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Relax and Win from Legacy of Speed · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:18
Speaker 2: Hello, Hello Revisionist history listeners. I'm so excited to bring
0:21
Speaker 2: you Season seven in just two short weeks. Until then,
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Speaker 2: I wanted to share another podcast with you that I've
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Speaker 2: been working on. It's a new show called Legacy of Speed.
0:33
Speaker 2: As any loyal revisionist history listener knows, I'm totally crazy
0:36
Speaker 2: about running. So when Tracksmith approached Pushkin to make a
0:40
Speaker 2: show about running in sports activism, I was all in.
0:43
Speaker 2: Legacy of Speed is a series about the transformation of
0:46
Speaker 2: a track program at San Jose State in the nineteen sixties.
0:49
Speaker 2: What started out as just a second tier state college
0:53
Speaker 2: that no one outside of northern California had even heard of,
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Speaker 2: quickly became known as the home to Speed City. Under
1:00
Speaker 2: the guidance of one coach and his unconventional techniques, San
1:04
Speaker 2: Jose launched the careers of the fastest sprinters of the day.
1:08
Speaker 2: I traced the journey of those sprinters who went on
1:11
Speaker 2: to make an iconic protest at the nineteen sixty eight
1:14
Speaker 2: Summer Olympics. The show features conversations with Olympic athletes, sports journalists,
1:19
Speaker 2: performance coaches, and documentarians. You'll hear from some of the
1:23
Speaker 2: best runners of all time. Tommy Smith, John Carlos, Lee Evans.
1:28
Speaker 2: It's a story about athletes who dare to take a
1:31
Speaker 2: stand and the mentors who made them fast and brave
1:35
Speaker 2: enough to pave the way for the sports activism we
1:38
Speaker 2: see today. Here's a preview. You can follow the story
1:42
Speaker 2: by searching for Legacy of Speed wherever you get your podcasts.
1:48
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty eight, the Summer Olympic Games are in Mexico
1:51
Speaker 2: City for the first time. The Games are truly a
1:55
Speaker 2: television spectacle, twice as many hours of coverage with new
1:59
Speaker 2: technology like instant replay, and it's being broadcast live around
2:04
Speaker 2: the world in color. Everyone is watching.
2:09
Speaker 3: The United States leads the Olympics and Metal Awards, and
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Speaker 3: is just about supreme in the sprint races thanks to
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Speaker 3: men like Tommy Smith and John Carlos.
2:18
Speaker 2: Tommy Smith John Carlos, two of the greatest sprinters of
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Speaker 2: all time, captured in one of the most iconic images
2:25
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, two black men standing on a platform,
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Speaker 2: each with a fist in the air.
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Speaker 3: Yesterday they stood on the victory platform with bowed heads,
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Speaker 3: wearing black socks and gloves and a racial protest.
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Speaker 2: I remember seeing that photo as a kid growing up
2:51
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies, a kid who was obsessed with sports,
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Speaker 2: And even though I was much too young to understand
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Speaker 2: anything about the context for it, I understood that it
3:00
Speaker 2: was an act of transgression. Over the next five episodes,
3:05
Speaker 2: I want to tell you the story behind that transgression,
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Speaker 2: how those two men ended up on the victory stand,
3:12
Speaker 2: their struggles and triumphs, because in that moment half a
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Speaker 2: century ago, the way we think about sports and social
3:19
Speaker 2: protest shifted forever in ways that we are still wrestling
3:24
Speaker 2: with today. Two extraordinary figures made that iconic moment possible.
3:29
Speaker 2: One Bud Winter, an eccentric tactician who reinvented what it
3:33
Speaker 2: meant to be a coach. The other Harry Edwards, a
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Speaker 2: fiery professor and black power activist who dared to challenge
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Speaker 2: that most sacred of American institutions. And here's the remarkable thing.
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Speaker 2: All four of those men, those two runners, the professor
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Speaker 2: and the coach, came from the same place, a second
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Speaker 2: tier state college that no one outside of northern California
4:01
Speaker 2: had ever heard of, San Jose State, or as it
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Speaker 2: was known back then, Speeds City. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This
4:14
Speaker 2: is Legacy of Speed, a story about athletes who dared
4:18
Speaker 2: to take a stand and the visionaries who made them
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Speaker 2: fast enough and brave enough to change the world. In
4:33
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, Silicon Valley was not yet called Silicon Valley.
