Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello Revisionist history listeners. I'm so excited to bring
Speaker 2: you Season seven in just two short weeks. Until then,
Speaker 2: I wanted to share another podcast with you that I've
Speaker 2: been working on. It's a new show called Legacy of Speed.
Speaker 2: As any loyal revisionist history listener knows, I'm totally crazy
Speaker 2: about running. So when Tracksmith approached Pushkin to make a
Speaker 2: show about running in sports activism, I was all in.
Speaker 2: Legacy of Speed is a series about the transformation of
Speaker 2: a track program at San Jose State in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: What started out as just a second tier state college
Speaker 2: that no one outside of northern California had even heard of,
Speaker 2: quickly became known as the home to Speed City. Under
Speaker 2: the guidance of one coach and his unconventional techniques, San
Speaker 2: Jose launched the careers of the fastest sprinters of the day.
Speaker 2: I traced the journey of those sprinters who went on
Speaker 2: to make an iconic protest at the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: Summer Olympics. The show features conversations with Olympic athletes, sports journalists,
Speaker 2: performance coaches, and documentarians. You'll hear from some of the
Speaker 2: best runners of all time. Tommy Smith, John Carlos, Lee Evans.
Speaker 2: It's a story about athletes who dare to take a
Speaker 2: stand and the mentors who made them fast and brave
Speaker 2: enough to pave the way for the sports activism we
Speaker 2: see today. Here's a preview. You can follow the story
Speaker 2: by searching for Legacy of Speed wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty eight, the Summer Olympic Games are in Mexico
Speaker 2: City for the first time. The Games are truly a
Speaker 2: television spectacle, twice as many hours of coverage with new
Speaker 2: technology like instant replay, and it's being broadcast live around
Speaker 2: the world in color. Everyone is watching.
Speaker 3: The United States leads the Olympics and Metal Awards, and
Speaker 3: is just about supreme in the sprint races thanks to
Speaker 3: men like Tommy Smith and John Carlos.
Speaker 2: Tommy Smith John Carlos, two of the greatest sprinters of
Speaker 2: all time, captured in one of the most iconic images
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, two black men standing on a platform,
Speaker 2: each with a fist in the air.
Speaker 3: Yesterday they stood on the victory platform with bowed heads,
Speaker 3: wearing black socks and gloves and a racial protest.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing that photo as a kid growing up
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies, a kid who was obsessed with sports,
Speaker 2: And even though I was much too young to understand
Speaker 2: anything about the context for it, I understood that it
Speaker 2: was an act of transgression. Over the next five episodes,
Speaker 2: I want to tell you the story behind that transgression,
Speaker 2: how those two men ended up on the victory stand,
Speaker 2: their struggles and triumphs, because in that moment half a
Speaker 2: century ago, the way we think about sports and social
Speaker 2: protest shifted forever in ways that we are still wrestling
Speaker 2: with today. Two extraordinary figures made that iconic moment possible.
Speaker 2: One Bud Winter, an eccentric tactician who reinvented what it
Speaker 2: meant to be a coach. The other Harry Edwards, a
Speaker 2: fiery professor and black power activist who dared to challenge
Speaker 2: that most sacred of American institutions. And here's the remarkable thing.
Speaker 2: All four of those men, those two runners, the professor
Speaker 2: and the coach, came from the same place, a second
Speaker 2: tier state college that no one outside of northern California
Speaker 2: had ever heard of, San Jose State, or as it
Speaker 2: was known back then, Speeds City. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This
Speaker 2: is Legacy of Speed, a story about athletes who dared
Speaker 2: to take a stand and the visionaries who made them
Speaker 2: fast enough and brave enough to change the world. In
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, Silicon Valley was not yet called Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: That nickname wouldn't come until the early nineteen seventies. But
Speaker 2: among the Rolling Hills and Citrus Grove south of San Francisco,
Speaker 2: one hundred revolutions had already started to bubble, the microchip,
Speaker 2: the beginnings, the personal computer, the Internet. The Bay Area
Speaker 2: was wide open to innovation and reinvention and anyone who
Speaker 2: had a crazy idea about how to do things better.
