a few weeks of training, Madison had won her
first big race and several months later, she had set state records for the 50
and 100 meter freestyle and 100 meter backstroke. From there. she only got
better. The next year, Madison set a new Pacific Coast record for the 100 meter
freestyle which was only four seconds slower than the world record. In another
race against two time gold medalist Albina Osipowich, Madison finished just
behind her. Into 1929, Madison continued winning races, setting another Pacific
Coast record in the 200 freestyle, and more records fell the next year. If
there were any doubts about her stamina, Madison silenced these when she
traveled to Miami and set a world record for a 500 meter race. By now Madison
could beat anyone including other Olympians. In 1931 and 1932, she did not lose
a single race.
When Madison arrived in New York for the Olympic trials, her
qualifying was a forgone conclusion. She easily won the 100 and 400 meter races
and made the team. When she came to L.A., her career statics were astonishing,
before even setting foot in the water, she already held 117 U.S. and world
records. On August 6, she lined up for
the 100 meter freestyle. Though she was at the Olympics and surrounded by the
best swimmers in the world, she had no real competition and climbed out of the
pool with a new Olympic record and her first gold medal. Six days later,
Madison earned a second one in the 400 meter freestyle, this time with a world
record. The next day she finished out her Olympic events with the 4×100 team relay.
Going in the last leg she shot out the second the U.S swimmer touched the wall,
rounded the final turn and flew home for her third gold medal and her second
world record.
On August 26, Madison returned to Seattle. No local
Washingtonian had ever won so many medals in a single Olympics and people were
ecstatic. Nearly 200,000 waited at Boeing Field when she landed and the city
held the biggest tickertape parade in its history. In a speech, Mayor John Dore
proclaimed her “Queen of Fleet Week.” Madison, he said, “has done more in two
years to give Seattle and the state the best kind of advertising than anyone
who has ever lived here." He added, “The reception she receives today is
greater than that received by anyone in the history of the city.” Finally
Madison herself spoke. To stunned throng, she said, “I have entered my last
race in amateur competition and will leave the field for good. My ambitions
were realized when I scored in the Olympics.” She added, “I have nothing else
to look forward to. The grind has been a hard one, a tremendous task, and I am
glad to give it over to other girls.” Asked three decades later about this
decision, Madison responded, “I don’t think I had peaked yet when I retired.
But it was the Depression. I had to work.”
Madison swam in a few exhibitions were she was paid, but as
money became increasingly tight, few people showed up. In taking the money, she
could never race again on the armature circuit or the Olympics. Like Weissmuller,
Madison moved to Hollywood and appeared in several films, one with Weissmuller
himself. However, all of them did poorly and she soon returned to Seattle,
forgotten.
In her brief athletic career, Madison won every national
freestyle event in the county for three years in a row, won every freestyle
Olympic event, and held 16 world records in addition to her over 100 U.S.
records. To this day she remains the only athlete from Washington to bring home
three gold medals. No one, not Megan Quann or even Apolo Ohno has matched her.
In 1960, she was added to Washington State Hall of Fame and six year later to
the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Sadly, few remember her incredible
life, and it is only sharp eyed locals who may notice that two Seattle swimming
pools are named for her.
6. “I'll start shaving, I guess."
In 1948, London was once again chosen to host the Olympics.
However, things had vastly changed since 1908. Two world wars had occurred and
had cost Britain dearly. Even as the games began, citizens were still working
to fix the last visible scars on the city. Gone were the days when the sun
never set on British Empire. Just the year before, India and Pakistan had
declared independence. In May 1948, Israel also departed, and Ireland looked
soon to follow. Britain was nearly broke.
In a more important sense, the games were clear sign of a
return to normalcy after the tension filled Berlin Games of 1936 and the cancelled
games of 1940 and 1944. Because food rationing was in place, other countries
brought supplies: Denmark shipped over eggs, New Zealand shipped over condensed
milk, and the U.S. made the biggest splash when they brought in chocolate,
something not many British children had ever seen.
Many would later remember the spirit of unity that
characterized the games. Dorothy Whitley, a nurse with the American team, later
wrote, “The customs men were courteous to the point of not looking in our bags,
and redcaps refused to be tipped.” Whitley added, “During our whole stay people
knocked themselves out to make us welcome. Bus passes and badges to take us
inside Wembley arenas were given to everyone. When we saw and heard the
enthusiasm of thousands at the Games, we changed our minds about the blasé
English. They sweated out some of the hottest days on English record, and stood
dripping wet later in the rain to see the greatest sportsmen of the world
perform."
In the mist of the London hustle and bustle towered
six-foot-two, 17 year old American Bob Mathias. Like Weissmuller before him,
Mathias was a newcomer to his sport, the decathlon. Born in Tulare, California,
Mathias had been a sickly boy and still suffered from Anemia. By the time he
entered the Olympics, he had to take several sets of pills to compete and
frequently fell asleep.
However, he had also shown great skill at hand eye
coordination from a young age and been involved in high school sports, Mathias
had been on the basketball, football, and track teams, proving an outstanding
all round athlete winning one local completion after another. Then one day his
track coach Virgil Jackson told him he thought Mathias was good enough to
compete in the decathlon at the Southern Pacific AAU Games in Los Angeles only
weeks away. Even though he had never thought about it, or done any serious
training for the events, Mathias agreed.
To the shock of many, likely including Mathias himself, he
won. After getting financial support from his hometown, Mathias next competed
in the National AAU in New Jersey. Again he won, beating three-time national
champion Irving "Moon" Mondschein and qualifying for the London
Olympics. Though Mathias had won two major victories, he was still largely an
unknown.
After the first day of events, Mathias was in third place.
Despite making several serious mistakes in the shot put and long jump, he came
back with a strong performance in the discus throws. The final event was the 1,500
meter run which took place as the darkness crept across the sky. As spectators
looked on, an exhausted Mathias came across the finish line. “In rain, on a
track covered with water ... in fading light, and finally under floodlights, it
was an amazing achievement," wrote Allison Danzig in The New York Times.
Mathias had just become the youngest man to ever win a gold metal. Asked what
he would do to celebrate, Matthias responded, “I'll start shaving, I
guess."
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