Triple jumping at the Olympics of shame

The recent demise of V. Saneyev made me decide to write the story of the cheating that took place in the men's triple jump during the Moscow 1980 Olympics.

Georgia born, Viktor Saneyev is one of the best triple jumpers ever. When he presented himself for his fourth Olympics in Moscow he had already won three gold medals and was looking towards equalling Oerter's feat. But let us start at the beginning. The first time Saneyev came to the limelight was at the 1968, Mexico, Olympics. Contrary to the long jump competition that was killed by Beamon's out-of-this-world jump, the triple jump was most eventful. Already at the qualifiers, G. Gentile broke the world record with a 17.10 m jump, in the presence of the record holder J. Schmidt who was going to finish a distant 7th in the final. Gentile improved his own world record with a 17.22 m first jump only to be passed by Saneyev, with a 17.23 m third attempt. But even this was not enough for gold as N. Prudencio leapt to 17.27 on his fifth jump. The final word was that of Saneyev who with 17.39 m clinched gold, Prudencio and Gentile having to content themselves with silver and bronze respectively. Walker and Dudkin also jumped beyond Schmidt's record (17.12 and 17.09 m), while May in 6th was, with 17.02 m, just one cm shy of it. That was definitely the highest level competition in triple jump one has ever seen. 

    Saneyev jumping in Mexico

Saneyev went on to win the olympic triple jump again in 1972 and 1976. The latter marked the first appearance of the prodigious brazilian triple jumper J.C. de Oliveira. He had improved the world record to an impressive 17.89 m and was the obvious favourite for the gold medal, but Saneyev's experience prevailed and de Oliveira could do no better than third. 

de Oliveira jumping in Moscow

In 1980 de Oliveira was again the favourite. His world record was still holding (it would only be broken in 1985) and he had won both horizontal jumps (8.18 and 17.27 m) in the 1979 Pan American games. However that was counting without the soviets. After the first day of athletics they requested that all IAAF inspectors leave the field. This meant that only soviet judges were present and nobody was supervising them. And they abused the situation, resulting in defrauding de Oliveira, and also australian jumper I. Campbell, of well merited medals. (In fact they continued doing so in all disciplines, which had as a result the return of the IAAF inspectors. However by that time it was too late for the triple jump). 

The disappointment of Campbell

I. Campbell distinguished himself already in the qualifiers with a 17.02 m leap on his first attempt while de Oliveira and Saneyev did not have any difficulty to qualify. In the final de Oliveira took control with his first jump with Saneyev at second place. And the situation did not change till the third attempt. Then (Estonia born) J. Uudmae jumped a personal best of 17.35 m moving to first place. Saneyev, in a 2015 interview, does not hesitate to point out that Uudmae had overstepped, but the soviet judges, being convinced that Saneyev could not stand up to the challenge presented by de Oliveira, preferred having a sure winner. The brasilian responded with a 17.22 m jump, not yet sufficient for gold. But the worse was coming. In the fourth attempt Saneyev's jump (beyond Uudmae's mark) was declared a foul and then I. Campbell had a humongous jump (estimated at 17.60 m) and started celebrating when a judge, situated midway between the take-off and the pit, raised a red flag: Campbell had committed a "scrape foul," meaning that his trailing leg had touched the track during the second jump. (Not only it is impossible to do this and still jump at almost world record level, but the whole scrape foul absurdity has been since expunged from the rules). All three final tries of Campbell and de Oliveira (most of them beyond Uudmae's mark) were declared fouls. One of Oliveira's jumps was estimated to be a new world record beyond eighteen metres. And in his last attempt Saneyev jumped 17.24 m obtaining silver. Campbell finished fifth and de Oliveira was once again third. The soviet duo won gold and silver.

J.C. de Oliveira was involved in a car accident in 1981, which had as a consequence that he lost one leg. He foundered into alcoholism and died in 1999. I. Campbell has been protesting over the past 40 years. And the Australian Federation has been asking the IOC to award the gold medal that was stolen from him by the soviet judges. The video of the jump is quite clear: there is no foul. (To be fair, a gold medal should be awarded posthumously to de Oliveira as well). Even Uudmae's coach, H. Seinberg, admitted off the record that the judging had leaned in favour of his athlete. Will the IOC make amends for this flagrant injustice? Nobody knows. But the 1980 Olympics, at least as far as athletics are concerned, will remain in our memory as the competition where nationalistic dishonesty prevailed over the rules of fair-play.

