1928—Amsterdam
George Baird, '29BA
1600-Meter Relay

George H. Baird was a leader in athletics. He led the University of Iowa to glory in 1928 when at Amsterdam he became the university's first athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal.

As the lead-off man for America's team in the 1600-meter relay, he and his three teammates left all other Olympic competitors straggling behind. Their time set a new Olympic record and 3 minutes 14 2/10 seconds became the time to beat.

Because the 1600-meter relay is traditionally the last event, Baird's memories of the 1928 Games are sketchy. He continued to work out right up to the competition.

After the closing ceremonies and a week or so in Paris—where a Frenchman chased him off the track at the Paris Stadium—Baird and his team headed for London. They crossed the English Channel in a Fokker, a plane Baird remembers being similar to Lindbergh's, with "tiny little windows and seats like an army jeep."

In London Baird again started his team to victory and again the Americans set a record, this time the world's record for the m"ile relay at 3 minutes 13 4/10 seconds.

Baird returned to the university to graduate just in time for the Great Depression, an economic circumstance that effectively ended his competitive track career. But, at age 77, Baird is running again. We interrupted his trek to the track when we called to ask him about his Olympic competition. "I feel great," he said.

1932—Los Angeles
Edward Gordon, '61BS
(attended 1927-32)
Broad Jump

Competing in Los Angeles in 1932, Edward Gordon jumped 25 feet, 3/4 inches. Though his mark was a full foot less than the broad jump world record set a week before by a Japanese athlete, Gordon's effort was the best from the Olympic field of competitors. It earned him the first of two gold medals the University of Iowa could claim in that Olympic year.

Although a hurdler and high jumper in high school, Gordon was convinced by Iowa track coach George Bresnahan that he should compete in the broad jump at the college level. The advice must have been good. During his freshman year (1928), Gordon qualified for the U.S. Olympic team competing at the Amsterdam Games. Unfortunately, a heel injury hindered his performance.

At Iowa, Gordon was the only collegian to win three NCAA championships in field events. By the time he qualified for the 1932 Olympic Games, he had won 18 major titles.

For Edward Gordon, the Olympic gold medal he earned in 1932 was number 19 in a long list of significant athletic accomplishments.

1932—Los Angeles
George Saling, '32BSC
110-Meter Hurdles

Track star George Saling had several hurdles to clear before he won the Olympic gold at Los Angeles in 1932.

Lack of money forced him to drop out of school temporarily in 1931 to work. But he continued training on his own and later that year he was able to return to his studies and to compete for the University of Iowa. Then in January, 1932, a muscle injury prevented him from entering all but a few meets. The remarkable athlete healed quickly, though. In June, George Saling broke the world records in both the 120-yard and 110-meter high hurdles.

The following month capped his career. Saling won the 1932 Olympic championship and set a new Olympic record that equaled the existing world mark of 14.6 seconds in the 110-meter high hurdles.

The glory was to be short-lived. One year later, George Saling's gold medal career ended tragically with his death in an automobile accident.

1948—London
Walter Ris, '49BA
100-Meter Freestyle

Gold medalist Walter Ris might never have become an Olympic champion had he not been interested in playing football. A high school injury drove him to the water when a doctor suggested that he either have surgery to repair his knee or swimming to strengthen it.

Recruited by the University of Illinois to play football in 1942, Ris's athletic career was interrupted by World War II. In his first 100-meter trial while attempting to qualify for the Navy swimming team, he missed the world record by less than one second. The timers wouldn't believe it until Ris verified his speed by swimming again with the use of three clocks. Football suddenly lost its glory for Walter Ris.

After his years in the Navy, Ris began looking around for a strong swimming school. In those days, Yale, Michigan, and Ohio State shared the NCAA title exclusively among themselves and often reserved the top three spots. Yet Ris chose Iowa.

"I really appreciated the rural charm," says Ris. "I'll never forget driving in. I asked my friend Bill McDonald, 'Where's the town?' and he said, 'We just passed it! We're on the way to the Field House.'"

The Field House pool was another reason for Ris's choice. "It was the only long course pool (60'x150') in the Big Ten," Ris says. And it was one of the only three indoor pools that large in the entire country. Curiously, one of the reasons Iowa had such an outstanding facility was that there was no adequate source of water on the west side of the Iowa River. The administration was convinced that a pool so large could act as a holding tank from which fire hoses would pump water in case of a big fire.

