Events That Would Otherwise Never Go Together, Hopefully

The same cities are not thought of as capable of hosting both Summer and Winter Olympics. You need gigantic urban centers for the Summer Games, and Winter Games require state-of-the-art ski resort towns or large cities next to mountain ranges. There are a few that might be possible in theory- Munich, 1972's summer host, made a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics, but lost out- so never say never, but there aren't many that can have that kind of dream.

Although there is one city that doesn't have to dream, because it's already done it.

The host city can't host every single event on its own. Some events get farmed out to satellite towns around the general area- sailing gets farmed out to a coastal town, canoe/kayak and rowing needs a town with a still or manmade lake and possibly a river location as well, soccer needs multiple venues and is shared with several cities around the host nation, mountain biking and BMX need some fairly hilly terrain and/or parkland, skiing needs a mountain, biathlon and cross-country skiing needs rural, semi-hilly-but-traversable terrain with some kind of trail, and then there are the various suburbs and outlying towns that manage to score random events that end up falling outside the main competition complex.

Karuizawa, Japan is one such satellite town. When Tokyo hosted the Summer Games in 1964, Karuizawa, a get-away-from-it-all town for residents of Tokyo, was called upon to host the equestrian events. The town sits in Nagano Prefecture, so when Nagano won hosting duties for the Winter Olympics in 1998, Karuizawa was in position to be a satellite town again, and they were given the curling competition. To date, they're the only city that's seen competition in both Olympic seasons.

At least until Munich bids again, that is.

They're Visible For Two Seconds Before The US Wins Something

I want to see how well you've been paying attention so far, with one week to go in these Games.

You know those abbreviations given next to each country's flag? That's the country's 3-letter IOC code. 'USA', of course, is the one for the United States of America. Every single person trapped alone in a room with NBC's coverage ought to know that one. As well as just about every other American, every beleaguered non-American who's ever put up with an American of substandard intelligence, and several species of mold.

Now let's work on the ones NBC hasn't concentrated on very much: the other 203 of them.

You have 20 minutes. Match the country to its respective code. (My score: 189. The L's and M's proved a little tricky.)

Go World, Vol. 2

In Mexico City 1968, Soviet freestyle wrestler Boris Hurevych won gold in the middleweight division. Along the way, he stood across wrestlers from the Bahamas, Poland, Great Britain, Cuba, Mongolia and Bulgaria.

For him, while gold may have been a step up, standing across from six different nations was a step down. Because a decade earlier, he served as the model for the statue 'Swords Into Plowshares' that stands to this day in the garden of the United Nations.

This Post Is Flagged

I'd like to draw your attention to Kim Collins, sprinter out of St. Kitts and Nevis. First, because his team sent him home for what they call leaving the Olympic Village and what he calls being in a hotel with his wife. However, I'd also like to mention him because he was his nation's flagbearer. For the third time. He also carried his flag in Sydney and Athens.

Also marking his third Olympics as national flagbearer is Kurt Couto of Mozambique, who carried the flag in Athens and Beijing. He ran in the men's 400 meter hurdles, being eliminated in the semifinals today.

Also in his third outing as flagbearer: Shiekh Saeed Al-Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates, who took part in men's skeet shooting. He came in 13th out of 36, failing to qualify for the 6-man final.

And in his fourth flagbearing appearance is Manuel Minginfel of Micronesia. He competed in men's weightlifting, 62kg division, and finished 10th out of 15.

What we'll show here is, according to Sports Reference, a listing of every athlete who has had the honor of carrying their nation's flag at least three times, in either summer or winter- and in the case of Francisco Fernandez Ochoa of Spain, both. (Ochoa was a winter athlete; he won Spain's first and to date only winter gold in Sapporo, winning the men;s slalom, and got rewarded with being the flagbearer in Munich later that year.)

