Some Olympic memories of 1956
U.S. Olympic marathoner and Farrell native Nick Costes
By Jeff Greenburg Herald Assistant Sports Editor
Los Angeles, where he and the team spent several days before leaving for the Olympics in Melbourne, Australia:
``The smog was terrible. On one occasion me and my two buddies were jogging up the freeway towards the Coliseum and we were coughing all the way. A motorcycle cop stopped us and asked us what the heck we were doing. We told him we were U.S. Olympians. He thought we were crazy. We also met Jesse Owens.''
The 32-hour plane trip to Melbourne, which included several stopovers:
``It was a horrible trip. When we finally got off the plane in Australia everybody's feet were so swollen they couldn't put on their shoes.''
Alain Mimoun, 1956 Olympic marathon champion:
``He was at a shoemaker's stand and couldn't communicate in English to the shoemaker. He wanted special shoes, so he called me over. I spoke to Mimoun in German. He told me in German what he wanted and I told the Australian shoemaker in English what he wanted. He got his shoes.''
Emil Zatopek, perhaps the world's greatest runner of his day:
``The first day he was just smothered with the media, reporters and runners. Nobody dared talk to him. A couple days later, somebody tapped me on shoulder and it was Emil. He saw one of my comments in the Boston Globe that I admired him because I had patterened my workouts after him. He gave (Olympic teammate) Hal Connolly a cut-glass jar that the Czechs produced special in 1957 to bring back to the U.S. to give to me.''
1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary during the Olympics and its effect on athletes in the Games:
``I was in a bookstore and there was a newspaper saying the Russians had just suppressed the Hungarian revolution. The Hungarians were in tears. It was very sad. But these athletes weren't politicos. It was very bad news, but there were no upheavals (at the games), although the Hungarians hated the Soviets with a passion.''
Hal Connolly, world record holder in the hammer throw who fell in love with and eventually married Czechoslovakian discus thrower Olga Fikatova, which at the time was a great scandal because it involved an Iron Curtain country. (A movie, starring Alex Karras in the title role, was made of the affair some 20 years ago):
``He was one of my best friends and I was involved in (the incident) indirectly. Hal was one of my roomates and I got to know Olga's mentor, who became my best friend, Emil Zatopek. We talked it over about the two _ that this was a dangerous relationship. Emil told me that Hal was leading her on and he wanted me to tell Hal to back off. After all she was a Communist and they didn't want to lose her. I told Hal that and he said he wouldn't.
``When the American team went to Sydney for competition after the Olympics, the Soviets, including Czechoslovakia, were supposed to fly back to Europe. Olga went AWOL and drove four hours to Sydney to see Hal and the Communist regime blew their stacks. He told me he was going to Czechoslovakia to marry her and it was the biggest wedding in Europe at the time.''
published Thursday, July 18,1996
