My Olympics memories

As it were. A random sampling, as I sit here being bored by the US against Bulgaria in men’s volleyball. (I’m sure it’s thrilling some people…but not me.)

My earliest Olympics — Munich 72. I have the photographic proof here:

My dad’s mustache was a short-lived phase, but he looked pretty good with that. As for me, I suspect I wasn’t paying too much attention.

My first ‘real’ Olympics — Lake Placid 80. It was the one I was first consciously aware of, that I tried to watch as much of as I could, though that was only so much. Eric Heiden I remember very well. The skiing Mahre brothers, reasonably well. And I might be the only person besides themselves who remember Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner — and how they ended up not competing.

My first full-on Olympics year — 1984. Sarajevo, Los Angeles, ABC covering both, Jim McKay looking pretty comfortable, Bill Johnson, Torvill and Dean, Katarina Witt (she was in that Olympics, wasn’t she?), Carl Lewis, Daley Thompson, Mary Lou Retton, Joan Benoit smoking the field in the women’s marathon, lots of other things. And bad Sergio Mendes songs on the radio. (But that was obviated by the presence of Prince and Van Halen and more besides.)

My first nearly ‘live’ Olympics — Calgary 1988. One time zone away, so the coverage was actually live! Amazing! Witt definitely in that one, Bonnie Blair…what else happened that year? Oh right, Tomba.

My first black and white Olympics — Seoul 1988. I had to crouch over a small B/W TV in my dorm room, having just moved into UCLA for freshmen year. Oh the Ben Johnson roffles.

My first actually ‘live’ Olympics via TV — Barcelona 1992, thanks to being in the UK at the time. BBC coverage, Des Lyman as commentator (was that his name?), and the greatest night of track and field in history. I heard later that all the water polo dudes on the high school team that were friends of my sis all came over and watched the NBC triplecast of said sports’ games. Cause why not?

My first Internet Olympics — Lillehammer 1994. “Check out our site on Prodigy!” alt.tonya-harding.whack-whack-whack — alt.nancy-kerrigan.ouch-ouch-ouch — and Dave Letterman’s mom interviewing the titular subject of the latter was the best Olympics TV moment in years.

My first ‘wait, what?’ Olympics — Atlanta 1996. A bombing, Celine Dion, Kerri Strug and John Tesh. Wait, what?

My last Olympics I watched in any great detail — Salt Lake City 2002. Vague memories.

The current one, which I’m only watching due to being home for a few days — the Christian Slater ads are laughable.

Roll on the track and field coverage, PLEASE!

RIP Jim McKay

As reported on at the NY Times as well as many other spots.

I cannot claim to have grown up on McKay’s work, but he was a familiar figure to me in my younger years — ABC’s Wide World of Sports was a regular fixture to watch on late Saturday afternoons, almost as regular a thing for as Saturday morning cartoons, while I remember him being an avuncular enough host for the Sarajevo and Los Angeles Olympics (I believe I must have seen him on the Lake Placid coverage as well but the memories are slightly dimmer then).

I was too young to have known the work he did which still defined his career, which I’m sure must have been at once profoundly moving and distressing for him to look back at — Munich 1972, specifically his 16-hour-stint of covering the Israeli athletes’ kidnapping and the resultant botched rescue attempt where both kidnappers and victims were slain.

This piece he wrote in 2002 looking back over thirty years to that time is well worth a read. To quote:

These were athletes in the old Olympic tradition. They were amateurs. Almost from the first minute I was on the air, I thought about a young man named David Berger, who had immigrated to Israel because he wanted to be in the Olympic. It just made the whole thing worse and worse.

A producer called me early in the morning of Sept. 5 and said terrorists had broken into the Olympic Village, and to get right over because we were going on the air in 45 minutes. When he called to tell me what was going on, I was in the sauna. I had just taken a swim. I just put on my clothes and went out there. I still had a bathing suit on under my clothes.

Roone told me he selected me to do this because I had been a newspaper reporter, not a sports reporter. He knew I had been a reporter and wanted me in the studio so I wasn’t scared.

I realized in the end, I am going to be the person who is going to tell David Berger’s family whether he is alive or dead.

The interview I’m linking below, done for the Archive of American Television‘s TV Oral History project, discusses that time as well as other work he did. A half-hour long, it doesn’t cover his full career by any means, but is a good primer, and gives a sense of his abilities with the camera as well as with his voice, warm and intelligent. Worth a watch.

Thanks sir — your son’s testimony seems to be the best summary (Sean McManus runs CBS Sports):

“Because of the profession I’m in, not a day goes by when someone doesn’t stop me and say, ‘I admire your father’ or ‘I loved his work,’ ” Mr. McManus said. “That tells you a lot about the kind of man he was.”