Speaker 2: And in the middle of that ferment was a commuter
Speaker 2: school in downtown San Jose. San Jose State State was
Speaker 2: where a coach named Bud Winter held court, and Bud
Speaker 2: Winter is where this story begins. Bud was one of
Speaker 2: the most important coaches of the twentieth century. He invented
Speaker 2: modern sprinting with an unconventional approach that has today become dogma.
Speaker 2: Have you ever watched the way of the fastest man
Speaker 2: in history, the Jamaican sprinter Ussain Bolt, glides down the track, You, Saint.
Speaker 1: Bolt, look at the timeline by night, world record, unruffled,
Speaker 1: calm composed.
Speaker 2: You can credit Bud Winter for the way Bolt ran.
Speaker 2: Bolt's coach was a Bud Winter disciple. Over his career,
Speaker 2: Bud coached one hundred and two All Americans, thirty seven
Speaker 2: world record holders, and twenty Olympians, including Tommy Smith and
Speaker 2: John Carlos, the two sprinters who raised their gloved fists
Speaker 2: in Mexico City. Bud's athletes so completely dominated sprinting the
Speaker 2: people stopped calling the San Jose A team by its
Speaker 2: formal nickname, the Spartans, and just called it Speeds City.
Speaker 4: He was a scrapper. He grew up in a poor
Speaker 4: neighborhood in San Francisco. Yeah, it was right by the zoo.
Speaker 2: That's Kathy Winter, Bud's daughter. Bud Winter was born Lloyd C.
Speaker 2: Winter in nineteen oh nine and grew up in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Well, his mom was a spitfire Irish woman, and his
Speaker 4: father was a photographer and a very quiet introvert. And
Speaker 4: he lived on the poor side, So I think that's
Speaker 4: why he had such a compassion and a heart for
Speaker 4: people that didn't have money.
Speaker 2: Bud ended up at UC Berkeley. He studied psychology. After college,
Speaker 2: Bud coached football at a high school and then a
Speaker 2: junior college. He was a man of obsessions. He didn't
Speaker 2: just golf. He invented a golf club that he swore
Speaker 2: hit the ball further because he'd exposed it to radiation.
Speaker 2: He didn't just fish, He went fishing around the world.
Speaker 2: He was unkempt, unassuming. He wore mismatched patterns. His clothes
Speaker 2: were often wrinkled. When he traveled, he stuffed his suits
Speaker 2: into a Duffel bag.
Speaker 4: You always seem to have soup or something down his shirt,
Speaker 4: but when you pointed it out, he'd go, you know
Speaker 4: who cares. It just wasn't his priority.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty one, Bud took a job coaching track
Speaker 2: and freshman football at San Jose State.
Speaker 4: I would say my dad was somewhat absent, and I
Speaker 4: don't say that with negativity in my heart or anything,
Speaker 4: but his whole life was about track and field and
Speaker 4: the guys. We'd be sitting there at the table at dinner,
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, my dad would get up
Speaker 4: and he would go over to the side and he'd
Speaker 4: start to practice like the shot put. Okay, now he
Speaker 4: wants to tell him to turn his head this way.
Speaker 4: And here we were in the middle of trying to
Speaker 4: tell him a story about what we did at school.
Speaker 2: As a coach. Bud was a teacher, not a screamer.
Speaker 5: The thing that impressed me about Bud he never raised
Speaker 5: his voice.
Speaker 2: This is Ray Norton, one of Bud's athletes.
Speaker 5: And never did I ever hear him use propenity. That's
Speaker 5: pretty unusual for a coach, My high school coach. Is
Speaker 5: all they did yo. They couldn't coach all that they
Speaker 5: was used propetit.
