"Some days you bite the dog. Some days the dog bites you."
Sometimes things go wrong.
I was 17, standing on a ladder, thinning the excess fruit off of pear trees in a Medford-area Naumes-family orchard, when I heard the words about biting and getting bit. Older guys, the Rasmussen twins, both students at Stanford said it. They, like me and Jack Mullen, the author of today's guest post, were on the same crew.
The Rasmussen twins looked cool to me -- so accomplished! So worldly! Students at one of the schools I hoped someday to attend! -- So I paid attention and remembered their wisdom. Sometimes you lose. Accept that.
Jack Mullen was one of the people watching when the USA's star figure skater, Ilia Malinin, the only person in the world able to spin in the air four full times in practice jumps, slipped and fell in his performance at the Olympics this week.
As a high school athlete in Medford, Jack Mullen experienced great successes, and some disappointments. Jack watched the successes of some of his classmates: All-American fullback Bill Enyart, whose Oregon State's football team defeated USC and OJ Simpson, and boyhood friend Dick Fosbury, who revolutionized high jumping while winning a gold medal. But no triumph survives future disappointment. Sometimes the dog bites you. After two seasons in the NFL, Enyart injured a knee and had to leave professional football. Dick Fosbury ran for the state legislature in his home in Idaho and lost, and then died -- too young -- at age 76.
Mullen lives in Washington, D.C. and sent this photo of himself after he dug his car out of the snow. A small victory, until the next deep snow.
Guest Post by Jack Mullen
How to process the "Quad God'" meltdown at the Winter Olympics?
It was hard, not only for me, but for many, to explain the stunned emotions we felt as we watched Ilia Malinin, USA’S face of the Olympic Games, truncate his long program, stumble and fall multiple times, and finish eighth in the men’s figure skating competition.
But my sadness switched to pride as an American when Ilia handled disappointment with grace and humility.
The pressure a 21-year-old feels to perform, solo, in front of a captivated live audience, along with millions on world-wide television, must be immense. Ilia did not shy away from the many interviews in which he acknowledged the mental part of his performance that overwhelmed his years of practice and mastery of the sport. Indeed, he showed maturity beyond his years.
As I went to bed on Friday, the 13th, I realized I knew of a certain 21-year-old, a childhood friend growing up with me in Medford, Oregon, Dick Fosbury, who, somehow met his Olympic moment in front of 80,000 fans at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Foz not only won a gold medal but entered the history books by revolutionizing his specialty, the high jump, in ways unimaginable at the time.
How did Dick Fosbury meet the moment and change how athletes high jump?
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| Corvallis, Oregon, June 1965 |
I grew up with Dick Fosbury. We both arrived in Roosevelt grade school in the third grade – Dick from Portland and me from Missouri. Our fathers both landed jobs at Haupert Tractor Company. Foz, or Fosdick as he was called then (nicknamed after a character the Lil’ Abner comic strip), engaged, like many Medford kids of that era, in multiple sports. We were teammates in football, basketball, track and even baseball from the fifth grade through high school. None of our friends or teammates took any notice of Fosbury developing mental toughness. How could we? He was awkward, dropped passes I threw him in football and basketball and never seemed to improve.
The only sign of any athletic ability came between the fifth and sixth grade at Roosevelt when he improved from high jumping 3’10” in the fifth grade to 4’6” in the sixth grade. Four feet was the magic barrier that I couldn’t conquer. Fosdick left all of us sixth graders in the dust.
Early in high school, Fosbury plateaued while clearing the height of 5’4”, that is until in his sophomore year, at a meet in Grants Pass. There, he ditched his scissors and roll style and went over the bar sideways-backward, improving six inches to 5’10’, his new personal best.
Dick Fosbury’s unique sideways-backward style garnered local attention, even a UPI photo spread around the country, but not much else until he arrived in Mexico City as the third qualifier on America’s Olympic high-jumping team.
Not many of the 80,000 plus fans at the estadio Olimpico had ever witnessed someone leap over the high-jump bar backwards. YouTube shows the crowd laughing and cheering each time Fosbury jumped. Dick Fosbury jumped to a 7’4 ¼ Olympic record height. His style of jumping, known as the "Fosbury Flop," is now the universal style of high jumping.
Dick Fosbury obtained instant world-wide fame from his unique Olympic win. The adulation was overwhelming. I suppose to try to feel grounded he came from Corvallis, where he was still a student at Oregon State, to visit me at my fraternity house at the University of Oregon. He was the same, easy-going Dick Fosbury I knew before. What I recall from that visit was that he said he treated jumping in the Olympics like any other track meet.
The Olympic moment wasn’t too big for Dick Fosbury. I only wish that in Ilia Malinin’s mind, he was competing at any other event and not in front of the world. One lesson Ilia Malinin left us with is that, after all, we are all just humans.
Fosbury’s genius was thinking outside the box: is it possible to do this backwards?
ReplyDeleteIn Medford in the late 1950s and 1960s, the community fostered an expectation--athletes were expected to think they could be and should be excellent. Looking back, and looking at southern Oregon now and at other communities, that was an extraordinary expectation. Medford's population was 20,000-25,000. It produced (this list isn't exclusive): Robert McIntyre, co-holder with three others of the world record in the 440 relay (he ran for Stanford); Scott Eaton (NFL); Doug Olson (national collegiate golf champion at Houston and PGA touring pro); and George Dames (NFL--a contemporary of Dick Fosbury, Bill Enyart, and Jack Mullen). The 1965 Black Tornado is an example of "sometimes things go wrong," but Tom Blanchard had a lot to do with the Grants Pass Cavemen beating the up-to-then undefeated Black Tornado, and he went to the NFL too.
ReplyDeleteFor motivation to be excellent, study Tom Cole, who started Kids Unlimited. He coaches the highly motivated South Medford girls basketball team. Dick Fosbury would like what Tom Cole has done for South for many years. Maybe Dick did know about the girls basketball team at South. That is his kind of sports team.
ReplyDeleteDick Fosbury and Jack Mullen probably looked up to Danny Miles.
ReplyDelete