Track and Field History with Jesse Squire

Things like the American Track League and its recent string of meets are rare and a huge logistical undertaking. In United States history, I can think of another time when something simpler and similar has happened. I'm thinking of the International Track Association that launched in March 1973. It featured the likes of Lee Evans, Bob Seagren, Jim Ryun, Richmond Flowers, Marty Liquori, Randy Matson and founder Mike O'Hara. ✩ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

On Wednesday, November 4, the Bowling Green – Toledo rivalry will be renewed with its 85th football game. To celebrate this I will run from Doyt Perry Stadium, the home of the BG Falcons, to the Glass Bowl, the home of the UT Rockets. The course is 26.2 miles and the run will be known as The Marathon Of Hate. If you’re a runner you won’t ask why I’m running 26.2 miles. You know there isn’t any particularly good reason other than that I want to. But why am I so invested in this rivalry? Now that’s a much better question. For this episode of the podcast, I got together with my friend Sean Pennywitt to discuss our own history with the rivalry. He went to Toledo and I went to Bowling Green. ✩ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

Like many of you, I try to keep myself in shape by working out through running. I often need some sort of goal in my future to keep myself honest on following my workouts. Usually, that's a race. The problem is that no races have been held in the United States since early March and it doesn't appear as though we'll have any for a while yet. I need something else to keep myself honest. I needed something big enough that was a real actual challenge. Something popped up on my Facebook feed about three or four weeks ago. It was an event called The Big Canada Run – a virtual run across the width of Canada that starts in Saint John, Newfoundland and going all the way to Vancouver. That's 8,000 kilometers or 5,000 miles. Canada is a massive country and much larger than the United States.  The goal is to be able to do this in a year. It's intended for teams of people to do together because that's nearly 100 miles a week for an entire year. There are Olympians that don't run that much. Let alone, people approaching 50 years old with full-time jobs. I signed up with a couple of guys. This is not the first time that anyone has attempted to run across Canada. A week ago, CITIUS MAG tweeted out: "Without saying their name, what is your favorite runner known for?" It was assumed that my favorite runner was Dave Wottle, the Olympic champion who ran at my alma mater but it's not. It's not Kip Keino, the two-time Olympic champion out of Kenya and tremendous humanitarian. It's not Emil Zatopek – one of the most successful and well-loved people of all-time. It's not Joan Samuelson or Grete Waitz even. It was a man, who without identifying by name, I just retweeted it saying: “Today we got up at 4:00. As usual, it was tough.” Guest co-host: Andrea Grove-McDonough Consider donating to The Terry Fox Foundation – A single dream. A world of hope. The Terry Fox Story Terry Fox featured on ESPN Heritage Minutes: Terry Fox ✩ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

We're going to take a look at one of America's greatest and most forgotten competitors – Earlene Brown. She is the greatest American women's thrower of the 20th century. Four years ago, Michelle Carter won the women's shot put title at the Rio Olympics. She was the first American woman to win gold in that event at the Olympics. She was the first medalist since Brown in 1960. Brown is the only other woman to have won an Olympic shot put medal beside Carter.  In 1958, Brown finished the year ranked No. 1 in the world in the shot put. The only other American woman to do that is Carter.  She went on to win her bronze in the discus and finished 6th in the discus at the 1960 Olympics. Four years later, she finished 12th in the shot put at the 1964 Games. She became the first woman to compete in three Olympic shot puts. Not the first American woman but the first woman from anywhere in the world to accomplish the feat.  Then throwing ran its course for Brown...she moved on to another pro sport – roller derby. She stayed in that sport for 11 years. "When I was young I was ashamed of my size," she once said. "I never thought something of which I was ashamed -- my size and my strength -- could make me feel proud. But I am proud now."⁣ Here's a 1967 Interview with Brown: https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/190890 ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

If you run, jump or throw, it’s likely you have worn something that Ron Hill Sports has helped pioneer. This episode takes a look at Ron Hill, who is maybe best known as a marathon world record holder and definitely has a record-setting running streak, but you might not realize you wear his inventions every day. ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

