Track and field historian/statistician made great contribution

World track and field lost one of its great contributors when Italian statistician Roberto Quercetani died in Florence, aged 97 on May 13.

One of the great historians and statisticians of world athletics, Quercetani, or RLQ as he was known, was a founder member of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians, serving as president of that group from 1950-68.

 

He first published his A World History of Track and Field Athletics in 1964, regularly updating it and added other titles all highlighting statistical and historic areas of interest in the sport.

When undertaking research for Conquerors of Time, the story of the great era of mile and 1500m running bounded by the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games, I arranged to meet with Quercetani while on a European trip to discuss one of the central characters in my story, Luigi Beccali, the winner of the 1500m in Los Angeles in 1932 and bronze medalist in the 1936 classic race in the Berlin Olympics.

He walked into the hotel in which I was staying and said it had been where all the athletes had stayed for a major track meet in the city. 

He explained then that Beccali had been his inspiration to becoming involved in athletics. He carried with him a copy of a special issue of the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato which was devoted to Beccali's career. He thought it might be of help to me, although sadly it was in Italian and I would need to get it translated.

He was surprised when I told him I already had a copy of the magazine, and that it had also been translated for me. It was then that I was able to tell him that Luigi Beccali's son Gene had loaned me a copy after I met with him at his home on New York's Long Island in 2003.

At the same time he was delighted to learn that Gene had been such a fund of information about his father, because there was so little known about Luigi Beccali after he left Italy to live in the United States from 1938. 

Quercetani said that while he had spoken with Beccali when he was awarded an Italian knighthood, Caviliere in 1965, he thought, it was only a brief conversation and there had not been the time to talk about his life beyond Italy. He did tell Quercetani, "I'm too American to Italians and too Italian to Americans."

Quercetani was very supportive of the effort going into the book and highly complimentary when it was published.

Appreciation of Quercetani's achievements by New Zealanders may have been diminished due to Kiwi Peter Heidenstrom establishing himself as a track and field statistician of the highest order in this country.

However, there is no doubting the knowledge and understanding that Quercetani brought to track and field and his history is a must-have source for every event on the track and field programme.

He was a big fan of New Zealand runners, Jack Lovelock, Peter Snell and Murray Halberg especially.

Quercetani was in no doubt of the significance of the 1500m final at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

"The Berlin 1500m is still remembered as a classic in the history over the event, were it only for the tactical skill displayed in it by a man who had keyed himself up for the occasion with unsurpassed precision. This man was Jack Lovelock," he wrote in the 2000 edition of Athletics – A history of modern track and field athletics (1860-2000).

And in my interview with him he said: "The 1936 1500m final was a masterpiece. It was one of the greatest 1500m races in history because it put together three great champions." They were Lovelock, American Glenn Cunningham, and Beccali.

Searching for Jack Lovelock, and a flat white

One of the delights of undertaking sports research is finding a treasure trove of information from an unexpected source.

For any historian, the LA84 Foundation Sports library in the West Adams district of Los Angeles is a must visit.

When the internet was in its infancy and I was undertaking some research on Jack Lovelock for what would become Conquerors of Time, I came across a reference to the LA84 Foundation Library. Upon making contact with them it was clear that when the opportunity arose they needed to be included in any research trips to the United States.

That chance occurred in 2003 when setting aside four days in Los Angeles to utilise the library's resources. Basing myself in a motel in Santa Monica, I was a short taxi ride away from the museum. But before getting there, there was an unexpected, but most welcome, surprise.

The trip had been a round-the-world effort firstly to visit Galatas on Crete to do some research on the World War Two bayonet charge by two companies of New Zealand's 23 Battalion, and others, to reclaim the small village, just outside of Canea, that was the subject of my book Galatas 1941: Courage in Vain. From Crete it was to New York to stay with Prof. Roger Robinson and his wife Kathrine Switzer, while also visiting the families of milers Bill Bonthron (Princeton) and Luigi Beccali (Long Island) for research on the Lovelock book.

So successful were those contacts that by the time Los Angeles was reached it would be fair to say the brain, and the suitcase, was overloaded with excitement with the information that had been gained.

Alas, one of the disappointments of time away from home was that coffee a la Australasia, and Coffee Culture in Christchurch, where we were living at the time, especially, had been a noticeable absence during the trip. Sustenance was to be closer at hand than was appreciated when checking into said Santa Monica motel. The manager said if I needed some breakfast in the morning there was a little café out the front that was bound to suit.