V. Saneyev emigrated to Australia after the break-up of Soviet Union. At one point he had to work as a pizza delivery man in order to make ends meet (it was that or selling his olympic medals). He ended up obtaining a regular job as physical education teacher and later as jumping coach. He was 76 when he passed away.

Athletics Podium: a great site

I found this site as (almost) always: by chance. But once I started digging into it I discovered an incredible wealth. Can you imagine that they have the podium of all the Women World Games? (I hope that by now, at least my regular readers, are familiar with this series of competitions: it was thanks to them that women obtained access to athletics on an international level. I told that story in a six-part series. If you haven't followed the series, here is the link to the first part: if you are interested you can work your way forward starting from there). 

Athletics Podium was created by the turkish sports journalist (and athletics aficionado) S.F. Erbray, in May 2020. It is not a site focused on news (although, quite often, news do make the site's headlines) but rather on thematic articles.

I was attracted to the site by the recent article on ex-champions who involved themselves in politics.

Obviously I recognised S. Sakorafa, a former javelin world record holder  (74.20 m with the old-type implement). She is a member of the greek parliament since 2007 and, since this spring, president of SEGAS (the greek athletics federation). Of course, P. Mennea is easily recognisable in the photo, and given that one can read "Luxembourg" on the escutcheon it is easy to infer that the gentleman on the left is none other than J. Barthel, winner of the 1500 m in the 1952 Olympics, who served as government commissioner in his country. 

Just the calendar of the competitions is worth a visit to Athletics Podium. No more having to wade your way through the user-unfriendly pages of World Athletics is a treat. A click on the competition in the calendar leads you to the page with the results (if the competition has already taken place) and the sidebar gives the archives of the series (whenever they exist). I cannot imagine the work that went into building this site. 

And if you visit now the Athletics Podium you will be greeted by the photo of three great spinters, with the superb ivorian duo Ahouré and TaLou (Kambundji is of congolese descent on her father's side).

And the story of ivorian sprint shows that the people at Athletics Podium know their athletics history. 

So, if you are interested, even just a little bit, in athletics, go and visit this great site.

The incredible decathlon of Curtis Beach

Last year un an article about decathlon variants I wrote about austrian decathlete D. Distelberger who was planning to complete a 10 minutes decathlon. Unfortunately he had to renounce due to an injury and the attempt never took place.

And then, a few days ago, I ran across a reference to Curtis Beach and his 10 minutes decathlon. The name must certainly ring a bell for the readers of this blog. Beach has one of the very few sub-4 1500 m performances in a 7000+ decathlon, having run in 3:59.13 in 2011. His 4:06.18 from 2015 is probably the best 1500 m performance in a 8000+ decathlon. (His total was 8081 points in that case). And Beach has the best indoor 1000 m heptathlon performance with 2:23.63 from 2012, obtained in a 6138 heptathlon.

C. Beach looking far from exhausted at the end of the decathlon

This is not the first time Beach is dabbling with super-fast events. In fact he is the winner of the 2019 Thoreson memorial 30-min decathlon. David Thoreson introduced this speed-decathlon variant in 1971 and established the first best performance in that event with over 6000 points. To my knowledge the best performance to date is that of  J. Zeilbauer, from 1977, with just over 6700. Beach's performance in the 30-min event was a most decent one: 11.54, 6.70, 11.78, 1.85, 53.26, 16.96, 32.07, 3.65, 40.39, 4:34.09 for a total of 6242 points.  

