| Ãàðîëüä Êîííîëëè Harold Connolly | |
| Ïîåçäêà çà Îëèìïèéñêèì Çîëîòîì The Journey for Olympic Gold ãëàâû 21 | |
Chapter Twenty-one
The 35-pound weight throw competitions were about to begin.
This event,
contested almost exclusively in the Northeast colleges, was
the indoor simulation of the
16-pound hammer throw, an Olympic event since 1900. Being
nearly 3 feet shorter and
19 pounds heavier than the hammer, it was more a strength
than a speed event. The
cumbersome weight throw caused me great difficulty. My
shorter, weaker left arm made
the grip everyone else used on the weight’s handle
ineffective, so I began to heave it with
the same grip used in the hammer throw: the right hand
overlapping the left instead of
the two hands side by side. In spite of my leather
protective glove and taping the fingers
of my left hand, the wide, triangular iron handle bruised,
calloused, and frequently tore
the skin off the fingers of my left hand.
During the summer before my last year at Boston College I
realized I could not
use my arms in the throw as effectively as the other
competitors. Searching to
compensate, I began to rely more on getting lower as I spun
and on an explosive drive up
from my legs in the release. This laid the foundation for
what would later become my
unique way of throwing the sixteen-pound hammer and the
35-pound weight.
The winter of my senior year I competed in five weight throw
competitions, the
biggest of which, the New England Indoor Championships, was
held in the Tuft’s
University Field House. It was at this meet where I got my
personal best of 53 feet - ten
feet under the world record, but sufficient to earn second
place to the world record holder
and the first Olympian I had ever met, Bob Backus. The
physical comparison between
the two of us was less than flattering - I looked up to Bob
figuratively but also literally
from my height of barely six feet to his towering six feet
six inches. He had dark wavy
hair, a prominent, slender nose, emphasized by a regularly
recurring smile, perched above
a narrow chin. Long slender legs and incongruously small
feet supported his lanky,
broad-shouldered, John Wayne-like physique. A smooth,
powerful throwing motion
revealed why he held the world record in the weight throw.
Backus wore an almost new, navy blue warm up suit trimmed in
red, white and
blue, with the bold letters “U.S.A.” emblazoned across the
front of his sweatshirt. It was
the most beautiful tracksuit I had ever seen, the U.S.
Olympic Team uniform. I felt like a
rag-clad shrimp next to this towering Olympic athlete.
Silently, I envied him and his
self-confidence. Impressive as he was, Backus was also very
congenial with everyone
after the meet. He went out of his way to complement to me
on my throwing, ask me
about my training, and invite me to work out with him.
“When do we start?” was my immediate reaction. I was
surprised, a bit daunted,
and nervous, of course, but I wanted to express my
enthusiasm and eagerness. Training
with a national champion, a record holder, and member of the
Olympic team! What a
break!
The following Monday, we began meeting three times a week at
the back door of
the Tuft’s University Field House at six in the evening
after Bob finished work as a
salesman for the Black and Decker Tool Company. In the
half-lighted, moldy emptiness
of the high-ceilinged building, with its two hundred yard
oval cinder track and huge
hanging baseball nets, we threw the weight from an
eight-foot-square wooden platform
set into the dirt floor. There was eeriness in the
resounding clang of the lead weight and
iron handle as it struck the ground in that cavernous field
house. After two hours of
lifting barbells in the adjoining weight room, we showered,
carefully extinguished all
lights, and left for home.
A thousand times we blessed the name of “Pop Jaeger”, the
Tuft’s Athletic
Director, for giving Bob, a Tuft’s graduate, the key to the
back door and permission to
use the facility. Without his generous confidence, we would
never have been able to
accomplish all the throwing, running and weightlifting that
led us both to break American
records.
In the locker room one night after our three-hour practice,
I asked Bob something
that had been slowly growing in me since our first meeting.
“Bob, do you mind if I try on
your sweat top? I’d like to see how it looks.”
“Sure, go ahead, Buddy. It’s a comfortable one”.
Standing in front of a large mirror I peeled off my gray
sweatshirt, and put on
Bob’s uniform. The sleeves were two inches too long and the
knit at the waist fell down
to my hips, yet I felt like a new person. Wearing the
letters “U.S.A.” made me feel like a
little boy in a general’s uniform, or Clark Kent emerging
from a phone booth. I was ready
to conquer anything to earn the honor of wearing that
uniform.
“Kinda big, but it looks good on you” Bob’s lightly jocular
tone reminded me that
I had stood in front of the mirror a little too long. I
quickly pulled the shirt off and folded
it carefully.
“Bob, how tough is it to make the Olympic team?”
“Well,” he said with a reflective look in his dark eyes, “
it takes an awful lot of
work and leaves little free time for anything else”. After a
pause he added, as if anxious
to share thoughts that had bothered him for some time:
“Unfortunately we really don’t
know how to throw the hammer in this country, but the
Europeans, they’ve got it. They
use a much different technique than we do and produce far
better results. We will never
beat them unless we change our approach to the event”.