4:37
Speaker 2: That nickname wouldn't come until the early nineteen seventies. But
4:41
Speaker 2: among the Rolling Hills and Citrus Grove south of San Francisco,
4:45
Speaker 2: one hundred revolutions had already started to bubble, the microchip,
4:49
Speaker 2: the beginnings, the personal computer, the Internet. The Bay Area
4:54
Speaker 2: was wide open to innovation and reinvention and anyone who
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Speaker 2: had a crazy idea about how to do things better.
5:01
Speaker 2: And in the middle of that ferment was a commuter
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Speaker 2: school in downtown San Jose. San Jose State State was
5:10
Speaker 2: where a coach named Bud Winter held court, and Bud
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Speaker 2: Winter is where this story begins. Bud was one of
5:16
Speaker 2: the most important coaches of the twentieth century. He invented
5:20
Speaker 2: modern sprinting with an unconventional approach that has today become dogma.
5:26
Speaker 2: Have you ever watched the way of the fastest man
5:28
Speaker 2: in history, the Jamaican sprinter Ussain Bolt, glides down the track, You, Saint.
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Speaker 1: Bolt, look at the timeline by night, world record, unruffled,
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Speaker 1: calm composed.
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Speaker 2: You can credit Bud Winter for the way Bolt ran.
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Speaker 2: Bolt's coach was a Bud Winter disciple. Over his career,
5:51
Speaker 2: Bud coached one hundred and two All Americans, thirty seven
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Speaker 2: world record holders, and twenty Olympians, including Tommy Smith and
6:00
Speaker 2: John Carlos, the two sprinters who raised their gloved fists
6:04
Speaker 2: in Mexico City. Bud's athletes so completely dominated sprinting the
6:09
Speaker 2: people stopped calling the San Jose A team by its
6:11
Speaker 2: formal nickname, the Spartans, and just called it Speeds City.
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Speaker 4: He was a scrapper. He grew up in a poor
6:18
Speaker 4: neighborhood in San Francisco. Yeah, it was right by the zoo.
6:22
Speaker 2: That's Kathy Winter, Bud's daughter. Bud Winter was born Lloyd C.
6:27
Speaker 2: Winter in nineteen oh nine and grew up in San Francisco.
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Speaker 4: Well, his mom was a spitfire Irish woman, and his
6:36
Speaker 4: father was a photographer and a very quiet introvert. And
6:41
Speaker 4: he lived on the poor side, So I think that's
6:43
Speaker 4: why he had such a compassion and a heart for
6:46
Speaker 4: people that didn't have money.
6:48
Speaker 2: Bud ended up at UC Berkeley. He studied psychology. After college,
6:53
Speaker 2: Bud coached football at a high school and then a
6:55
Speaker 2: junior college. He was a man of obsessions. He didn't
6:58
Speaker 2: just golf. He invented a golf club that he swore
7:02
Speaker 2: hit the ball further because he'd exposed it to radiation.
7:06
Speaker 2: He didn't just fish, He went fishing around the world.
7:10
Speaker 2: He was unkempt, unassuming. He wore mismatched patterns. His clothes
7:15
Speaker 2: were often wrinkled. When he traveled, he stuffed his suits
7:18
Speaker 2: into a Duffel bag.
7:20
Speaker 4: You always seem to have soup or something down his shirt,
7:24
Speaker 4: but when you pointed it out, he'd go, you know
7:27
Speaker 4: who cares. It just wasn't his priority.
7:30
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty one, Bud took a job coaching track
7:33
Speaker 2: and freshman football at San Jose State.
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Speaker 4: I would say my dad was somewhat absent, and I
7:40
Speaker 4: don't say that with negativity in my heart or anything,
7:43
Speaker 4: but his whole life was about track and field and
7:47
Speaker 4: the guys. We'd be sitting there at the table at dinner,
7:51
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, my dad would get up
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Speaker 4: and he would go over to the side and he'd
7:54
Speaker 4: start to practice like the shot put. Okay, now he
7:57
Speaker 4: wants to tell him to turn his head this way.
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Speaker 4: And here we were in the middle of trying to
8:01
Speaker 4: tell him a story about what we did at school.
8:03
Speaker 2: As a coach. Bud was a teacher, not a screamer.
8:07
Speaker 5: The thing that impressed me about Bud he never raised
8:11
Speaker 5: his voice.
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Speaker 2: This is Ray Norton, one of Bud's athletes.
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Speaker 5: And never did I ever hear him use propenity. That's
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Speaker 5: pretty unusual for a coach, My high school coach. Is
8:21
Speaker 5: all they did yo. They couldn't coach all that they
8:23
Speaker 5: was used propetit.
