Al Oerter

For some reason, the news that Al Oerter died yesterday is like getting hit with a discuss in the gut.

And only 71?! He appeared in the '56 Olympics but was still going strong when I was reading Track & Field magazines and worshiping track stars back in the '70s*.

The decade that is, not my age.

Enough about me. Read:

Oerter (pronounced OAR-ter), a sandy-haired bear of a man who weighed as much as 297 pounds and stood 6 feet 4 inches, won Olympic gold medals in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Only Carl Lewis has duplicated the feat, winning the long jump from 1984 through 1996.

Oerter’s sweep was all the more remarkable because in each case he broke the Olympic record, beat the world-record holder, overcame an injury and was not the favorite to win. His winning throws — the men use a 4.4-pound disc that resembles a flying saucer and soars like one — were 184 feet 11 inches in Melbourne in 1956; 194-2 in Rome in 1960; 200-1 in Tokyo in 1964; and 212-6 in Mexico City in 1968.

Harold Connolly, an American hammer thrower who also won an Olympic gold medal, once told the sports columnist Stan Isaacs:

“In the opinion of many of us, he is the greatest field-event athlete of the century. There’s a magic about him when he’s competing. He’s nervous before the meet. He doesn’t eat well and his hands shake. But once the event is about to start, a calmness settles over him. The other athletes see it, and it intimidates them. They watch him, and they are afraid of what he might do.”

Oerter typically made light of his triumphs. In 1991, he told the Olympian magazine, “The first one, I was really young; the second, not very capable; the third, very injured; the fourth, old.”

The injury in his third Olympics, in 1964, came six days before competition was to begin, when he slipped on a wet concrete discus circle and tore rib cartilage on his right side — his throwing side — causing internal bleeding and severe pain. Team doctors told him to forget the Olympics and not throw for six weeks. He refused.

“These are the Olympics,” he was quoted as saying at the time. “You die before you quit.” He competed and won.

* Yes, kids, track was relatively popular -- somewhere between tennis and... table tennis, I guess... back in those dyn-o-mitalicious days.