Speaker 2: Bud didn't look like a traditional coach. He didn't sound
Speaker 2: like a traditional coach, and that was all part of
Speaker 2: the charm. Norton remembers the first time he met Bud,
Speaker 2: he was still in high school. He and some of
Speaker 2: his friends who also ran went to a track meet
Speaker 2: at the University of California, Berkeley, the annual showdown between
Speaker 2: the Big Ten and the conference that would become the
Speaker 2: Pac twelve.
Speaker 5: First of all, we snuck in the place and we're
Speaker 5: sitting quietly hoping nobody noticed us.
Speaker 2: You know, Norton and his friends all ran track for
Speaker 2: their high school teams. A couple of them were pretty fast,
Speaker 2: but none of them expected to be recruited by the
Speaker 2: colleges at this meet. It's nineteen fifty five, not too
Speaker 2: many of the big track schools. We're interested in black sprinters.
Speaker 5: We watched the big boys, the collegian guys, and then
Speaker 5: when they left, we kind of eased down on the
Speaker 5: track and got into starting blocks.
Speaker 2: They started to raise each other just for fun.
Speaker 5: We were supposed to be there, obviously, and there were
Speaker 5: several coaches in the stands watching. All of them left
Speaker 5: except one that one was but Winter and but walked
Speaker 5: from the bleachers and then we were in the starting
Speaker 5: blocks and we said, oh god, we've been busted. They're
Speaker 5: going to throw us out of here. And he walked
Speaker 5: real slow, and then he stopped in front of me
Speaker 5: and he said, do you know you could be the
Speaker 5: world's fastest human? And I went k, I wasn't even
Speaker 5: the fastest guy in the starting blocks where he was standing.
Speaker 5: A couple of the high school kids could beat me.
Speaker 5: And they're going, what this coach must be old something.
Speaker 2: At the time, Norton had no idea what Bud saw
Speaker 2: on him. It wasn't until he went to San Jose
Speaker 2: State that he understood that Bud had turned the science
Speaker 2: of sprinting on its head.
Speaker 5: I was six three sprinters are like five eight, five, nine,
Speaker 5: five ten. What he saw is that I had a
Speaker 5: natural relaxation mode. I did string what I ran and
Speaker 5: the other kids did. He could teach me the relaxation mode,
Speaker 5: and I could handle it.
Speaker 2: The relaxation mode shorthand for the complex set of ideas
Speaker 2: at the heart of Bud's philosophy. Coaches for generations had
Speaker 2: stressed the visible application of effort intensity, the grimacing, tightly
Speaker 2: coiled runner, huffing and snorting down the track like a
Speaker 2: runaway plow horse work harder, push, push, push, But Bud's
Speaker 2: thought was, what if that was entirely backward? What if
Speaker 2: the sprinter should be gliding. Norton joined Bud's team in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six on a scholarship. He would become a star,
Speaker 2: the first real star of the so called speed city
Speaker 2: era at San Jose State. We'll be right back. Bud
Speaker 2: Winter had his light bulb moment when he first arrived
Speaker 2: at San Jose State. He sat in on a class
Speaker 2: taught by Dorothy Hazeltine Yates. It was about the psychology
Speaker 2: of fighter pilots, an enormously important subject. At the start
Speaker 2: of World War Two. Pilots were suffering from nervous exhaustion,
Speaker 2: burnout breakdowns. They were making fatal errors in combat because
Speaker 2: of the enormous stress they were under. In the class,
Speaker 2: Bud learned about a new approach to tackling the problem,
Speaker 2: teaching the pilot's relaxation techniques. Bud watched as the techniques
Speaker 2: were applied to boxers at San Jose State. This is
Speaker 2: what Bud wrote in his nineteen eighty one book, Relax
Speaker 2: and Win. The results proved not only gratifying in some cases,
Speaker 2: they were amazing to us. Green inexperienced novices very soon
Speaker 2: showed the cool, confident poise of champions. San Jose boxers
Speaker 2: won every bout that season, some spectacularly. At the start
Speaker 2: of the Second World War, Bud enlisted in the Navy,
Speaker 2: and he got a chance to build on what he'd
Speaker 2: learned with Yates's class at San Jose. He was put
Speaker 2: in charge of a research study at a flight school
Speaker 2: in California looking at relaxation training for cadets. It was
Speaker 2: the beginning of what would be a radical transformation in
Speaker 2: the way we think about preparing people for stressful jobs.