But the 10-min attempt was mind-blowing. It took 10 minutes and 45 seconds, 1500 included! Normally, in a speed decathlon the time allocated is counted up to the start of the 1500 m and the stopwatch starts whether the athlete is ready for the 1500 m or not. In some sense, what Beach did was a 5-min decathlon. (To be fair, since he started his 1500 m at 5 min and 37 seconds the proper scoring of a 5 minutes decathlon would be based on his time over 1500 m increased by 37 seconds, which, is this case, would amount to subtracting 186 from his total). Be that as it may, Beach obtained a total of 3001 points. Of course his performances are rather underwhelming: 16.08, 4.10, 8.80, 1.60, 1:15.80, 21.20, 25.15, 2.74, 32.00, 5:08. He performed all his throws from a standing position and his long jump was, well, I guess you have to see it for yourselves. But one has to take into account that he had to jog all the time in order to reach the various areas in the stadium where the next event was staged. And he was not exhausted at the end of this lightning-fast decathlon. 

If you regularly read this blog you know I am a decathlon fan, but things like this would suffice to convince even the sceptics that this discipline has magic.

The Gallery of Shame (bonus track of "the long and arduous road of women to the Olympics")

Women had to fight tooth and nail in order to be admitted into the world of sports. Along the way they met with a ferocious opposition by the men who were managing sports at an international level. Those men did whatever was possible, first to thwart the women's efforts and, when they realised that this was not possible any more, by embracing and smothering. Those men are considered and venerated as the founding fathers of the modern sports movement. Lest the world forgets their scurrilous behaviour, I will present their portraits in the Gallery of Shame.  

Honour to whom honour is due, and thus we cannot start with anybody other than the famous baron, the one who managed, with a little help from his friends (and from his enemies as well), to keep women out of the Olympics for years and years (it depends on how you count). I have written time and again on de Coubertin and his deeply aristocratic, pseudo-elitist, sexist, racist attitude. Hadn't it been for the efforts of Mme Milliat, it is not clear when and how women would have been allowed to compete in athletics. And I do not think that it is a coincidence that a women's athletics program (a highly curtailed, and officially announced as an experimental one) was included in the Olympics only after de Coubertin had stepped down from the president's position.

Sullivan and the letter by I. Schnall

Speaking of de Coubertin's enemies it is impossible not to mention James E. Sullivan. He was one of the founders of the USA Amateur Athletic Union. One of the most influential people in the early Olympic movement, he was the main organiser of the 1904 Olympics. The events around this organisation, moving the venue out from Chicago and ignoring the IOC and de Coubertin himself, sparked the enmity between the two men. But on one point the two did totally agree: anti-feminism. For Sullivan women had nothing to do in the Olympics and, while in the Paris 1900 Olympics some sports had been open to women, in St. Louis the only feminine presence was in US archery championship (which was a posteriori promoted to olympic event). While the aquatic sports (swimming and diving) were open to women in the 1912 Olympics, Sullivan, on behalf of the USOC, forbade american women to participate, in a competition where Ida Schnall could have won a medal in diving. Fortunately he was not able to do much more harm since he died two years later. 

I don't think there is photo of de Coubertin with Hitler

but there definitely is one of Baillet-Latour with the Führer

When the baron bowed out he was replaced by a count (and the rise in nobility titles would continue, since many years later a marquess would become president of the IOC). Count Henri Baillet-Latour was not only an admirer of Hitler but also, you guessed it, an anti-feminist. Already the inclusion of women's athletics events in the Amsterdam, 1928, had met with great resistance, but following the whole fabrication around the 800 m  Baillet-Latour proposed simply the “exclusion of women’s events entirely from the Games". He argued against the participation of women in the traditionally "masculine" sports. He reiterated the proposal in 1930, supporting only women’s (limited) participation in the so-called "aesthetic" sports. And after he was down-voted, he re-attacked in 1931 calling for the removal of women's sports, in their entirety, from the Olympic Games. Fortunately, on every occasion, the IOC members did not follow the president's recommendations.

