Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  It was not an optimal environment for world-class athletes who needed to keep their weight down and their muscles well conditioned. The journey was languorous and did not seem conducive to such strain; the sea was calm in the early days, calm enough to fill the athletes with a sense of well-being.

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  As the nine-day journey reached its end, twenty-six-year-old Bud Houser was chosen as the team’s captain and given the honor of carrying the flag at the opening and closing ceremonies. He was a senior member of the team; he had won a gold medal in the shot put and discus at the Paris Games. Weissmuller would carry the sign with the country’s name emblazoned on it, and MacArthur would follow them.

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  As the Roosevelt crossed the Atlantic, reports began to trickle in that Amsterdam officials had been unable to finish the track fields. MacArthur scoffed at the idea. “On the battlefield, never believe reports of a disaster,” he told the coaches. “Leave it to the Dutch engineering genius to provide a proper field for the games.”

  Undeterred by reports chronicling the Dutch lack of preparations, MacArthur concentrated on the task at hand. He gathered the trainers for daily updates, encouraging them to have the best team the United States could churn out and repeatedly urging the athletes not to pay any attention to the gossip. Reporters were allowed to attend those meetings, and one correspondent griped that they “had about them the same chilling spiritual temperature as a bank directors’ meeting.”

  As they neared land, the training intensified. The weather still cooperated; a clear sky and tranquil sea lulled the ship forward. The swimmers continued to harness themselves and take a few minutes of exercise in the pool, and the divers, who could not dive into the pool, used springboards to land on mats laid out on the concourse. The boxers practiced with the wrestlers, the runners ran the length of the ship, and the equestrians used treadmills to keep limber, their sessions followed by vigorous rubdowns of alcohol liniment to prevent pain and joint stiffness. Seagulls screeched overhead as docked ships were sighted on the horizon.

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  The athletes awoke early on Friday, July 20, to a half-darkened sky. They soon learned that they would drop anchor momentarily, finally catching a glimpse of a land they had seen only in books or their imagination. A tugboat led them slowly up a canal toward Amsterdam’s sprawling cityscape. They made their way through wide lonely wetlands dotted by vibrant patches of land where tulips and neat rows of vegetables grew. Windmills rotated in the distance, a pasty sky their backdrop.

  Newspaper reporters traveling with the Olympians later described the tiny canals bursting out from the larger ones like a network of spiderwebs, marveling at the cleverness of the Dutch in growing a multitude of flowers and vegetables together. The reporters knew they would have opportunities to tour this Venice of the North beyond the Olympic grounds. There were museums to explore and canals upon which to row and spend breaks soaking in the sun, if it ever showed up. There were flower markets with native tulips taking center stage, and unexpected candy and chocolate shops that offered untold delights.

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  At two o’clock, the ship docked in Amsterdam. Stepping onto a foreign land for the first time evoked intense feelings of wonder in the athletes, though the coaches and trainers had no time for such reflection. They immediately left to inspect the field, hoping the reports that had come in during the journey had been mistaken.

  Alas, the conditions within the stadium could hardly have been any worse. Usually, track quality depends on how well the cinders (small bits of black material) are mounted on the ground; if not done properly, heat causes them to become loose and break away, while rain can turn the track into muck. The plan for the track in Amsterdam had been to construct “two straight lines some 60 meters each, an arch at either end with extremities extended to form a complete circuit.” But upon arrival the Americans realized that the Amsterdam officials’ plan had not materialized, and the track they had built, or what remained of it, was not only half finished but mostly underwater.

  It was all a matter of architecture and soil quality. The Games had been designed to take place around a brand-new stadium meant to hold more than fifty thousand spectators, its track taking center stage. The swimming pool was constructed next to the stadium, equipped for an audience of just fifteen hundred. In addition, just outside the main arena was the gymnasium for the fencing, boxing, and other competitions.

  The grounds were soft, almost springy. New technology had to be implemented so that the buildings would not sink into the soil, as the rest of the city was doing. The track-and-field arena had been built in such a fashion that it had not occurred to officials that this would pose a problem for the athletes, though it soon became apparent that it would—particularly as rain poured down in the weeks prior to the opening ceremonies.

  Lawson Robertson, the men’s track-and-field coach, surveyed the conditions and observed that a miracle would be needed to make it adequate in time for the July 29 opening ceremony. There was a softness to the track, obvious the moment the runners stepped on it. An immediate casualty was James Quinn of the New York Athletic Club, who sprained his ankle.

  The coaches all agreed that the conditions were shameful. Each coach, of course, had his own peculiarities and superstitions—but they all seemed to agree on what made a great track. It had to possess three equal layers of stratification: a base of either stone or what they called clinkers, which were a derivative of coal. That layer had to be leveled off particularly well and evenly. Above that was an overlap consisting of coarse cinders; and above that, the final layer and top sheet was made of cinders mixed with either clay or coal ashes. That fine mixture was then rolled out smoothly. But in Amsterdam, it appeared that the process had gone awry.

  Aside from the track, Robertson was unimpressed with the physical conditions of his own athletes: they had grown lethargic and slow on the Roosevelt. With little to do besides making a pretense of training, they had eagerly awaited lunch, followed by the largest dinners any of them had ever been served.