Speaker 2: We called up doctor Belisa Vranich to get a little
Speaker 2: one oh one on relaxation techniques.
Speaker 6: So, any tense muscle you have on your body is
Speaker 6: using oxygen, and you need other muscles to be sort
Speaker 6: of prepped and alert and ready to go.
Speaker 2: Brandich is a clinical psychologist who works with lots of
Speaker 2: people in high stressed jobs, law enforcement, firefighters, navy seals, pilots.
Speaker 6: So if your entire body is tense, you are going
Speaker 6: to be using up calories and you're going to be
Speaker 6: using up oxygen. For instance, chess masters burn a tremendous
Speaker 6: amount of calories playing chess, and it's because your brain
Speaker 6: uses so much oxygen. So if you are thinking intense
Speaker 6: and if your body is tense, you're tapping into your
Speaker 6: tank of energy.
Speaker 2: Imagine how quickly you might drain that tank of energy
Speaker 2: in a dog fight, And if you return safely, how
Speaker 2: would you manage to get some sleep so you could
Speaker 2: fight again tomorrow. The solution is to learn how to relax,
Speaker 2: to contain and control your stress.
Speaker 6: Inhale two three four.
Speaker 2: Breathing slowly and deliberately. This is called tactical breathing.
Speaker 6: Inhale, stretch a little bit more, sigh on the exhale,
Speaker 6: and you're ready to go. So your breathing controls your
Speaker 6: heart rate, and your heart rate is your main indicator
Speaker 6: of stress. So when you get stressed out, your heart
Speaker 6: rate goes up, and once it goes past a certain point,
Speaker 6: it affects your motor skills, your fine motor skills, your memory,
Speaker 6: and your ability to perform. So, whether you are working
Speaker 6: in a corporate setting or you're an athlete, you'd like
Speaker 6: your heart rate to be at a place where you
Speaker 6: are calm but alert.
Speaker 2: At the Flight School, Winter study involved two hundred cadets.
Speaker 2: For six weeks, they get tended classes, played sports, and
Speaker 2: took psychological tests. The cadets were split into two groups.
Speaker 2: One was the control group. The other group learned relaxation techniques.
Speaker 2: Bud wrote about the outcome in his book. The relaxation
Speaker 2: group made more significant and even spectacular progress. The greatest
Speaker 2: improvement by the relaxation group was demonstrated in the courses
Speaker 2: that involved the most pressure. When the war was over,
Speaker 2: Bud went back to San Jose staid, and that's when
Speaker 2: he realized if relaxation techniques could help pilots. Surely they
Speaker 2: could also help sprinters. Doctor Belisa Vranich again.
Speaker 6: If you are able to get yourself to breathe well
Speaker 6: mechanically meaning dive framatically, and now you train those muscles
Speaker 6: separate from your sport, it actually affects your times. It
Speaker 6: delays fatigue.
Speaker 2: The problem at the heart of a sprinter's task was pressure.
Speaker 2: They weren't running a marathon where they had two hours
Speaker 2: to settle in and adjust and make up for mistakes
Speaker 2: and misjudgments. One hundred meters sprint is ten seconds, the
Speaker 2: two hundred meters is twenty seconds. The runner must react
Speaker 2: instantly to the gun, run a flawless race, extract every
Speaker 2: ounce of speed from their bodies over an impossibly compressed timeframe.