I don't know if one of the hands in the nazi salute is that of Baillet-Latour

but the wreaths during his funeral are definitely nazi

The case of Sigfrid Edstrom is much more complex. Edstrom was a very subtle man and, although also not favourable towards women's sports, he managed to navigate cleverly in the troubled olympic milieu. In 1913 he created the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF, today known as World Athletics). For this he had to deal with de Coubertin who was, at the beginning, not favourable at all to the idea. Still, Edstrom managed to convince him assuring the baron that the new federation would not contest or interfere with the leadership of the IOC and that the Olympic Games would serve as world championships for athletics. (It took 70 years to change this!). Edstrom understood early enough that women's athletics could not be ignored and thus in 1924 women became officially, through the FSFI (Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale), part of the IAAF. From the negotiations between the IAAF and the IOC it becomes obvious that the expansion of athletics for women at the international level ultimately was determined and shaped by the "goodwill" and interests of men. Edstrom, through lobbying for acceptance of women's sport within the IAAF and the IOC, did in fact succeed in making the FSFI disappear. His disdain for the FSFI is clear in his writings (here, from a letter to A. Brundage): "I suppose you know that Mme. Milliat's federation has caused us so much trouble that we certainly have no interest at all to support it. We should like the whole thing to disappear from the surface of the earth". By accepting women as a part of the IAAF Edstrom could maintain a "watchful eye" over the athletics activities allowed to women. After the demise of Baillet-Latour, Edstrom became the fourth president of the IOC.

Edstrom with de Coubertin (left) and Brundage (right)

Edstrom was succeeded in the presidency of the IOC by A. Brundage in 1952. (David Burghley, marquess of Exeter, and 1928 gold medalist in the 400 m hurdles had assumed the presidency of the IOC already in 1946. By the way it was Burghley who presented the medals for the 200 m in the Mexico, 1968, Olympics, and can be seen in the photo next to Smith, Norman and Carlos). I have devoted a whole post to A. Brundage. I cannot think of anybody with a more negative presence in the world of sport. He was the one who, through his report, convinced the US not to boycott the 1936, Nazi, Olympics. He was the one who refused to re-habilitate J. Thorpe (definitely out of spite, since Thorpe was a million times better athlete than Brundage). He was the one who refused to recognise the 1906 Intercalated Games as Olympic ones. He was the one who, sticking to antiquated amateur-ship rules, hindered the modernisation of sports during decades. He was the one who, after the tragic 1972, Munich events, dared to compare, in his talk, the massacre of the Israeli team to the exclusion of Rhodesia from the Games. I could go on and on about Brundage but, here, it is interesting to focus on his attitude towards women's athletics. When he became president of the AAU it was too late: it had already been voted "to promote, control, and provide competitions for women in track and field". In 1930 Brundage was elected to the IAAF's "Committee on Women's Sport". His contempt for female participation in sport during the early 1930's was well hidden. Although, in his own words, "not enthusiastic on the subject" he realised that women's participation was inevitable and thus it needed to be strictly supervised by qualified individuals, namely men. His negative view for women's sport is visible through his writings. In 1932 he wrote: "Maybe the Greeks were right after all. You know the ancient Greeks kept women out of their athletic games. They wouldn't even let them on the sidelines. I'm not sure but they were right". And again in 1949: "I think it is quite well known that I am lukewarm on most of the events for women for a number of reasons which I will not bother to expound because I probably will be out- voted anyway. I think women's events should be confined to those appropriate for women; swimming, tennis, figure skating and fencing but certainly not shot putting". When he became president of the IOC, in 1952, he had to deal with an issue that keeps rearing its ugly head till today, namely the reduction of the olympic program. And Brundage's proposal (well, one of them) was "to eliminate all events for women". Although that did not pass, the 1953 decision was not to eliminate women from the Games but to only let them compete in "suitable" sports. In 1957 Brundage wrote: "there is still a well grounded protest against events which are not truly feminine, like putting a shot, or those too strenuous for most of the opposite sex, such as distance runs". Brundage is an excellent example of how men used their political power and personal stature within international sport circles to define, control, and manipulate women's sport participation. 

All these persons, during their tenure at the highest sports instances, perpetuated the anachronistic ideals of women as passive, non-physical beings and tried to shape the growing women's sports movement to fit within their personal agendas. Fortunately women are tenacious beings and in the end they prevailed. And the gentlemen who tried to stifle the women's sports movement gained a prominent place in my Gallery of Shame.