Let me tell you about one of the most-watched sprint races in history – at least in American history to an American audience. Sportswriter Bill Simmons calls it his favorite YouTube clip. It's not his favorite track and field YouTube clip or his favorite sports YouTube clip, it's just flat-out his favorite YouTube clip of all-time. To do this, we need to look back at the 1970s. That was the time of Olympic-style competition on television. To understand why, you have to think about the fact that there was much less television to be watched at the time. There were just three networks and cable TV was basically a non-entity. There was not a whole lot of televised sports. The NBA had one game a week. Major League Baseball had one game a week. Hockey was still a regional sport. The NCAA held a bit of control over how much basketball and football was broadcast on television. They kept a pretty tight lid on that. One of the few exceptions to this was the Olympics. They were a two-week-long celebration of sports on television. In 1968, there was live satellite coverage of Olympic competition for the first time. It also happened to be taking place in U.S. primetime. That happened again in 1976. ABC had lost its NBA TV contract to broadcast one game per week and they were looking for something else. A man named Dick Button had an idea. He wanted to take 10 athletes from 10 different sports and threw them all together in a decathlon-style competition. It was a hit so then they tried it with celebrities for the 1976 debut of Battle of the Network Stars. ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

One of the things that I find very useful for history – especially while looking at track and field history – is looking at the past and allowing it to educate us on how we got to where we are now, how things changed and what we can learn from the past. Most recently, a very important point has been raised that we may have significantly less money to play around with than we used to...quite a bit less money. How that's going to play out is anybody's guess right now. Just a little over a week ago, USA Track and Field president Vin Lananna (who is also the head coach at the University of Virginia) tweeted: "All NCAA track and field coaches should be thinking and planning a fiscally responsible way to conduct our sport.  Our student athletes are counting on us." What does that mean? We might not have that answer yet but I can tell you about how college track teams used to set up their schedules in the past when they had much less money to spend than they do now. ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

This week, LetsRun.com released a bracket of 64 runners to determine the greatest American distance runner of all-time. It had 32 men's nominees and 32 women's nominees. They'll play it out over the next couple weeks to determine who the greatest of all-time is. I thought, 'This is a really hard thing to determine because there's so many different things, especially when you're looking at distance running.'  We have outdoor track, indoor track, road running, cross country and the Olympics get the limelight of attention. I believe just six Americans have been Olympic champions at distances of 1,500 meters or longer in the last 100 years so that's a big deal. But there's so many other things and so many ways of looking at it with times, competitions, winning streaks. Let's talk about some of these things. One of these nominees set world records for every road distance from the 12K all the way up to the marathon. That's incredible dominance. One of these nominees had a three-year win streak at all distances farther than 10,000 meters. That's incredible dominance to be able to win that much against the best in the world for three straight years.  One of these nominees had both tremendous longevity and ability across a wide range of distances because this nominee earned Track and Field News world rankings (that's top 10) at every distance from 3,000 meters up to the marathon over a 25 year span.  You could look at records. One of these nominees held both the American and half marathon and full marathon record – each of them for more than 20 years.  How about odd and unusual accomplishments? One of these nominees won a major marathon and set the collegiate 10,000 meter record both in the same spring. One of these nominees was the leading runner on a U.S. team that won gold at the world cross country championships – there haven't been very many of those either.  So how do you determine which one is the best? It does become a lot easier when you realize that there's one person who has combined all of those things that I talked about. That person is of course, Joan Samuelson. ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan

Track and Field History is a new podcast from the CITIUS MAG Podcast Network, where Jesse Squire will re-visit, examine and inform listeners about the greatest athletes, races and moments from the world's greatest sport. ▶ Follow CITIUS MAG: twitter.com/CitiusMag | instagram.com/citiusmag | facebook.com/citiusmag ✩ Connect with Jesse and the show via Email: trackhistorypod@gmail.com | twitter.com/tracksuperfan