Speaker 2: The sprinter settling into the blocks before a race was
Speaker 2: under an extraordinary, potentially debilitating amount of pressure, and the
Speaker 2: body's untrained response to that pressure makes the runner slower,
Speaker 2: not faster. Bud realized he needed to fix that problem.
Speaker 2: That idea seems common sense to our ears today, but
Speaker 2: he came from Bud.
Speaker 6: He was really visionary and understanding how important relaxation was
Speaker 6: to performance. Think about it in the forties fifties, or sixties.
Speaker 6: What you were hearing was buck right, and maybe a
Speaker 6: little bit later was no pain, no gain, was pull
Speaker 6: yourself up by your bootstraps. So that he was saying,
Speaker 6: relaxed to perform better was fantastic because it works.
Speaker 2: Ray Norton and other athletes on the track team remember
Speaker 2: Bud and his phrases.
Speaker 5: How do you explain to a sprinter running bull speed
Speaker 5: to relax? Well, you teach them to relax by using
Speaker 5: certain terminologies, mantras.
Speaker 2: Really, they were designed to keep parts of your body relaxed.
Speaker 2: If you ran for Bud, a couple of them were
Speaker 2: burned into your brain.
Speaker 7: Loose hands.
Speaker 5: You never clinch your fists when you're running. Loose jaws,
Speaker 5: but you don't have to open your mouth, but just relax.
Speaker 2: To demonstrate the power of loose hands loose jaws, Bud
Speaker 2: would have his athletes run it tight, straining with effort
Speaker 2: and time them. Then he'd have them run relaxed, their
Speaker 2: hands unclenched, their faces sagging with what Bud called fish lips.
Speaker 2: The stopwatch didn't lie. I spoke with Tommy Smith, one
Speaker 2: of the greatest of all Bud's athletes. Was it difficult
Speaker 2: to master some of the things he was talking about.
Speaker 8: So it was a lot of things that he put
Speaker 8: into a process that we had to understand, and it
Speaker 8: was very difficult at times for us to master the
Speaker 8: usage of the muscles to their maximum without tensing up,
Speaker 8: without overdoing it. The process of too much is not good,
Speaker 8: too little is just as bad.
Speaker 2: And just like the Navy cadets, Bud's athletes also had
Speaker 2: to do visualization exercises. This is Ben Tucker, a distance runner.
Speaker 7: Before each competition, Bud would always call us in on
Speaker 7: the Friday night. This is the night before the event,
Speaker 7: and then he would have us sit in a room,
Speaker 7: turn the lights out, and then we would just sit
Speaker 7: there and he would just talk us through. This is
Speaker 7: the first lap. This is a second lap. And so
Speaker 7: he had us not only strategizing, but he had us
Speaker 7: seeing ourselves. This is the night before. A hypnosis, but
Speaker 7: it's hypnotize on us, but it got into our heads,
Speaker 7: got into our heads.
Speaker 2: But also ran his athletes methodically through drills he'd created,
Speaker 2: like the high knee exercise. The runner marches up and
Speaker 2: down the track, driving one knee after the other high
Speaker 2: into the air. In an exaggerated slow motion version of running.
Speaker 1: That's a real basic of how sprinter's run.
Speaker 2: Doctor Peter wayAnd And studies the biomechanics of sprinting at
Speaker 2: the Locomotive Performance Laboratory at Southern Methodist University, and it's.
Speaker 1: Directly connected to how forcefully the sprinters hit the ground.
Speaker 1: So if you watch a marathon or run, they don't
Speaker 1: run that way. They have kind of a shuffling gait.
Speaker 1: The sprinters punch the track with their limb, so the
Speaker 1: high knee lift allows in the space to get the
Speaker 1: high velocity and then the quick stop. It's like delivering
Speaker 1: a punch to the ground.
Speaker 2: The more force the sprinter can deliver with that leg punch,
Speaker 2: the faster they can get off the ground, which leads
Speaker 2: to a longer, more efficient stride.