But Ris wasn't thinking of fires. He was impressed by Iowa's swimming coach, David Armbruster. "I knew him by reputation," Ris comments. "He was outstanding! I'd have to say that my experiences with Dave were really gratifying. The greatest turn I ever made was attending the University of Iowa."

Ris prospered under Armbruster's coaching. "Armbruster added his quiet character to my training," Ris says. "In those days I was a robust young man who thought he knew it all. My attitude was 'this is nice, but we Navy men have seen it all.'" Nonetheless, with Armbruster's coaching Ris developed a slow starting style that kept hearts aflutter until the end. It was called pacing.

Pacing was a new concept for sprint swimmers whose usual practice was to give all they could from the beginning. "It was amazing how brilliant Dave was," Ris said after he won the gold medal in 1948. "Armbruster was the first to talk pace in swimming, but he never got the credit he deserved. He spent most of the year leading up to the Olympics working on the proper pace for me."

Always in bed by 10:30, Ris sacrificed his social life during his junior year in college. "But," he says, "it paid off when the time came in London in 1948." Though that was the fourth year that Ris had held the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) title for freestyle swimming, the Olympic competition was stiff.

"My biggest thrill was making the U.S. team," Ris says. "You can't have any idea of the effort. You practice all your life for an event that takes a minute and if you have a bad day or miss a turn, you might lose it all."

At the Olympics Ris was competing against top athletes from the U.S. as well as those from countries around the world. One of the finalists, American Alan Ford, had broken the world record for the 100-meter freestyle two months before the games, but Ris says he had no worries. "The easiest race in my career was the one I swam at the Olympic competitions," Ris remembers.

Both Armbruster and Ris knew he was well prepared. "Down in 27 seconds, back in 30," Armbruster ordered. "If you come close to that you won't have to worry about anything else."

Well, Ris went down in 27.2 and back in 30.1. The New York Herald Tribune described that last race this way: "Ford, who came back from four years in Navy service to try for the Olympic title, was finally in his top form. He dove in, plunged thrashing into the lead. Ford in front, the others all close, but Ris definitely next to last. They whirled off the turn. Ford held the lead to the last ten yards, but as he headed for victory, Ris came on with beautiful action and drive, torpedoing past one after another, until, in the final strokes, he nailed Ford and won going away."

Even today, Ris describes the Olympic award ceremony as a very special moment. "It's a moment in your life when you take the liberty to tell yourself you are the best in the world," he says. "It only lasts the 50-60 seconds the anthem plays, but the friendships and memories of that minute remain for life."

Ris's memories of those glory years go beyond the games themselves. After he graduated from he UI in 1949 and was voted swimmer of the year by college coaches, he retired from competitive swimming. But his prowess in the water made him a candidate for succeeding his friend, Johnny Weismuller. Ris took a screen test as Tarzan. Over 30 years later, he chuckles about that scene—"I was swinging from the vine, giving the Tarzan yell, the whole bit! One of the greatest comedies of all times." Needless to say, Ris didn't get the part.

Today Ris is a member of every swimming hall of fame. He is serving on four Olympic committees for this year's Olympic Games. And he has just begun to unpack all of his awards from his years of winning. "It's going to cost me $12,000 in frames," he jokes.

1956—Melbourne
Carl Cain, '56BA
Basketball

Not all Olympic champions think of a gold medal as the zenith of their careers. Basketball player Carl Cain refers to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne as "the first time I came to grips in any meaningful way with what I would call a significant disappointment."

Cain was to be one of America's starting players on the first night of competition against the Japanese. But minutes before the team was to take the floor, a chronic back problem flared up and Cain had to be taken from the dressing room on a stretcher. For nearly ten days he lay immobilized on a hospital bed. Finally, with only one game left to decide the Olympic basketball championship, Cain convinced the doctors to release him to watch the last match. The doctors discharged him with a warning not to put any strain on his back for a month.

