The Miracle of '32

By Gerald Clarke

If the organizers of the 1984 Olympics ever feel discouraged, worried about costs and the possibilities for confusion, let them take heart. Whatever befalls them between now and next July, whether act of man or nature, could scarcely be as bad as the troubles that bedeviled the promoters of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. Yet that small band not only survived, it triumphed and made the Games of the X Olympiad profitable and one of history's best and most fondly remembered.

Everything was against them in that grim time. The entire world was staggering from the effects of the Depression, and many countries felt they could not even afford to send athletes to a place as distant as California. "Just where is your state?" a Portuguese bureaucrat politely asked William May Garland, president of the group of businessmen who ran the California Olympics. When Garland marked the spot on the map, the bureaucrat sadly replied, "That is a long, expensive way from here." Even the officials of the international Olympic committee were discouraging. "For your 1932 ambitions, it now does not look so certain," they told Garland two years before the flags were to be set fluttering at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Coupled with the sour economic situation was a darkening political climate. Adolf Hitler, who was not yet in power but spreading his poison in Germany nonetheless, succeeded in blocking funds to send German competitors abroad: good Germans, he said, should not be mixing with foreigners.

At home the news was equally depressing. As Sportswriter Al J. Stump noted in American Heritage, unemployed protesters marched through Sacramento, the capital of California, with signs saying GROCERIES NOT GAMES! and OLYMPICS ARE OUTRAGEOUS! In Southern California, some social reformers were also indignant. "They're big sports, all right," said one bitter member of a group called the Technocrats. "Bringing Germans and Japs to town! Down with their damned circus!" The heads of state or royalty of the host countries had opened the ceremonies at the nine previous modern Olympics, but President Herbert Hoover, confronted with the worst domestic crisis since the Civil War, decided to stay in Washington. "It's a crazy thing," he reportedly told his intimates. "And it takes some gall to expect me to be part of it." He sent instead his Vice President, Charles Curtis.

Even California's fabled weather--no one had yet heard of smog--refused to cooperate. Olympic committees from northern countries complained that their athletes could not compete in the heat of what they assumed was a desert climate. Nonsense, replied the boosters, Southern California is moderation itself. And to prove it, they set out thermometers during the first part of August 1931, on the dates on which the competition would be held a year later. To their consternation, a heat wave sent the mercury climbing past 100DEGF day after day. The results were quietly consigned to a back file. Disappointment followed disappointment, in ever quickening succession. Almost no one, in Los Angeles or anywhere else, seemed interested in buying tickets, and a few ticket sellers joined the unemployment lines. Some of the Los Angeles organizers became disheartened enough to suggest calling off the events entirely. But the "cold feeters," as one of the stalwarts called them, were shamed into continuing so that Los Angeles could keep "its sacred word."

And so it did. The Coliseum had been built in 1923 with the Olympics in mind, and most of the other sites were already in place. In another parallel to 1984, only a new swimming facility had to be built to house an event. To save costs for the visiting athletes, the committee built an Olympic Village, where all the men would be fed, housed and entertained for a mere $2 a day. (The women were put in a nearby hotel at the same rate.) During previous games, teams had kept to themselves, rarely meeting athletes from other countries. But the Olympic Village, born of necessity, proved such a success that the Los Angeles Olympic Committee, which was credited with promoting international brotherhood, was recommended for a Nobel Peace Prize. With costs lowered so far, moreover, many countries, including Britain, Denmark and Sweden, suddenly decided they could participate. "We had to make it attractive for the athletes to come here," recalls Gwynn Wilson, who was associate manager for the Olympic committee. "I would say that without the village, we would not have been successful with our games."

The list of holdouts grew smaller and smaller. Cuba, with no ready cash, dispatched its team on a boat loaded with sugar and tobacco; at each port of call, the cargo would be auctioned off to help defray expenses. Even Germany managed to outwit its future Fuhrer and sent 125 of its best young athletes.

Finally Los Angeles woke up to what was happening. Movie stars offered to entertain, merchants lined the streets with foreign flags, and, most important, tickets suddenly began to sell. Years later, visitors remembered the extraordinary atmosphere of amity that pervaded the air during the 16 days of the Games of the X Olympiad. At the end of the first day's events, an announcer asked spectators to remain seated so there would be no traffic to slow the athletes on their way back to the village. The great throng joined in singing a chorus of songs until the contestants were well on their way.

In the following days, records were broken, and reputations were made by such athletes as Babe Didrikson and Buster Crabbe. The most sensational events were men's track and field, in which new world marks were set nearly every day. Probably the most heart-stopping was the 5,000-meter run: Ralph Hill, a hitherto unknown American, raced after the world-record holder, Finland's Lauri Lehtinen. Hill tried to pass him on the outside, then the inside, and was finally beaten in a virtual dead heat. The largely American crowd was angry at first, believing that the Finn had unfairly tried to stop Hill, but a word from the announcer ("Remember please, these people are our guests") turned boos into applause. The sunny mood returned and remained. Nature cooperated, and for those two weeks the temperature was exactly what the Chamber of Commerce had promised. Camelot could not have offered more.

--By Gerald Clarke This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.