8:25
Speaker 2: Bud didn't look like a traditional coach. He didn't sound
8:28
Speaker 2: like a traditional coach, and that was all part of
8:31
Speaker 2: the charm. Norton remembers the first time he met Bud,
8:35
Speaker 2: he was still in high school. He and some of
8:37
Speaker 2: his friends who also ran went to a track meet
8:39
Speaker 2: at the University of California, Berkeley, the annual showdown between
8:43
Speaker 2: the Big Ten and the conference that would become the
8:45
Speaker 2: Pac twelve.
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Speaker 5: First of all, we snuck in the place and we're
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Speaker 5: sitting quietly hoping nobody noticed us.
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Speaker 2: You know, Norton and his friends all ran track for
8:58
Speaker 2: their high school teams. A couple of them were pretty fast,
9:01
Speaker 2: but none of them expected to be recruited by the
9:03
Speaker 2: colleges at this meet. It's nineteen fifty five, not too
9:07
Speaker 2: many of the big track schools. We're interested in black sprinters.
9:12
Speaker 5: We watched the big boys, the collegian guys, and then
9:16
Speaker 5: when they left, we kind of eased down on the
9:19
Speaker 5: track and got into starting blocks.
9:22
Speaker 2: They started to raise each other just for fun.
9:27
Speaker 5: We were supposed to be there, obviously, and there were
9:29
Speaker 5: several coaches in the stands watching. All of them left
9:34
Speaker 5: except one that one was but Winter and but walked
9:40
Speaker 5: from the bleachers and then we were in the starting
9:42
Speaker 5: blocks and we said, oh god, we've been busted. They're
9:46
Speaker 5: going to throw us out of here. And he walked
9:50
Speaker 5: real slow, and then he stopped in front of me
9:53
Speaker 5: and he said, do you know you could be the
9:55
Speaker 5: world's fastest human? And I went k, I wasn't even
10:04
Speaker 5: the fastest guy in the starting blocks where he was standing.
10:08
Speaker 5: A couple of the high school kids could beat me.
10:10
Speaker 5: And they're going, what this coach must be old something.
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Speaker 2: At the time, Norton had no idea what Bud saw
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Speaker 2: on him. It wasn't until he went to San Jose
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Speaker 2: State that he understood that Bud had turned the science
10:24
Speaker 2: of sprinting on its head.
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Speaker 5: I was six three sprinters are like five eight, five, nine,
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Speaker 5: five ten. What he saw is that I had a
10:33
Speaker 5: natural relaxation mode. I did string what I ran and
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Speaker 5: the other kids did. He could teach me the relaxation mode,
10:41
Speaker 5: and I could handle it.
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Speaker 2: The relaxation mode shorthand for the complex set of ideas
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Speaker 2: at the heart of Bud's philosophy. Coaches for generations had
10:53
Speaker 2: stressed the visible application of effort intensity, the grimacing, tightly
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Speaker 2: coiled runner, huffing and snorting down the track like a
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Speaker 2: runaway plow horse work harder, push, push, push, But Bud's
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Speaker 2: thought was, what if that was entirely backward? What if
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Speaker 2: the sprinter should be gliding. Norton joined Bud's team in
11:16
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six on a scholarship. He would become a star,
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Speaker 2: the first real star of the so called speed city
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Speaker 2: era at San Jose State. We'll be right back. Bud
11:43
Speaker 2: Winter had his light bulb moment when he first arrived
11:46
Speaker 2: at San Jose State. He sat in on a class
11:49
Speaker 2: taught by Dorothy Hazeltine Yates. It was about the psychology
11:53
Speaker 2: of fighter pilots, an enormously important subject. At the start
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Speaker 2: of World War Two. Pilots were suffering from nervous exhaustion,
12:01
Speaker 2: burnout breakdowns. They were making fatal errors in combat because
12:06
Speaker 2: of the enormous stress they were under. In the class,
12:09
Speaker 2: Bud learned about a new approach to tackling the problem,
12:12
Speaker 2: teaching the pilot's relaxation techniques. Bud watched as the techniques
12:18
Speaker 2: were applied to boxers at San Jose State. This is
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Speaker 2: what Bud wrote in his nineteen eighty one book, Relax
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Speaker 2: and Win. The results proved not only gratifying in some cases,
12:29
Speaker 2: they were amazing to us. Green inexperienced novices very soon
12:34
Speaker 2: showed the cool, confident poise of champions. San Jose boxers
12:38
Speaker 2: won every bout that season, some spectacularly. At the start
12:46
Speaker 2: of the Second World War, Bud enlisted in the Navy,
12:50
Speaker 2: and he got a chance to build on what he'd
12:51
Speaker 2: learned with Yates's class at San Jose. He was put
12:54
Speaker 2: in charge of a research study at a flight school
12:57
Speaker 2: in California looking at relaxation training for cadets. It was
13:02
Speaker 2: the beginning of what would be a radical transformation in
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Speaker 2: the way we think about preparing people for stressful jobs.
