Reviews

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Hold on to Your Tickets

12/7/2012

Adam Nelson, 2004. My pals Karen Rosen, Bryan (aka Home Slice) Burwell (dark shirt; white cap) and Tim Layden (glasses on cap). Photo: Stratos Safioleas.

It all comes back to me now – the heat, the dust, the antiquity, the frustration when Adam Nelson could not prevent his foot from squiggling over the foul line.

By the slimmest of margins, Nelson fouled on his final shot in the 2004 Summer Games, which meant somebody else won the gold medal by virtue of a tiebreaker.

Nelson had two millenniums of history all around him on the most memorable day of the entire Olympics. The hosts had placed a medal event at the site of the ancient Games – the shot-put for men and women, fairly contained in one small corner of the old field.

I remember arriving the night before, walking the grounds in the dark with a few friends, sensing the old Olympians in the cosmic dust. Every step, every breath, was a privilege. Competitors and their followers had walked these hills and paths long ago.

Everybody got it, from the spectators to the athletes to the reporters. My daughter Laura Vecsey, then with the Baltimore Sun, made the trip out from Athens. This was the best day.

"It was surreal," said Cleopatra Borel, a shot-putter from Trinidad, who did not win a medal, but was exhilarated all the same.
"You can't believe that athletes just like myself competed here. I know it was an all-male environment back then. This can never, ever happen again like this. Even if they ever have something back here, it can never be like this again."

Borel was right. Now, eight years later, that day in ancient Olympia is being re-arranged. The sample from Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine has been judged to contain an illegal substance, untraceable by methods available in 2004.

It looks like Adam Nelson is going to get his gold medal. There is a warning out to all the cheaters, in all the sports. Be careful, pal; time and pharmacology may judge you yet.

The news about Nelson’s gold medal:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/sports/four-2004-olympians-stripped-of-medals-in-doping-re-test.html

The column I wrote from Olympic in 2004:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/18/sports/olympics/18CND-VECSEY.html?pagewanted=all

Interviewing a competitor in Ancient Olympia.(Photo, Stratos Safioleas)

Barbara Alpert

12/8/2012 05:57:49 pm

Hi George,
Somehow I've ended up on your website at 1:45 am this December 8-9...and have been happily reading up on your most recent posts. (I loved reading about Grandma Stork, too--please give my best to Marianne!) I think of you often, more often around Marathon time but other times too. I hope life is treating you both wonderfully well. I'm so pleased to read about your children and grandchildren on here. I miss reading you regularly in my newspaper, though. Congrats on the Stan Musial book--it sounds wonderful. What's next??

I'm not teaching anymore. I spent 2 years in the public schools followed by nearly 8 helping to run an after school and tutoring program in East Harlem. That ended in spring 2011 (not by my choice) and I spent more than a year out of work--very hard for me. But I've now found a new career as a medical editor for a pharmaceutical advertising firm in midtown--nice people, interesting work, and time to pursue my many interests.

Now that I know where to find you, I'll definitely be back to read your archives and learn whatever else interests you. Hope it's a joyful holiday time for all the Vecseys.

Best,
Barbara

George Vecsey

12/9/2012 01:03:24 am

Barbara!
(A terrific editor on the book I helped Barbara Mandrell write.; And the friendly volunteer directing runners at the finish line of the NY Marathon)
Thanks for the nice note. We're good. I'm still writing for the NYT couple of times a month -- and still reachable at [email protected].
Best
George

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12/9/2012 06:09:09 am

George

I visited the site of the ancient games in 2007. I can imagine what your emotions must have been covering events there during the 2004 Summer Olympics. If tradition had been accurately adhered to, the athletes would have performed without uniforms. If so, no one would have noticed that Adam Nelson had fouled.

Track was a close second to soccer when I was younger. It would still be right up there except for the NCAA, who killed AAU track sometime around the 1960’s in their quest for complete control. The early coverage of track meets from the old Madison Square Garden was sufficient justification for the development of TV. There is still great track today, but other than the Olympics every four years, it is rarely seen.

Around 1946, my father began selling televisions in his store on Broadway and 83rd in Manhattan. Since there was not enough availability then, we did not have one at home. I would take the A train or the 4 or 5 bus from 190th and Fort Washington Avenue in the Heights to watch Saturday evening meets from the Garden in his store. I was not allowed to go alone to the Garden, but I could travel to the store.

Teaneck HS’s relay team was invited to run at a meet in the Garden during the 1950-51 indoor season. Since we could not practice outdoors, we trained for two weeks in the very long school hallway. We were concerned about competing against the great Catholic high school teams we had seen on TV and mastering the fabled banked short track. It was notorious for splinters if you fell. We figured that it would be a thrill just to compete.

Then we were shot down by our own school. The principle ruled that since it had not been scheduled by Teaneck’s athletic department, we could not compete. I argued-“how could an invitation to a track meet in the Garden have been scheduled in advance? Also, it would have been good exposure for the school”. The administration was not moved by logic or common sense, only the safety of not setting a precedent, whatever that might have been.

My daughter’s Suffern HS cross country team had the opposite experience. They were always accepting invitations to regional Saturday meets, including several in Sunken Meadow.

(It is always nice when your old acquaintance’s pop in to say hello.)

Brian Savin

12/11/2012 11:37:52 am

Raises interesting and important questions. What is "sport"? What is "amateur?" What is "cheating"? The Olympics is about national politics, having nothing to do with those questions. The brightest person I ever met (and not really a cynic) said to me that most every human interaction these days is about power, sex or money. Altruism? Not much. A foot on the line? In the scheme of the way this competition actually works, why should that be any big deal? The Olympics story is a sad story in need of top to bottom reform that is not likely to come. And that leads to even larger questions about why we still innately know that sport is important.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Hold on to Your Tickets

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