Speaker 1: All of the difference in how fast they can run,
Speaker 1: all of the force difference happens during that initial impact period.
Speaker 1: So it's essential that they get the highknee lift and
Speaker 1: that they execute the high velocity and quick stop. That's
Speaker 1: the entire secret right there.
Speaker 2: The innovations, the tinkering, the rethinking, the search for the
Speaker 2: slightest edge never stopped.
Speaker 9: I realized, I said, this is the first genius. I
Speaker 9: remember because his mind was busy of how to make
Speaker 9: us run faster.
Speaker 2: That's Lee Evans, another Abud's greatest sprinters.
Speaker 9: I remember he said, okay, everybody, give me your your shorts,
Speaker 9: and he was punch holes in the back part of
Speaker 9: him so the wind could throw through them better. And
Speaker 9: he said, okay, okay, give me, everybody, give me the
Speaker 9: spikes out of your shoes. We take our spikes on
Speaker 9: get to him, and he would shape them like a
Speaker 9: pyramid so that the real part would get more push off.
Speaker 9: He was always thinking of waye to take off a
Speaker 9: tenth or one hundredths of a second, and I never
Speaker 9: had a coach to you'd be concerned about little minor
Speaker 9: details like that.
Speaker 2: At the heart of the Bud Winter Revolution is that
Speaker 2: he saw his role as cultivating the talent of his athletes.
Speaker 2: He took raw clay and molded it. That is not
Speaker 2: how coaches saw their role in those years. The traditional
Speaker 2: coach exploited talent. The distinction between cultivation and exploitation is crucial.
Speaker 2: Coaches of that era were motivators, recruiters, tacticians. Coaches took
Speaker 2: what they were given and put it to use. Bud
Speaker 2: was one of the first modern coaches who understood that
Speaker 2: a coach's job was to make you facture elite performance
Speaker 2: systematically and methodically, not just shepherd it into existence. The
Speaker 2: most successful of the coaches of the contemporary age, Bill
Speaker 2: Belichick and football, Phil Jackson and Pat Summit and basketball
Speaker 2: are in many ways Bud's disciples. When a coach wins
Speaker 2: again and again in different places and with different athletes,
Speaker 2: it means they have crossed the line from exploitation to cultivation.
Speaker 2: Bud was the profit of that movement. Bud held coaching
Speaker 2: clinics NonStop. He wrote a how to manual, So You
Speaker 2: Want to Be a Sprinter that became a must read
Speaker 2: for coaches and athletes alike. In it, two cartoon sprinters
Speaker 2: helped demonstrate the right way and the wrong way to
Speaker 2: execute Bud's techniques. Their names were Jack Champ and Joe Chump.
Speaker 2: Their coach is a Bud like figure named Igor Beaver.
Speaker 2: Get it egor Beaver. He eventually made a fifteen minute
Speaker 2: instructional film that he shot at San Jose State.
Speaker 10: Coach Winter believes that the sprinter should undergo a special drill.
Speaker 2: Members of Bud's team appeared in the film, which was
Speaker 2: called sprinting with Bud Winter.
Speaker 10: Bohm action is powerful, but it is also relaxed. The
Speaker 10: run of things, of driving his elbows, the hands are loose.
Speaker 2: Ray Norton was his first major recruit. In nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 2: Norton tied the world record for the one hundred yard
Speaker 2: dash with a time of nine point three seconds. The
Speaker 2: only other Americans that held that record were from big
Speaker 2: schools like USC and COL. That same year, Budd added
Speaker 2: another star to his team. This one was shorter in
Speaker 2: stock here, a more traditional looking sprinter. Bob Pointer was
Speaker 2: a high school state champion from Pasadena who had his
Speaker 2: heart set on USC. He went to junior college trying
Speaker 2: to study his way onto the USC track team. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Bud kept sending him letters.
Speaker 11: That kind of thrilled me, you know, in fact that
Speaker 11: somebody for you tented to you.