13:09
Speaker 2: We called up doctor Belisa Vranich to get a little
13:12
Speaker 2: one oh one on relaxation techniques.
13:14
Speaker 6: So, any tense muscle you have on your body is
13:18
Speaker 6: using oxygen, and you need other muscles to be sort
13:23
Speaker 6: of prepped and alert and ready to go.
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Speaker 2: Brandich is a clinical psychologist who works with lots of
13:28
Speaker 2: people in high stressed jobs, law enforcement, firefighters, navy seals, pilots.
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Speaker 6: So if your entire body is tense, you are going
13:38
Speaker 6: to be using up calories and you're going to be
13:40
Speaker 6: using up oxygen. For instance, chess masters burn a tremendous
13:45
Speaker 6: amount of calories playing chess, and it's because your brain
13:50
Speaker 6: uses so much oxygen. So if you are thinking intense
13:53
Speaker 6: and if your body is tense, you're tapping into your
13:56
Speaker 6: tank of energy.
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Speaker 2: Imagine how quickly you might drain that tank of energy
14:00
Speaker 2: in a dog fight, And if you return safely, how
14:03
Speaker 2: would you manage to get some sleep so you could
14:05
Speaker 2: fight again tomorrow. The solution is to learn how to relax,
14:10
Speaker 2: to contain and control your stress.
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Speaker 6: Inhale two three four.
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Speaker 2: Breathing slowly and deliberately. This is called tactical breathing.
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Speaker 6: Inhale, stretch a little bit more, sigh on the exhale,
14:30
Speaker 6: and you're ready to go. So your breathing controls your
14:34
Speaker 6: heart rate, and your heart rate is your main indicator
14:38
Speaker 6: of stress. So when you get stressed out, your heart
14:41
Speaker 6: rate goes up, and once it goes past a certain point,
14:45
Speaker 6: it affects your motor skills, your fine motor skills, your memory,
14:50
Speaker 6: and your ability to perform. So, whether you are working
14:55
Speaker 6: in a corporate setting or you're an athlete, you'd like
14:58
Speaker 6: your heart rate to be at a place where you
15:01
Speaker 6: are calm but alert.
15:03
Speaker 2: At the Flight School, Winter study involved two hundred cadets.
15:07
Speaker 2: For six weeks, they get tended classes, played sports, and
15:11
Speaker 2: took psychological tests. The cadets were split into two groups.
15:15
Speaker 2: One was the control group. The other group learned relaxation techniques.
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Speaker 2: Bud wrote about the outcome in his book. The relaxation
15:24
Speaker 2: group made more significant and even spectacular progress. The greatest
15:30
Speaker 2: improvement by the relaxation group was demonstrated in the courses
15:33
Speaker 2: that involved the most pressure. When the war was over,
15:40
Speaker 2: Bud went back to San Jose staid, and that's when
15:43
Speaker 2: he realized if relaxation techniques could help pilots. Surely they
15:48
Speaker 2: could also help sprinters. Doctor Belisa Vranich again.
15:52
Speaker 6: If you are able to get yourself to breathe well
15:57
Speaker 6: mechanically meaning dive framatically, and now you train those muscles
16:02
Speaker 6: separate from your sport, it actually affects your times. It
16:07
Speaker 6: delays fatigue.
16:09
Speaker 2: The problem at the heart of a sprinter's task was pressure.
16:13
Speaker 2: They weren't running a marathon where they had two hours
16:15
Speaker 2: to settle in and adjust and make up for mistakes
16:18
Speaker 2: and misjudgments. One hundred meters sprint is ten seconds, the
16:22
Speaker 2: two hundred meters is twenty seconds. The runner must react
16:26
Speaker 2: instantly to the gun, run a flawless race, extract every
16:30
Speaker 2: ounce of speed from their bodies over an impossibly compressed timeframe.
16:36
Speaker 2: The sprinter settling into the blocks before a race was
16:39
Speaker 2: under an extraordinary, potentially debilitating amount of pressure, and the
16:43
Speaker 2: body's untrained response to that pressure makes the runner slower,
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Speaker 2: not faster. Bud realized he needed to fix that problem.