  The British newspapers, which had gotten hold of the menus on the Roosevelt and noticed the less-than-ideal physical condition of the Americans, enjoyed poking fun at the athletes and contrasting the food spreads on the Roosevelt with those on the British ship. While the Americans had indulged in biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, pancakes with syrup, pies, cookies, liquor (though not officially sanctioned), and chocolate, their British counterparts had satiated themselves with tea, an abundance of salads, chicken or beef, and steamed vegetables. The results showed. On landing, the British looked lean and ready to take on the world, while the Americans were pounds away from their ideal weight.

  The Evening Standard mockingly wrote, “A good cargo of ice cream may perhaps act as ballast for the man whose business it is to put the shot. But it must be a heavy burden to carry in a sprint or long-distance race.”

  For their training, members of the American team had to spend most of their time back on the Roosevelt, berthed in the Coenhaven. As Nick Carter, scheduled to run in the 1,500 meters, explained, “The places to work out were like running in a plowed field.”

  The Netherlands Olympic Committee was aware of the issues with the track but begged everyone to be patient. On July 21, criticism reached such a height that Olympic officials, responding to protests, announced that the track would be reworked and completed within a day or two. They agreed that the engineer, who’d been in charge of constructing it, was not at fault. The blame lay with the country’s geographical location and the site of the Olympic stadium itself. Officials were left scrambling and, not surprisingly, it took workers longer than anticipated; they finished the resurfacing only three days prior to the opening ceremonies.

  The track field was not the only construction to suffer problems. The swimming pool, which had been built in similarly swampy terrain and without the use of pilings to stabilize its foundations, had sunk nearly six inches on one side by the time the opening ceremon
ies rolled around.

  There was only one saving grace, the Americans thought: They were not the only ones having trouble running on the sodden Dutch track; the track was claiming victims from everywhere.

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  Aside from the physical conditions, the American Olympic Committee was irritated by another source: the female athletes, particularly the swimmers. As they were having an issue finding a place to train, the women sensed an opportunity to leave Amsterdam for a few days and, unknown to anyone, traveled to Paris for a shopping expedition. Their behavior raised alarm with the committee members, who later learned from coaches that the athletes would continue their training in the French capital, though provisions had not been made for them to do so. There was an uproar among the American officials over the women’s decision, fueled by newspaper reports declaring that they had left because “the team, considering itself unbeatable, anyhow, decided it might as well have a side trip now as at the close of the games, when time was short.”

  The shopping expedition did nothing to put the female athletes in a better light. Though the women participating in the Paris trip were from the swim team, the fallout was felt by every female Olympian, fortifying the stereotype already in place: when the time for training and hard work rolled around, if given the opportunity, women would rather go shopping.

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  On Saturday, July 28, at 11:15, the athletes were treated to a hearty buffet lunch on the ship’s hurricane deck; they all gorged on the offerings, despite their nerves. At 1:00 they formed long lines to board motorboats and then buses that led them to the stadium for the opening ceremony. Her Royal Highness Queen Wilhelmina had initially agreed to attend, but then suddenly declined. The royal consort, Prince Henry, took her place. Members of the IOC and the Netherlands Olympic Committee greeted him and his two companions with ceremonial gestures that included more than a thousand vocalists heralding his entrance, singing the national anthem, “Het Wilhelmus.”

  The gray sky provided a somber beginning to the games, but at least the rain had finally stopped falling. Athletes donned an array of colors to offset the ashen afternoon: the Belgian delegation wore pink, the South Africans were vivid in their rosy tints, the Americans were in white and blue, the Italians were in military green. The Greeks led the procession per tradition, the rest of the countries entering in alphabetical order (according to the Dutch alphabet).

  They emerged from the concrete tunnel into a confusion of light, noise, and cheers—a virtual assault on the senses—as the applause from the stands reverberated in their ears. Athletes from forty-six nations paraded proudly around the large track-and-field stadium to the cheers of more than forty thousand spectators. The athletes found the track’s surface soggy and mushy, and those who’d be running on it later feared they would be slowed down by the conditions. The US contingent was third from the last. Tradition held that when passing the Royal Box the flag bearer should salute the prince by dipping his country’s flag horizontally, at about chest height. Bud Houser had spoken to MacArthur earlier, so he knew what to do, and he watched as most of the countries’ flag bearers paid homage. The Americans hadn’t dipped their flag since the 1908 Games in London, and he wasn’t about to begin now. Houser passed the prince, stared at everyone in the box, and kept the American flag flying high above his head. He thought it looked majestic, waving in the late-afternoon breeze.

  He heard the jeers and boos that followed, but he didn’t care; he knew that MacArthur and everyone on the team supported him. European reporters were shocked by what many considered a typical sign of America’s disrespect. The US papers, on the other hand, praised Houser’s moxie and his spirit and patriotism. The slight was quickly forgotten as the Games began.

