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