16:54
Speaker 2: That idea seems common sense to our ears today, but
16:57
Speaker 2: he came from Bud.
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Speaker 6: He was really visionary and understanding how important relaxation was
17:03
Speaker 6: to performance. Think about it in the forties fifties, or sixties.
17:07
Speaker 6: What you were hearing was buck right, and maybe a
17:10
Speaker 6: little bit later was no pain, no gain, was pull
17:13
Speaker 6: yourself up by your bootstraps. So that he was saying,
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Speaker 6: relaxed to perform better was fantastic because it works.
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Speaker 2: Ray Norton and other athletes on the track team remember
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Speaker 2: Bud and his phrases.
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Speaker 5: How do you explain to a sprinter running bull speed
17:34
Speaker 5: to relax? Well, you teach them to relax by using
17:42
Speaker 5: certain terminologies, mantras.
17:44
Speaker 2: Really, they were designed to keep parts of your body relaxed.
17:48
Speaker 2: If you ran for Bud, a couple of them were
17:51
Speaker 2: burned into your brain.
17:55
Speaker 7: Loose hands.
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Speaker 5: You never clinch your fists when you're running. Loose jaws,
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Speaker 5: but you don't have to open your mouth, but just relax.
18:03
Speaker 2: To demonstrate the power of loose hands loose jaws, Bud
18:07
Speaker 2: would have his athletes run it tight, straining with effort
18:10
Speaker 2: and time them. Then he'd have them run relaxed, their
18:21
Speaker 2: hands unclenched, their faces sagging with what Bud called fish lips.
18:32
Speaker 2: The stopwatch didn't lie. I spoke with Tommy Smith, one
18:43
Speaker 2: of the greatest of all Bud's athletes. Was it difficult
18:47
Speaker 2: to master some of the things he was talking about.
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Speaker 8: So it was a lot of things that he put
18:52
Speaker 8: into a process that we had to understand, and it
18:57
Speaker 8: was very difficult at times for us to master the
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Speaker 8: usage of the muscles to their maximum without tensing up,
19:07
Speaker 8: without overdoing it. The process of too much is not good,
19:12
Speaker 8: too little is just as bad.
19:14
Speaker 2: And just like the Navy cadets, Bud's athletes also had
19:18
Speaker 2: to do visualization exercises. This is Ben Tucker, a distance runner.
19:23
Speaker 7: Before each competition, Bud would always call us in on
19:27
Speaker 7: the Friday night. This is the night before the event,
19:32
Speaker 7: and then he would have us sit in a room,
19:39
Speaker 7: turn the lights out, and then we would just sit
19:42
Speaker 7: there and he would just talk us through. This is
19:47
Speaker 7: the first lap. This is a second lap. And so
19:55
Speaker 7: he had us not only strategizing, but he had us
20:00
Speaker 7: seeing ourselves. This is the night before. A hypnosis, but
20:10
Speaker 7: it's hypnotize on us, but it got into our heads,
20:16
Speaker 7: got into our heads.
20:21
Speaker 2: But also ran his athletes methodically through drills he'd created,
20:25
Speaker 2: like the high knee exercise. The runner marches up and
20:28
Speaker 2: down the track, driving one knee after the other high
20:32
Speaker 2: into the air. In an exaggerated slow motion version of running.
20:36
Speaker 1: That's a real basic of how sprinter's run.
20:39
Speaker 2: Doctor Peter wayAnd And studies the biomechanics of sprinting at
20:42
Speaker 2: the Locomotive Performance Laboratory at Southern Methodist University, and it's.
20:47
Speaker 1: Directly connected to how forcefully the sprinters hit the ground.
20:51
Speaker 1: So if you watch a marathon or run, they don't
20:53
Speaker 1: run that way. They have kind of a shuffling gait.
20:56
Speaker 1: The sprinters punch the track with their limb, so the
20:59
Speaker 1: high knee lift allows in the space to get the
21:00
Speaker 1: high velocity and then the quick stop. It's like delivering
21:03
Speaker 1: a punch to the ground.
21:04
Speaker 2: The more force the sprinter can deliver with that leg punch,
21:08
Speaker 2: the faster they can get off the ground, which leads
21:11
Speaker 2: to a longer, more efficient stride.
21:13
Speaker 1: All of the difference in how fast they can run,
21:16
Speaker 1: all of the force difference happens during that initial impact period.