Speaker 2: Eithers started to pay attention to San Jose State too.
Speaker 11: It drew crowds from you know, the Bay area and
Speaker 11: all around because Bud would promote the heck out of
Speaker 11: attract meet and we got an invitation to go to
Speaker 11: the pen relays. Well, I didn't even know where that
Speaker 11: was because I'd never been back east in my life.
Speaker 2: The Penn Relays in Philadelphia are the oldest track and
Speaker 2: field event in the United States, a massive international carnival
Speaker 2: of track and field.
Speaker 11: So Ray and I went and we won all the
Speaker 11: stuff back east, and people back there they hadn't heard
Speaker 11: the sounds. They used to pronounce its San Josie and say,
Speaker 11: those guys from San Jose, And they thought it was
Speaker 11: a black college because we had gold uniforms and most
Speaker 11: of the kids were African Americans. But what that did?
Speaker 11: That put Soundly State on the map.
Speaker 2: Bud was doing all of this with a minuscule budget
Speaker 2: out of state college that when he arrived didn't even
Speaker 2: have dormitories.
Speaker 11: He loved beating Carol of Stafford and anybody who's big,
Speaker 11: because he felt that like the poor people going out
Speaker 11: against the rich people.
Speaker 2: And Ray Norton, he was beating almost everyone.
Speaker 5: Fifty nine was my biggest year. At that time. I
Speaker 5: held the world's record for the one hundred yards, two
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty yards around a curve, the hundred meters,
Speaker 5: and the two hundred meters. I had all those records
Speaker 5: at one time, and I also went undefeated another meters
Speaker 5: period for two years. I beat them all, everybody.
Speaker 2: It was now nineteen sixty. Norton had been going strong
Speaker 2: for almost two years. Everyone thought he would win big
Speaker 2: at the Rome Olympics that year, but then just before
Speaker 2: the games, he suffered a freak injury. A teammate, the
Speaker 2: high jumper John Thomas, played a prank and threw a
Speaker 2: snake at him.
Speaker 5: That was a real stink. It was a little one,
Speaker 5: but it was, you know, done. No, I don't do
Speaker 5: things still though. I jumped out of that hurdle's position
Speaker 5: and snapped my back low part of my back. It
Speaker 5: roughs at the nerve. This is three weeks before the
Speaker 5: Olympic Games. I had no feeling in my legs, couldn't walk.
Speaker 5: I didn't run in any tune up meets. I couldn't
Speaker 5: I didn't run anymore until the Olympic Games, which I
Speaker 5: had probably lost ninety percent of my conditioning. I couldn't sleep,
Speaker 5: couldn't eat. I lost ten pounds.
Speaker 2: But Norton didn't want to give up his chance at
Speaker 2: the Olympics.
Speaker 5: I just decided that I still could win and nobody
Speaker 5: can beat me, even though I couldn't walk. Three weeks before.
Speaker 2: That, Norton made it to the finals of the one
Speaker 2: hundred meters and the two hundred meters at the Olympics,
Speaker 2: but he finished dead last. Then he botched a baton
Speaker 2: pass in a four by one hundred meter relay, leading
Speaker 2: to a disqualification. The meltdown was astonishing. The US hadn't
Speaker 2: like the men's hundred meters since nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 5: I don't even know how I ran. To be honest with.
Speaker 2: You, only a few people knew about his injury. One
Speaker 2: of them was Bud. Norton says he begged his coach
Speaker 2: not to reveal the truth.
Speaker 5: I'm in one room, Bud next door. My door's open,
Speaker 5: so Buck to see me because I'm hurt, and he
Speaker 5: knows it. Okay, So I say, Bud, I said, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm drafted. I'm gonna play football after the Olympics. He says,
Speaker 5: I know. Champ he called me Jim and I said,
Speaker 5: I don't want him to know I'm hurt.
Speaker 2: Norton says Bud didn't want to lie.
