Corsicana Daily Sun from Corsicana, Texas • Page 36

ne andjresh ilself Bonnie Mills, an SMU Mustangs, set a gruelling training pace in his quest for a backstroke swimming berth on the V. S. team and a return to the Oltjmpics. (Continued from page 7) entation cannot duplicated anywhere else in Yet Baker remembers best some priceless Olympic moments with foreign rivals. he asks, you get Russian and Hungarian athletes sitting together on a the height of the Hungarian Revolution? Or two Czechoslovakians asking nu' training methods? spoke German, and my spoke some, so we had a wild, 4-way translation Baker says.

Germans on the bus cracked up over the way we fractured their hese pics- incidents ARE the Olym- the public seldom hears about them. The Olympics is more than just athletic competition It is a souvenir-trading session, wim a Russian athlete laughingly imploring Earl Young to me New give you It is SMU trainer Eddie Lane at Mexico City in 1968, conversing amiably all night with a Soviet Union by six bottles of Russian wine. The Olympics is behind-the-scenes drama, as it was in 1968 for Smitty Duke when he saw lightning strike one of a horde of Nlexicans who were waiting patiently in a driving rain to get autographs. U.S. never even knew his out of nowhere and saved the Duke recalls.

The Olympics can provide irony, too, as it did for Fort Worth music store partner Earle Meadows in 1936. Meadows established an Olympic record of 14-3V 4 in winning the pole vault in Berlin. crowned me with olive Meadows says, gave each of us a little oak tree cement everlasting Mine died on th way home U.S.- German relations. The Olympics the public sees is performance. But it takes an inner fire to produce those efforts, and even Olympic medal winners find that the only way to cool the flame is via another trip to the Games.

Ronnie Mills of SMU is typical of the Texans feeling that heat which flares once every four years. a disappointing senior year, he is setting a gruelling training pace in his for another backstroke swimming berth. back to the Olympics has always been on my Mills vows. want to really experience it first time was like a first day back at sch(wl at Fort Arlington Heights after winning his bronze medal in 1968 dill little to dispel that dream feeling. whole student body was out he recalls.

cameras were everywhere, the band was playing they even carried me on their shoulders. And I even believe been in the All other motivation aside, Olympic veterans inevitably seize one vital inspiration for their return attempts. As Mills notes fervently: I stood on the victory platform at Mexico City, it was the first time I felt I had REALLY accomplished Every former Olympian has a mental of those moments, good and bad, and the nostalgia lasts a lifetime. As one Texas Olympian says, waited and w'orked, and you finally arrive. The Olympic Games and their memories are like the exhilaration after a long trip.

On August 26, those Texas veterans will begin retracing the ultimate athletic Olympic zeal. 8 the TEXAS STAR July 16, 1972.