21:20
Speaker 1: So it's essential that they get the highknee lift and
21:22
Speaker 1: that they execute the high velocity and quick stop. That's
21:25
Speaker 1: the entire secret right there.
21:27
Speaker 2: The innovations, the tinkering, the rethinking, the search for the
21:31
Speaker 2: slightest edge never stopped.
21:35
Speaker 9: I realized, I said, this is the first genius. I
21:38
Speaker 9: remember because his mind was busy of how to make
21:42
Speaker 9: us run faster.
21:43
Speaker 2: That's Lee Evans, another Abud's greatest sprinters.
21:47
Speaker 9: I remember he said, okay, everybody, give me your your shorts,
21:52
Speaker 9: and he was punch holes in the back part of
21:56
Speaker 9: him so the wind could throw through them better. And
22:01
Speaker 9: he said, okay, okay, give me, everybody, give me the
22:02
Speaker 9: spikes out of your shoes. We take our spikes on
22:04
Speaker 9: get to him, and he would shape them like a
22:07
Speaker 9: pyramid so that the real part would get more push off.
22:12
Speaker 9: He was always thinking of waye to take off a
22:14
Speaker 9: tenth or one hundredths of a second, and I never
22:18
Speaker 9: had a coach to you'd be concerned about little minor
22:21
Speaker 9: details like that.
22:34
Speaker 2: At the heart of the Bud Winter Revolution is that
22:37
Speaker 2: he saw his role as cultivating the talent of his athletes.
22:41
Speaker 2: He took raw clay and molded it. That is not
22:45
Speaker 2: how coaches saw their role in those years. The traditional
22:48
Speaker 2: coach exploited talent. The distinction between cultivation and exploitation is crucial.
22:54
Speaker 2: Coaches of that era were motivators, recruiters, tacticians. Coaches took
23:01
Speaker 2: what they were given and put it to use. Bud
23:04
Speaker 2: was one of the first modern coaches who understood that
23:07
Speaker 2: a coach's job was to make you facture elite performance
23:11
Speaker 2: systematically and methodically, not just shepherd it into existence. The
23:16
Speaker 2: most successful of the coaches of the contemporary age, Bill
23:20
Speaker 2: Belichick and football, Phil Jackson and Pat Summit and basketball
23:24
Speaker 2: are in many ways Bud's disciples. When a coach wins
23:27
Speaker 2: again and again in different places and with different athletes,
23:31
Speaker 2: it means they have crossed the line from exploitation to cultivation.
23:36
Speaker 2: Bud was the profit of that movement. Bud held coaching
23:42
Speaker 2: clinics NonStop. He wrote a how to manual, So You
23:46
Speaker 2: Want to Be a Sprinter that became a must read
23:48
Speaker 2: for coaches and athletes alike. In it, two cartoon sprinters
23:53
Speaker 2: helped demonstrate the right way and the wrong way to
23:55
Speaker 2: execute Bud's techniques. Their names were Jack Champ and Joe Chump.
24:00
Speaker 2: Their coach is a Bud like figure named Igor Beaver.
24:05
Speaker 2: Get it egor Beaver. He eventually made a fifteen minute
24:09
Speaker 2: instructional film that he shot at San Jose State.
24:12
Speaker 10: Coach Winter believes that the sprinter should undergo a special drill.
24:16
Speaker 2: Members of Bud's team appeared in the film, which was
24:18
Speaker 2: called sprinting with Bud Winter.
24:20
Speaker 10: Bohm action is powerful, but it is also relaxed. The
24:24
Speaker 10: run of things, of driving his elbows, the hands are loose.
24:28
Speaker 2: Ray Norton was his first major recruit. In nineteen fifty eight,
24:33
Speaker 2: Norton tied the world record for the one hundred yard
24:35
Speaker 2: dash with a time of nine point three seconds. The
24:39
Speaker 2: only other Americans that held that record were from big
24:42
Speaker 2: schools like USC and COL. That same year, Budd added
24:47
Speaker 2: another star to his team. This one was shorter in
24:50
Speaker 2: stock here, a more traditional looking sprinter. Bob Pointer was
24:54
Speaker 2: a high school state champion from Pasadena who had his
24:57
Speaker 2: heart set on USC. He went to junior college trying
25:00
Speaker 2: to study his way onto the USC track team. Meanwhile,
25:04
Speaker 2: Bud kept sending him letters.
25:06
Speaker 11: That kind of thrilled me, you know, in fact that
25:08
Speaker 11: somebody for you tented to you.