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  The rest of the athletes, wearing patriotic uniforms with a red-white-and-blue stripe down one side, the USA logo affixed above their hearts, and another red-white-and-blue stripe across their blouses, stared at the gold-beaded officials in the Royal Box in their gold-beaded uniforms, unaware as to who they were. Soon enough, they realized that they included the prince, along with various IOC members.

  The athletes were startled by the day; by the thousands giving them a thunderous standing ovation in the stadium; and by the shouts of the more than seventy-five thousand individuals standing outside who had not been able to gain access but still wanted to be a part of such an event. The outsiders yelled and screamed the athletes’ names as they crowded around the entrance. There were flags waving in the spectators’ hands, and music filled the arena.

  The Dutch Royal Military Band and the Band of Royal Marines, as well as twelve hundred white-robed vocalists from choir groups gathered from across the country, provided the music. The meets in which Betty had taken part in Chicago, much less back in Riverdale, were not remotely comparable to this. Some of the athletes wept openly as they marched around the track, taking in the glorious sight of spectators on their feet, waving flags and shouting with glee. Following dozens of formal speeches by the IOC members and Amsterdam’s officials, the sound of bugles and gunshots officially declared the Ninth Olympic Games opened.

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  On the following day—a Sunday—the competitions finally began. The rain was blinding at times, though it often petered out to a drizzle that felt like pins on the athletes’ skin. Many complained that the muck-soaked track felt heavy beneath their feet (yet it did not prevent Stanford University’s Robert King from winning the gold medal in the high jump or Paavo Nurmi from securing the last of the nine medals of his career). Four Americans in the 100 meters and 800 meters, as well as two Americans in the 400-meter hurdles, advanced to the preliminaries.

  On Monday, the women made their Olympic debut in several preliminary meets. The excitement was palpable, but despite the boundaries they were breaking, the attention of the world remained on the men’s teams, particularly because their fortunes had turned.

  The Associated Press claimed that the United States had “experienced one of the worst series of track and field setbacks it has ever known.” Such setbacks began in the 400-meter hurdles, when the British marquess David George Brownlow Cecil, known as Lord Burghley, who had been third in the semifinal heat, beat the Americans Morgan Taylor and Frank Cuhel. More bad luck followed in the 100 meters, where Henry Russell and Claude Bracey were quickly eliminated in the semifinal, leaving a lone American, Frank Wykoff, in fourth place. And so it continued. The New York Times echoed what was on the minds everyone: “What’s the matter with the American team?”

  Coach Mel Sheppard watched from the sidelines, worry lines crossing his forehead. When asked how he felt the women would ultimately fare in their first Olympic showing, he said, “It is difficult to predict what definite results may be expected from the American Women’s Track and Field team. Because of extremely poor training facilities, the women athletes haven’t had any really satisfying workouts, and have found it difficult to perform to the best of their ability.” Then he added what everybody else was thinking: “Nor did we expect to find that the training field allowed to the best athletes from all corners of the globe was a mere sandbox.”

  A handful of the women sat in the benches, fearing what was to come on Tuesday, during their own meets, hoping the same question The New York Times had posed would not be asked about them: “What’s the matter with the American team?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  QUEEN OF THE TRACK

  Each morning since arriving in Amsterdam, the athletes had awoken to a drencher. It was no different on the morning of July 31, the rain coming down unwaveringly. The dismal, cheerless weather that had greeted them since landing in Europe seemed to match the athletes’ performances. Louis Nixdorff wrote in his diary, “There have been so many upsets on the track team that it is getting contagious.” He joined the chorus and blamed the losses on the soggy conditions of the field: “It seems as though the stadium track is not suitable for our runners. It is slow and rather heavy, and the foreigners are more used to it
than we are.” Another enduring issue was the excess of food, in which the athletes continued to indulge.

  Most of the women woke up frazzled, their nerves raw. They had witnessed the trouble on the track and experienced problems themselves in the preliminaries. In the 100 meters, three of the four American women failed to qualify for the final. Anne Vrana was quickly eliminated in the first round, finishing third in the preliminary heat. Elta Cartwright, who had been ill throughout the ocean journey, and Mary Washburn did not even advance to the semifinal, but wound up in only fourth and fifth place, respectively, during the following heat. Only Betty Robinson advanced, making her the sole 100-meters representative of the United States.

  While awaiting her starting moment, Betty sat in the locker room treating her feet, as did all of the runners, their soles having become bothersome due to the repeated impact. There were massages to impart to sore and aching toes, last-minute blisters to lance, toenails to care for that had become blackened and were about to fall out. Some even soaked their feet in a brine solution concocted by themselves or their coaches. It was an ugly business (hardly anybody’s definition of ladylike), but such attention was essential for any serious runner.

  As Betty readied to enter the stadium and was about to put on her running shoes, she realized that she had packed two left ones when she had departed the Roosevelt that morning. She owned two pairs of track shoes, both of which had served her well up until that point, but in the fervor of the occasion she had grabbed two lefties. It was odd that she would have made such a careless mistake; she had awakened refreshed and unperturbed, unlike most of the other competitors. That was why she thought it bizarre that such a monumental mistake should have happened to her. Still, two left shoes. Looking down at her feet, she could not make sense of it. And now it was too late to go back to the ship to retrieve the correct one.