That night Cain wasted no time rejoining the team. First he talked the coach into letting him dress for the game and sit on the bench. Then, with the Americans comfortably ahead, he persuaded the coach to let him on the court. With one quick play, Cain sunk a free throw to assure himself of a gold medal. But the experience was anti-climactic and certainly not the triumph associated with the Olympic gold.

Carl Cain's best basketball memories are of earlier days, those days at Iowa when he was one of the "Fabulous Five." Alone, each player was good enough, Cain remembers, "but when we came together we were kind of extra."

Not only extra, the Fabulous Five were extraordinary! Led by Coach Bucky O'Connor, they captured the Big Ten crown and qualified for the NCAA semi-finals two years in a row (1955 and 1956). Carl Cain (no. 21), Sharm Scheuerman (no. 46), Bill Seaberg (no. 22), Bill Schoof (no. 33), and Bill Logan (no. 31) played so well during their college careers that their jersey numbers were retired by the Iowa Athletics Department when they graduated.

1956—Melbourne
Charles Darling, '52 BA
Basketball

Charles Darling wanted to play Big Ten basketball. He came to Iowa, made All-American and Phi Beta Kappa, was elected class president, and four years after graduation surpassed his greatest dreams by winning a gold medal in the 1956 Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

Darling's preparation for the Olympics began when coach "Pops" Harrison offered him an athletic scholarship.

Training under three coaches at Iowa, Darling admits that his favorite was Bucky O'Connor, the coach who would soon become legend in the annals of UI athletics.

Four years after graduating, Darling ran into Bucky O'Connor again, but this time his former coach was guiding the opposing team. At the 1956 Olympic trials in Kansas City, Bucky coached the College All Stars, a team unified by the remarkable talents of one of basketball's now most famous players, center Bill Russell. Darling played for the Phillips 66ers. In the final game of the round robin Olympic trials, the two teams met.

The memory is still vivid for Darling. "The highlight of my whole career was playing against Bill Russell in that game," he says. "We went head-on there." The outcome was that the five starters for the victorious Phillips 66ers formed the nucleus of America's Olympic team, with seven men from the other round robin teams filling out the rest of the squad. Carl Cain, a 1956 Iowa graduate, was one of them. And, of course, Bill Russell led the Olympic team from that point on.

Darling recalls that "the best ball I ever played in my life was when we were practicing for the Olympics and I was playing center against Bill Russell twice a day for a month. He brings out the best in everybody."

1960—Rome
Terrence McCann, '57BSC
Wrestling

Competitive wrestling was no sacrifice to UI alumnus Terrence McCann: "It was something I liked and wanted to do. It was an important part of my life."

Back in the fifties, McCann chose Iowa over other schools because of one man, Iowa's wrestling coach, Dave McCuskey. McCann knew that McCuckey had coached Bill Cole—a wrestler McCann feels is the best ever—and, he says, "I wanted to be coached by the guy who coached Bill Cole."

Even today, McCann speaks of his wrestling mentor with adulation. "I never regretted my decision to wrestle at Iowa. Dave McCuskey is probably one of the finest men, one of the finest coaches, and one of the greatest human beings I've ever known."

McCann's own record on the mat supports McCuskey's coaching ability. In 1959, the U.S. competed in ten dual meets with the U.S.S.R., five in the U.S. and five in Russia. With ten men spanning the various weight classes, Americans fought it out with their opponents in a total of 100 matches. The U.S. won only nine of those contests, with one draw, but in all cases the American victor was Terrence McCann.

One year later, at the semi-finals of the Rome Olympics, McCann found himself in a head-to-head match with the only Russian wrestler he'd been unable to beat the year before. Because of the round robin approach to point accumulation in wrestling, he needed to pin his opponent to earn enough points to advance to the finals. Since neither a draw nor a win by decision alone would give McCann the opportunity to advance in the competition, he knew his chances were slight. But coaching and determination saw him through. When McCann pinned the Russian in the first ten seconds of the first round, he passed the only hurdle remaining between himself and the Olympic gold.

McCann remains competitive to this day. Although he continued wrestling until he was 29, trouble with his knees encouraged him to enter other sports. At age 50 he competes in surfing and outrigger canoeing, both popular sports in his resident state, California. As a matter of fact, he notes, "There's a good chance I'll be competing in the World Championships for outrigger canoeing the week after the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles!"