I was surprised. “What do you mean by ‘change’?”
“Well”, Bob started slowly, “there are points in our
technique they laugh at. For
instance the way we wind the hammer. They do it differently,
and when they turn it
looks much smoother and faster. They have much better
contact with the pull and don’t
jump in their turns. I’ve tried to copy how the best guys
looked at the Olympic Games,
but I can’t. Actually I’m not quite sure what the hell
they’re doing, but I know it gives
them twenty more feet. The Germans invented the new style
and the Hungarians and
Russians have greatly improved it. To be entirely honest, as
I see the situation, to match
those guys, we’d have to go to Europe, study their
technique, and train with them.”
During the spring of 1953, I entirely abandoned practicing
shot putting, threw it
only in dual meets, and devoted all my efforts to the
hammer. I realized after seeing a
movie of myself throwing that my left arm was much more of
an obstacle to my progress
in the shot put and discus than it was in the hammer throw,
where my right arm could
directly help my left arm and where the legs were a much
greater factor in the final
distance achieved. In addition, training with Bob convinced
me that specialization was
the only way I would ever beat him; and both he and I knew
that was my goal, though I
suspected he believed that it would never happen.
It was my last semester at Boston College and Bill Gilligan,
who by then had
become the head coach, tried to cram into me all he knew
about the event. On the
weekends I drove to Backus’ home in Marshfield where we
threw from a dirt road next to
his house into a meadow. During my school practices I twice
surpassed the BC record,
and the coach began to speak about my officially breaking
the twelve-year-old, 172-foot
mark in the first spring meet with Amherst University.
The hammer throw was contested on a land filled section of
the old Chestnut Hill
Reservoir, which would become a major football stadium and
ice hockey arena sports
complex. It was far from the main track and down a steep
hill below the main campus.
The event’s remote location increased the safety factor and
relegated it to the first event
of the meet. At its conclusion, the rest of the meet resumed
up at the track.
Overly anxious to produce a new school record, I came to the
meet two hours
early and warmed up twice. Before the hammer competition
even started, I was nearly
exhausted. Evidently the word of an impending new school
record had filtered all the
way up to the esteemed fathers of the faculty; because
Father Connors and several other
priests, enthusiastic followers of the school’s sports
scene, all came down from the hill
and gathered in expectation of the historic event. There
were only four competitors.
Finally when the call came for me to step into the circle, I
couldn’t stop thinking that this
was the first time an audience had ever come especially to
see me. Impatient to make a
long throw, I made my preliminary wind too fast and plunged
into the turns off balance.
The hammer lifted me off my feet before I even let go. The
hammer and I crashed to the
surface of the circle. Unhurt but shaken, I raised myself,
stepped off to the side, brushed
myself off, and avoided looking at the spectators.
Frantically I tried to analyze what had
gone wrong. Overanxious - that was it. I was pressing for
distance and my form fell
apart. I must relax! Use control! --When it came around for
my turn again, I was
suddenly gripped with fear that I had forgotten the
technique!
During my second attempt I fouled again by stumbling out of
the ring. The next
two throws resulted in the hammer bouncing off the ground
during my turns, ripping
away before the release and barely landing far enough to get
me into the finals. After my
next to last effort, which barely reached a hundred and
sixty two feet, I tried frantically to
pull myself together. In my final throw I again tried too
hard, slipped and toppled over
for the third time. I finished in second place with a mark
10 feet under the school record,
far below my average in practice and beaten by an Amherst
thrower.
What a fool I had made of myself! I was happy that Bob had
to work and couldn't
come to see me try for the record. I marched off the field
dragging the hammer across
the uneven ground, getting angrier at its every bounce. Bill
Gilligan caught up to me.
“Now calm down, Irish. It was tough going, but you found out
that the hammer is no
cinch after all. Don’t let it get you down; you’ll get that
record soon. Don’t worry about
it.”
“Okay, coach. Thanks.” I knew I could have done much better
but for my
nervousness and insecurity about my throwing technique. I
never forgot that day’s
humiliation. It always reminded me to never to throw too
much or all out warming up,
and before stepping into the ring, to take two deep breaths,
detach myself from all
distractions, and relax. That barely noticeable little
routine became incorporated into my
throwing with timing as precise as the technique itself. It
did not always work. There
were times when I got so nervous I couldn’t concentrate, but
I never failed to follow that
early resolution.
That final year in Boston College gave me a consuming goal
for my immediate
future. The Korean War appeared to be ending and classmates
were talking about
graduate studies, law school, and professional employment
opportunities. All I could
think about was learning how to throw the hammer, beating
Bob, and getting to the
Olympic tryouts. Now it seemed that my high school English
teacher's prophecy would
come true. Being a teacher would give me time to throw the
hammer and the money I
needed to go to Europe with Bob to learn to throw it better.
Copyright © 1999-2002 Harold Connolly |
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