3-time flagbearers:

Bhutan: Jubzang Jubzang, Barcelona/Atlanta/Sydney
Croatia: Janica Kostelic, Nagano/Salt Lake City/Torino
Cuba: Teofilo Stevenson, Munich/Montreal/Moscow
Finland: Akilles Jarvinen, Amsterdam/Los Angeles/Berlin
Gabon: Melanie Engoang, Sydney/Athens/Beijing
Gambia: Dawda Jallow, Seoul/Barcelona/Atlanta
Great Britain: Mike Dixon, Lillehammer/Nagano/Salt Lake City
Greece: Thanasis Tsakiris, Calgary/Albertville/Vancouver
Hungary: Gergely Kulcsar, Tokyo/Mexico City/Munich
India: Shiva Keshavan, Nagano/Salt Lake City/Vancouver
Iran: Ovaness Meguerdonian, Innsbruck/Grenoble/Sapporo
Kenya: Philip Boit, Nagano/Salt Lake City/Torino
Monaco: Albert, Prince Grimaldi, Calgary/Albertville/Lillehammer
Mongolia: Badmaanyanbuugiin Bat-Erdene, Seoul/Barcelona/Sydney
Mongolia: Luvsansharavyn Tsend, Innsbruck/Grenoble/Sapporo
Mozambique: Kurt Couto, Athens/Beijing/London
Panama: Eileen Marie Coparropa, Atlanta/Sydney/Athens
Paraguay: Ramon Jimenez-Gaona, Seoul/Barcelona/Atlanta
Poland: Waldemar Baszanowski, Tokyo/Mexico City/Munich
Romania: Aurel Vernescu, Tokyo/Mexico City/Munich
Soviet Union/Unified Team/Russia: Alexandr Karelin, Seoul/Barcelona/Atlanta
St. Kitts and Nevis: Kim Collins, Sydney/Athens/London
Sweden: Bo Lindman, Amsterdam/Los Angeles/Berlin
United Arab Emirates: Shiekh Saeed Al-Maktoum, Sydney/Athens/London

4-time flagbearers:
Austria: Hubert Raudaschl, Munich/Los Angeles/Seoul/Atlanta
Belgium: Gaston Roelants, Tokyo/Mexico City/Munich/Montreal
Micronesia: Manuel Minginfel, Sydney/Athens/Beijing/London
Spain: Francisco Fernandez Ochoa, Sapporo/Munich/Innsbruck/Lake Placid
Trinidad and Tobago: Hasley Crawford, Munich/Montreal/Moscow/Los Angeles

5-time flagbearers:
Bermuda: Whitfield "Chummy" Hayward, London/Helsinki/Rome/Tokyo/Mexico City

Hayward was not an athlete and never competed; he was team manager and did some timekeeping in London and Helsinki. So who was he and why did he get the honor so often for Bermuda? Simple: it was his doing that got Bermuda's National Olympic Committee up and running in the first place, in time for Berlin 1936.

DNS

In order to win at the Olympics, you have to train. You have to sacrifice. You have to push to your absolute limits. You have to avoid injuries at the wrong time. Often you have to avoid getting knocked out in the national trials.

Oh, yes, and you have to show up. This tiny little detail has eliminated more than a few potential medalists over the years. The Olympics don't wait around for you. Even if you somehow got bad information as to where you have to be and when, they don't wait around. You're either in uniform and ready to go when they call your name, or they just plain go on without you. They have a schedule to keep and plenty of athletes that did show up on time. Caught in traffic? Alarm didn't go off? Mugged by aliens? Left the cat in the oven? Too bad. Go home. The end. Try again in four years, or if you never get back, hope you enjoyed your Olympic experience.

So today let's remember a few of those who wound up with a DNS on the results sheet.

*The first-ever Olympic entrant from Suriname was Wim Esajas, slated to compete in the men's 800 meters in Rome 1960. He was slated to, at least. However, someone told him that the heats were in the afternoon, so he slept in that morning.