25:10
Speaker 2: Eithers started to pay attention to San Jose State too.
25:13
Speaker 11: It drew crowds from you know, the Bay area and
25:17
Speaker 11: all around because Bud would promote the heck out of
25:19
Speaker 11: attract meet and we got an invitation to go to
25:23
Speaker 11: the pen relays. Well, I didn't even know where that
25:25
Speaker 11: was because I'd never been back east in my life.
25:29
Speaker 2: The Penn Relays in Philadelphia are the oldest track and
25:31
Speaker 2: field event in the United States, a massive international carnival
25:35
Speaker 2: of track and field.
25:37
Speaker 11: So Ray and I went and we won all the
25:42
Speaker 11: stuff back east, and people back there they hadn't heard
25:45
Speaker 11: the sounds. They used to pronounce its San Josie and say,
25:48
Speaker 11: those guys from San Jose, And they thought it was
25:50
Speaker 11: a black college because we had gold uniforms and most
25:55
Speaker 11: of the kids were African Americans. But what that did?
25:59
Speaker 11: That put Soundly State on the map.
26:01
Speaker 2: Bud was doing all of this with a minuscule budget
26:04
Speaker 2: out of state college that when he arrived didn't even
26:06
Speaker 2: have dormitories.
26:08
Speaker 11: He loved beating Carol of Stafford and anybody who's big,
26:16
Speaker 11: because he felt that like the poor people going out
26:19
Speaker 11: against the rich people.
26:20
Speaker 2: And Ray Norton, he was beating almost everyone.
26:24
Speaker 5: Fifty nine was my biggest year. At that time. I
26:27
Speaker 5: held the world's record for the one hundred yards, two
26:30
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty yards around a curve, the hundred meters,
26:35
Speaker 5: and the two hundred meters. I had all those records
26:38
Speaker 5: at one time, and I also went undefeated another meters
26:43
Speaker 5: period for two years. I beat them all, everybody.
26:48
Speaker 2: It was now nineteen sixty. Norton had been going strong
26:51
Speaker 2: for almost two years. Everyone thought he would win big
26:54
Speaker 2: at the Rome Olympics that year, but then just before
26:57
Speaker 2: the games, he suffered a freak injury. A teammate, the
27:02
Speaker 2: high jumper John Thomas, played a prank and threw a
27:05
Speaker 2: snake at him.
27:07
Speaker 5: That was a real stink. It was a little one,
27:09
Speaker 5: but it was, you know, done. No, I don't do
27:11
Speaker 5: things still though. I jumped out of that hurdle's position
27:15
Speaker 5: and snapped my back low part of my back. It
27:19
Speaker 5: roughs at the nerve. This is three weeks before the
27:21
Speaker 5: Olympic Games. I had no feeling in my legs, couldn't walk.
27:27
Speaker 5: I didn't run in any tune up meets. I couldn't
27:30
Speaker 5: I didn't run anymore until the Olympic Games, which I
27:35
Speaker 5: had probably lost ninety percent of my conditioning. I couldn't sleep,
27:40
Speaker 5: couldn't eat. I lost ten pounds.
27:43
Speaker 2: But Norton didn't want to give up his chance at
27:45
Speaker 2: the Olympics.
27:46
Speaker 5: I just decided that I still could win and nobody
27:49
Speaker 5: can beat me, even though I couldn't walk. Three weeks before.
27:52
Speaker 2: That, Norton made it to the finals of the one
27:55
Speaker 2: hundred meters and the two hundred meters at the Olympics,
27:58
Speaker 2: but he finished dead last. Then he botched a baton
28:01
Speaker 2: pass in a four by one hundred meter relay, leading
28:03
Speaker 2: to a disqualification. The meltdown was astonishing. The US hadn't
28:08
Speaker 2: like the men's hundred meters since nineteen twenty eight.
28:13
Speaker 5: I don't even know how I ran. To be honest with.
28:14
Speaker 2: You, only a few people knew about his injury. One
28:22
Speaker 2: of them was Bud. Norton says he begged his coach
28:25
Speaker 2: not to reveal the truth.
28:27
Speaker 5: I'm in one room, Bud next door. My door's open,
28:30
Speaker 5: so Buck to see me because I'm hurt, and he
28:32
Speaker 5: knows it. Okay, So I say, Bud, I said, you know,
28:36
Speaker 5: I'm drafted. I'm gonna play football after the Olympics. He says,
28:41
Speaker 5: I know. Champ he called me Jim and I said,
28:43
Speaker 5: I don't want him to know I'm hurt.