Speaker 5: I said, you're not. It's my nerves in my back
Speaker 5: that's killing me. All you got to see is my nerves.
Speaker 5: You're not gonna be telling a lie. Let's say I
Speaker 5: said can you do that? But I don't want these
Speaker 5: people to think they get damaged goods because I'm playing
Speaker 5: football as soon as I get back out of the Olympics.
Speaker 2: All Bud would say after Norton's loss was that ra
Speaker 2: Orton was trying too hard and that's the worst thing
Speaker 2: a runner can do, which was the truth as far
Speaker 2: as Bud Winter was concerned. Speed City had been stopped
Speaker 2: short in its first great international test.
Speaker 12: The Olympic Games to me were at once a inspiring, exciting, interesting,
Speaker 12: horrible experience.
Speaker 2: That's Bud in nineteen sixty three giving the opening remarks
Speaker 2: that a sports symposium hosted by San Jose Steai.
Speaker 13: They were aspiring because once again they pointed out what
Speaker 13: we must do in the United States if we're going
Speaker 13: to maintain our sports supremacy. They were wonderful because it
Speaker 13: pointed out that maybe on the field of sport is
Speaker 13: the one common ground upon which the nations in the
Speaker 13: world can get together. And now horrible because of what
Speaker 13: happened to Ray and Norton and are losing the sprint supremacy.
Speaker 2: All of that relaxation training, the visualization exercises, the loose hands,
Speaker 2: loose jaws, high knees all undone a freak injury from
Speaker 2: a prank gone wrong. Bud was devastated, but he and
Speaker 2: his runners would get another chance in the spotlight.
Speaker 13: Every Olympic Games has its heroes, both athletes and coaches,
Speaker 13: and perhaps.
Speaker 2: Only this time, Speed City would get swept up in
Speaker 2: another bigger revolution across America. The nineteen sixties would bring riots, protests, violence,
Speaker 2: political assassinations, and the organized marches of the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 2: And here was a group of young black men who
Speaker 2: had already been liberated from one orthodoxy, who had been
Speaker 2: taught that calm and self possession and preparation could unleash
Speaker 2: extraordinary performance. The sprinters of speed City would become famous,
Speaker 2: and a question would be asked of them that had
Speaker 2: never really been asked of athletes before. What will you
Speaker 2: make of your position? You will stand on a platform,
Speaker 2: what will you do once you're there? In our next episode,
Speaker 2: the athletes of speed City win, acclaim and break world records,
Speaker 2: but off the track, they struggle to make ends meet.
Speaker 2: After a discus thrower objects to the treatment of black
Speaker 2: athletes on campus, he sparks a movement that will become
Speaker 2: one of the most important moments of activism in sports history.
Speaker 2: Legacy of Speed is hosted by Me Malcolm Gladwell. It's
Speaker 2: executive produced by Tracksmith and presented by Puma. Our producers
Speaker 2: are Joel Meyer and Emily Rostak. The show is edited
Speaker 2: by Chrishibobita and Karen Shakerji, and our mix engineer is
Speaker 2: Jake Gorski. Original music composed by Alexis Quadrato with trumpet
Speaker 2: by Lee Hogan's fact checking by Wynton Saint Clair. Our
Speaker 2: Pushkin EPs are Katherine Girdeau and miel Obel. Our development
Speaker 2: team is Lee Talmulaude and Justin Lang. We had help
Speaker 2: with research and archival material from eur La Hill, Kathy Winter,
Speaker 2: Tom Ratcliffe, John Stalkup, Brett Lyman, and Carly Lowe. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Bud Winter Enterprises. Legacy of Speed is a
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show, consider
Speaker 2: subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and ad free
Speaker 2: listening across our network for four ninety nine a month.
Speaker 2: Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 2: at pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts that was a preview of Legacy of Speed.
Speaker 2: You can follow the story by searching for Legacy of
Speaker 2: Speed wherever you get your podcasts.