The heats were not in the afternoon.

By the time Esajas showed up, the heats were over and the quarterfinals set. There was nothing he could do but go home. Peter Snell of New Zealand eventually won gold. Eight years later, Suriname tried again with Eddy Monsels in the 100-meter dash in Mexico City 1968. Monsels made it out of the heats- barely- before succumbing in the quarterfinals.

*In the judo competition of Atlanta 1996, David Khakhaleishvili of Georgia came in as the defending heavyweight gold medalist from Barcelona. He was expected to contend for gold again. When it came time for weigh-ins, he made his way to the Georgia World Congress Center, the judo venue. Which would be fine except the weigh-ins were actually being held in the Olympic Village. A mad dash back to the village was too late to prevent the weigh-in from ending before he got there, meaning he was out.

Khakhaleishvili, it should be reiterated, was competing as a heavyweight. That's the unlimited division. He didn't have to slim down or anything. He could have shoved cheesecake into his face all day if he wanted. The officials just needed a number to record and he didn't give that number. With him out, his main competitor, David Doulliet of France, won gold instead, and would do so again four years later in Sydney.

*The 100-meter dash in Munich 1972 ended up suffering from a severe Americandectomy. The heats started on August 31 at 11:09 AM. Quarterfinals were scheduled for 4:15 PM. One American, Lee Evans, was at the track, but he wasn't in the 100 meters. He was in the 4x400-meter relay about a week down the road. And he noticed that the Americans scheduled to run the 100 meters, Eddie Hart, Rey Robinson and Robert Taylor, still hadn't shown up yet. Eventually, he took off for the Olympic Village three-quarters of a mile away to go drag them to the track in time. By the time he got there, though, they were already gone.

But not to the track. The sprinters were under the impression that the quarters weren't until 7 PM, because their coach was using an 18-month-old schedule. Meandering to the stadium, they happened into the broadcasting station of then-American-broadcaster ABC and found the 100 meters on one of the screens. Robinson asked if they were showing a rerun of the preliminaries.

He was told they were live.

The first realization dawned on Robinson quickly: 'Oh, shit.'

The second realization came soon after: 'Oh, shit, THAT'S MY HEAT.'

Robinson's Olympics were over. Hart was in Heat 2. There was too little time for him to make it, but he would eventually make up for it with gold in the 4x100-meter relay. Taylor, though, was able to claim his starting block in Heat 3 just in time. He would eventually win silver. The gold medalist, Valery Borzov of the Soviet Union, also barely made it to the heat; he had slept in too long and had to shove a stadium official aside to get to the track in time. Borzov wound up posting the fastest time of the competition, 10.07 seconds.

Bronze medalist Lennox Miller of Jamaica, in Heat 4, had no such issues.

As for Evans, there's no happy ending for him either. He pulled a hamstring prior to the 4x400-meter relay, and as fellow relayers Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett had been completely disrespectful on the medal stand of the 400 meters- they failed to stand at attention to their national anthem and just chatted to each other, drawing boos from the German crowd, then totally blew their chance to explain themselves when asked. Also Matthews, the gold medalist, took his medal off and twirled it on his finger after coming down from the platform. It all added up to the two being banned from further competition in Munich. With Evans' injury, it left the six-man relay team down to three, not enough to race. The Americans were out of that relay too, and Kenya wound up with gold instead.

Bizzaro Olympic Records

The United States polished off Nigeria earlier today to the tune of 156-73 in men's basketball, making for an Olympic single-game scoring record. (Please remember: that was a 40-minute game, not a 48-minute game like in the NBA.) The previous record was 138, set by Brazil in Seoul 1988.

Well and good. Here, though, let's focus on the opposite end of the spectrum. What's the lowest score?