28:45
Speaker 2: Norton says Bud didn't want to lie.
28:48
Speaker 5: I said, you're not. It's my nerves in my back
28:52
Speaker 5: that's killing me. All you got to see is my nerves.
28:55
Speaker 5: You're not gonna be telling a lie. Let's say I
28:57
Speaker 5: said can you do that? But I don't want these
28:59
Speaker 5: people to think they get damaged goods because I'm playing
29:01
Speaker 5: football as soon as I get back out of the Olympics.
29:05
Speaker 2: All Bud would say after Norton's loss was that ra
29:09
Speaker 2: Orton was trying too hard and that's the worst thing
29:11
Speaker 2: a runner can do, which was the truth as far
29:14
Speaker 2: as Bud Winter was concerned. Speed City had been stopped
29:18
Speaker 2: short in its first great international test.
29:22
Speaker 12: The Olympic Games to me were at once a inspiring, exciting, interesting,
29:31
Speaker 12: horrible experience.
29:33
Speaker 2: That's Bud in nineteen sixty three giving the opening remarks
29:36
Speaker 2: that a sports symposium hosted by San Jose Steai.
29:40
Speaker 13: They were aspiring because once again they pointed out what
29:42
Speaker 13: we must do in the United States if we're going
29:44
Speaker 13: to maintain our sports supremacy. They were wonderful because it
29:49
Speaker 13: pointed out that maybe on the field of sport is
29:51
Speaker 13: the one common ground upon which the nations in the
29:53
Speaker 13: world can get together. And now horrible because of what
29:56
Speaker 13: happened to Ray and Norton and are losing the sprint supremacy.
29:59
Speaker 2: All of that relaxation training, the visualization exercises, the loose hands,
30:04
Speaker 2: loose jaws, high knees all undone a freak injury from
30:09
Speaker 2: a prank gone wrong. Bud was devastated, but he and
30:16
Speaker 2: his runners would get another chance in the spotlight.
30:20
Speaker 13: Every Olympic Games has its heroes, both athletes and coaches,
30:24
Speaker 13: and perhaps.
30:25
Speaker 2: Only this time, Speed City would get swept up in
30:28
Speaker 2: another bigger revolution across America. The nineteen sixties would bring riots, protests, violence,
30:34
Speaker 2: political assassinations, and the organized marches of the Civil rights movement.
30:39
Speaker 2: And here was a group of young black men who
30:41
Speaker 2: had already been liberated from one orthodoxy, who had been
30:45
Speaker 2: taught that calm and self possession and preparation could unleash
30:49
Speaker 2: extraordinary performance. The sprinters of speed City would become famous,
30:55
Speaker 2: and a question would be asked of them that had
30:57
Speaker 2: never really been asked of athletes before. What will you
31:01
Speaker 2: make of your position? You will stand on a platform,
31:05
Speaker 2: what will you do once you're there? In our next episode,
31:10
Speaker 2: the athletes of speed City win, acclaim and break world records,
31:15
Speaker 2: but off the track, they struggle to make ends meet.
31:20
Speaker 2: After a discus thrower objects to the treatment of black
31:23
Speaker 2: athletes on campus, he sparks a movement that will become
31:27
Speaker 2: one of the most important moments of activism in sports history.
31:47
Speaker 2: Legacy of Speed is hosted by Me Malcolm Gladwell. It's
31:51
Speaker 2: executive produced by Tracksmith and presented by Puma. Our producers
31:56
Speaker 2: are Joel Meyer and Emily Rostak. The show is edited
31:59
Speaker 2: by Chrishibobita and Karen Shakerji, and our mix engineer is
32:04
Speaker 2: Jake Gorski. Original music composed by Alexis Quadrato with trumpet
32:09
Speaker 2: by Lee Hogan's fact checking by Wynton Saint Clair. Our
32:14
Speaker 2: Pushkin EPs are Katherine Girdeau and miel Obel. Our development
32:18
Speaker 2: team is Lee Talmulaude and Justin Lang. We had help
32:22
Speaker 2: with research and archival material from eur La Hill, Kathy Winter,
32:28
Speaker 2: Tom Ratcliffe, John Stalkup, Brett Lyman, and Carly Lowe. Special
32:33
Speaker 2: thanks to Bud Winter Enterprises. Legacy of Speed is a
32:37
Speaker 2: production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show, consider
32:41
Speaker 2: subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and ad free
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Speaker 2: listening across our network for four ninety nine a month.
32:50
Speaker 2: Look for the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or
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