Raise your hand if you remember Dave Wottle.
(Here’s a hint: white golf cap.)
If you’ve forgotten (or never knew), let me, uh, jog your memory. Wottle was a middle-distance runner from the United States who in a spellbinding handful of seconds 36 years ago inscribed his name in Olympic lore. Wafer-thin and sporting his signature golf cap, Wottle roared from the back of the pack in the final 200 meters and overtook three competitors in the final few strides to win the gold medal in the 800-meter run at the 1972 Munich Summer Games.
I remember Wottle’s victory well because for a while after it happened I imagined my 13-year-old-self sprinting to glory at Howar Junior High track meets in the suede Puma shoes my dad bought me for my birthday. These were the same cleats that Jim McGuire, our school’s coolest eighth grader and a dazzling athlete, asked to borrow before a meet, briefly elevating me to seventh-grade fame and ensuring that the shoes would finish in first place even if I did not.
Before writing this column, I watched Wottle’s race again on YouTube. All these years later, his final dash, swallowing up runner after runner and then out-leaning prerace favorite Evgeni Arzhanov of the Soviet Union at the tape, pulled me forward in my chair.
Some combination of nationalistic pride, human drama and world attentiveness stokes Olympic moments with special meaning. Let me toss a few more your way: Kerri Strug, ’01, MA ’02, sticking the landing on the vault, injured ankle and all, to help the American women gymnastics team win gold in 1996; 39-year-old Swiss marathoner Gabriele Andersen-Schiess, dehydrated and suffering from heat exhaustion, staggering through the final 400 meters of the 1984 race in Los Angeles, collapsing at the finish line; unheralded Misty Hyman, ’01, stunning world-record holder Susie O’Neill to win the 200-meter butterfly in the 2000 Sydney Games four months after nearly giving up the sport.
For three weeks every fourth summer we are introduced to previously obscure people who have endured years of sweat and toil and sacrifice for a few minutes of competition—one shot to show the world. This year, as has been typical in recent Olympiads, a few dozen Stanford alumni will be among them.
You can read about some of those who have deferred other plans, battled through injuries and followed a single-minded pursuit of that thing that made Dave Wottle run the race of his life back in ’72—the best they can muster.
Who knows, one of them might make a memory for us all.
