Sports Then and Now

There hasn't been a lot for Portland Trail Blazer fans to smile about since the selection of Greg Oden in the 2007 NBA Draft.

The announcement this week that Portland Trail Blazer center Greg Oden is out for the year while undergoing microfracture surgery for the second time in four years is simply the equivalent of tossing more salt into an old wound for Trail Blazer fans.

When Portland management made the decision in the spring of 2007 to bypass Texas forward Kevin Durant and choose Ohio State center Greg Oden with the first pick in the NBA Draft, fans hoped the move would work out better than a similar decision 23 years earlier.

In 1984, the Trail Blazers passed on selecting a young guard from North Carolina with the second pick in the NBA Draft to instead shore up their frontcourt with Kentucky big man Sam Bowie.

Over the next five seasons, Bowie would average 10.5 points per contest while playing in a grand total of 139 games for the Trail Blazers. Conversely, during those same five seasons, Michael Jordan claimed three of what would ultimately be 10 NBA scoring titles while building the Chicago Bulls into a franchise that would claim six NBA titles in the 1990s.

The reasoning at the time was that Jordan played a similar position to that of Clyde Drexler, who Portland had drafted the previous season out of the University of Houston. Drexler would go on to make eight All-Star appearances with the Trail Blazers and twice lead the team into the NBA Championship Series (including once against Jordan’s Bulls), but would never lead Portland to the title.

Similarly, when Portland approached the 2007 NBA Draft they felt second year swingman Brandon Roy was comparable in position and ability to Durant and instead needed to use the draft choice to enhance their frontcourt. Ironically, it was Roy who had represented the team at the NBA Lottery when they had received the top selection. Read the rest of this entry →

The damage had been done.

Whether through insensitivity, ignorance, or just plain incompetence, an athlete was victimized in one of sport’s most embarrassing atrocities.

South African 800-meter world champion Caster Semenya was publicly stripped (of her dignity), raped (of her privacy), and disemboweled (of her physiology) by medical experts, governing sports entities, and news media.

Semenya was effectively banned from competition after her stunning 2009 victory in Berlin’s World Championships. Her rapid week-to-week improvement and her impressive world-leading time in the finals (1:55.45) prompted an intrusive gender verification process which left no piece of the champion’s persona hidden.

During the eleven-month ordeal, the black cloud of suspicion and controversy which fell first on Semenya, suddenly moved to cast its shadow on the various governing powers whose charge it was to protect the athlete.

Still, the damage had been done.

But as it is said, “…every dark cloud has its silver lining.”

Yes, after an excruciating delay, Semenya was finally cleared by Track and Field’s governing body (IAAF) to compete as a woman. Read the rest of this entry →

Billy Mills is the only American to win a gold medal in the 10,000 meter run.

“You have to look deeper, way below the anger, the hurt, the hate, the jealousy, the self-pity; way down deeper, where the dreams lie, son. Find your dream. It’s the pursuit of the dream that heals you.”

These are the words of a Lakota (Sioux) father to his young son struggling with the whys of poverty, adversity, and racism in 1940s America.

When the young Oglala Lakota brave was 12 years old his father died, leaving him an orphan. Wisely, he took his father’s advice and pursued sports in his quest to find that dream.

Football and boxing filled the void for a time, but the young lad discovered a special connection to his inner dream when he took up distance running.

“All I had was the pursuit of a dream: I wanted to be an Olympian,” the boy would later say.

He was a natural. He found success in high school, setting numerous school records. Bill Easton, the track coach at the University of Kansas, was impressed with the gangly youngster and offered him a track scholarship.

Opportunity knocked…and Billy Mills opened the door.

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The decathlon duel between Rafer Johnson and C.K. Yang was the highlight of a star studded 1960 Olympics.

The decathlon is one of the most grueling competitions in all of sport. It consists of ten events, negotiated over two days. Points are awarded based on the order of finish as well as the distance, height or time achieved in each event. Final standings in a decathlon competition are therefore expressed as total accumulated points.

The particular events are designed to test the athlete’s speed, strength and endurance – in essence, an entire track meet in one competition. Because of the versatility and overall athleticism required to win, the Olympic decathlon champion is often referred to as  the “World’s Greatest Athlete”.

This is the story of one of the most dramatic battles for that coveted distinction. As you will read, this struggle for gold and glory carried with it some very interesting under currents.
The 1960 Rome Olympics was one of the most memorable in terms of drama, future legends and athletic achievement in all of modern Olympic history. Names like Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Wilma Rudolph, Al Oerter and the Russian sisters Irina and Tamara Press were but a few of the jewels set in the crown of Rome that year.

Among the gathered elite, probably none drew more attention than the top two decathletes in the world at that time: Yang Chuan-Kwang of Formosa (Taiwan) and the American world record holder, Rafer Johnson.

The decathlon in those days had worldwide appeal, due primarily to its dominance during the 1950s by Bob Mathias, who shocked the world by winning the 1948 Olympic gold as a 17 year old kid.

Yang, better known as C.K.Yang, was a member of the Takasago – an aboriginal tribe who inhabited Formosa long before the Chinese arrived. His athletic skill was recognized at an early age. He developed his art to the extent local facilities and competition would permit. He was good enough to finish eighth in the decathlon at the 1956 Melbourne Games. Eventually, track and field officials raised enough money to send him to the U.S. to train.

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