For that, we have to go back to Berlin 1936. 23 nations entered the inaugural Olympic basketball tournament. They were probably sorry they did. FIBA, basketball's international governing body, decided to use Berlin as an opportunity to experiment with outdoor basketball. Things weren't at the stage yet where you could get brand new venues for virtually every event, so they had to improvise, and the venue selected for basketball turned out to be a group of lawn, clay and sand tennis courts that the records (PDF file, page 162-163) don't give a formal name to.

The thing about playing basketball on grass and clay is that the ball doesn't bounce like it does on hardwood or concrete. The thing about playing basketball outdoors is, well, it's fine when it's sunny out. But sometimes it's not sunny. Sometimes it rains.

Have you ever played basketball on sand? In a rainstorm? It doesn't work too well.

Oh, and it's the pre-shot-clock era.

And the organizers banned any player over 6 foot 3, as David Wallechinsky's Complete Book of the Olympics maintains (this thing is a godsend come Olympic time). That rule got rescinded only after an American protest.

And also there's no NBA yet and the US Olympic Trials were won by a company team from Universal Pictures (now Universal Studios), a team supplemented in Berlin by players from the runner-up McPherson Globe Refiners of Kansas and University of Washington player Ralph Wilson. And that was the American team, still not really facing any true international competition. (The team was split in half and alternated games, as another rule limited teams to seven players in uniform for any one game.)

Some sample scores, taken utterly at whim from a glance at the bracket:

*Peru 35, Egypt 22
*Japan 35, China 19
*Poland 28, Latvia 23
*Czechoslovakia 20, Germany 9
*Philippines 35, Mexico 20

Mexico got the bronze by beating Poland 26-12. The United States, of course, won gold, beating Canada in the final. The final was held during a gigantic rain dump on the tennis courts, meaning the 1936 Olympic basketball gold medal match was held on a wet sand surface, in the rain, and also the fans had no actual seats, so they had to stand in the rain watching the basketball-like substance that was being extruded on them.

The final score was 19-8. Canada's eight points is the record for lowest score in a non-forfeited Olympic basketball game. (There were six forfeits in 1936. Two involved Peru's mid-Olympic boycott of Nazi Germany; two more involved Spain being caught up in the Spanish Civil War; and the other two were forfeits by Hungary, who also withdrew prior to the competition.)

And let us all pray it never gets challenged.

Well, That Was Simple

Many race-based events at the Olympics, swimming and track events in particular, break down into three stages: heats, semifinals and the final. You need some way to get the numbers cut down and determine who wins what.

Except when you don't. In the early days, due to the low number of entries, the heats and sometimes the semifinals could get skipped and they could go right to the final. Two specific occasions are worthy of note here.

In Antwerp 1920, the semifinals of the men's 4x400-meter relay were superfluous. Only six teams had entered- Belgium, France, Great Britain, South Africa, Sweden and the United States- and as you know, a track has plenty of room for six teams. The officials, though, decided that a semifinal was necessary; they'd take the top three from each of two heats, creating something even less necessary than a semifinal in which you have room for everyone in the final: a semifinal that doesn't even eliminate anyone. Needless to say, everyone took it rather easy in the semifinals. Great Britain wound up winning gold, South Africa silver and France bronze.

There was also at least one occasion where the final was unnecessary. Stockholm 1912 featured the only Olympic appearance of the two-handed javelin event. You threw three times with your right hand and three times with your left hand, and they added up your best single throws with each hand. 14 athletes from four nations were involved: Finland, Hungary, Norway and the host nation of Sweden. The top three from preliminaries moved on to the final.

As it turned out, the preliminaries put through a Finnish medal sweep. Julius Saaristo was in first at the end of the prelims, Vaino Siikaneimi in second, and Urho Peltonen in third. They turned out to all be perfectly fine with this turn of events. In fact, they were so fine with this turn of events that they all agreed they were happy just letting the results stand like that and not even bothering with the final. The officials just shrugged their shoulders and said, sure, why not.

Back then, they were just going to be playing the Russian anthem anyway.