So walking into the cafe to start my day next morning, I said to the woman behind the counter: "This may sound a little strange, but do you do flat whites here?" She responded, "You're from Australia or New Zealand!"

"New Zealand," I replied.

She then said: "We had an Australian barista stay here a couple of months ago and she showed us how to make flat whites, would you like one?"

Would I what? It arrived and when completed she said: "How was that?" And I said: "May I have another please? It's been a long time between flat whites."

Suitably fortified I made my way to West Adams to the LA Foundation Sports Library which was a site to behold. If this was how proceeds from the 1984 Olympics should be spent then all power to Peter Ueberroth and friends.

Faced with such an impressive array of sports books and magazines, including complete sets of the late, lamented World Sports, Sports Illustrated and a near complete series of The Amateur Athlete, the USOC official journal, it was fair to say pig and muck would be a fair description of my reaction.

The Track and Field section of the library was prolific and with only four days there was a lot of ground to be covered. The chosen method was to get a library ladder – the books were on the top shelf – and work my way through the indexes of the books most obviously related to my subject.

It was when nearing the end of that process that a true gem emerged, the story of Artur Takac, titled 60 Olympic Years. Takac had been Yugoslavia's delegate to the IOC for many years and it turned out that he had been a handy middle-distance prospect in his youth.

He raced with Lovelock in an event in Zagreb in 1935. Aged 17 at the time, Takac was taken under Lovelock's wing and was given a coaching session on the hoof, as it were, during the race. Too young to be included in the Yugolavia team for the 1936 Olympics, Takac was sent to the Olympic Youth Camp staged in association with the Games.

There, he ran into Lovelock who invited him to a training session before the 1500m. After watching him do his workout, Takac timed Lovelock through several 300m repeats and saw just how fast he was going. He asked him why he specifically ran 300m sprints?

Lovelock merely said: "Silence my boy. Just keep watching and you will see in the final all will be decided in the last 300 metres. But it has to be a surprise."

This was gold, literally and figuratively, because it confirmed that Lovelock's plan to sprint from 300m out was no fluke. And it destroyed the myth that Lovelock had arrived at this tactic very late in the piece.

On that find alone, the trip to the library had been worthwhile. But it yielded much more. It is a fantastic place for any sports historian and it was my experience that the staff became very involved in what I was seeking and could not have been more helpful.

Check out the Library's latest initiative

Conquerors of Time Review (4)

Jamie McKay in The Southland Times, February 26, 2010:

On a winning note, former Southland Times sports editor Lynn McConnell really has struck gold with his Jack Lovelock book Conquerors Of Time.
As chronicled last week, the story revolves around the 1932-36 period and looks at the lives of Lovelock and his rivals for gold in the 1500m at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
His two main rivals were the Italian Luigi Beccali (who won gold at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932) and the superstar American Glenn Cunningham, whom many considered the favourite for Berlin.
The chapter on Cunningham makes compelling reading. Growing up on a remote farm in Kansas, Cunningham triumphed over terrible childhood burns in 1917 that left one leg shorter than the other and took several years of constant self-massage before he was able to maintain balance, let alone run properly.
He escaped another childhood brush with death by hanging on to a cow's tail in a snow blizzard (a practice he'd developed during his recovery process to help regain his balance), the family cow getting him home safely to the barn when he would have otherwise perished.
Then in 1928, as his athletics career was starting to flourish, a high school baseball accident saw him ignore the ongoing pain of several loosened teeth.
It was only when he undertook a medical for entry into the US Navy at the advent of World War II that the full extent of the injury was realised.
His teeth were badly abscessed, the dentist saying with all that poison flowing into his system, it was a wonder he could walk during his athletic career, let alone run through the constant pain he'd wrongly associated to his legs.
For the record, Cunningham finished second to Lovelock in Berlin with Beccali third. Sports historians will thoroughly enjoy Conquerors Of Time.

Conquerors of Time Review (3)

From: AthleticsWeekly, January 21, 2010

BOOK REVIEW: Story of the 1936 Olympic 1500m is revisited by New Zealand writer

CONQUERORS OF TIME


Lynn McConnell brings alive a golden era in middle-distance running that few people today were around to witness. Conquerors of Time is the story of the race to win the 1936 Olympic 1500m title – a classic confrontation won by Jack Lovelock of New Zealand.

The cast of athletes during the period was a who's who of milers. In addition to Lovelock, characters included: Glenn Cunningham, the world mile record holder from the United States; Luigi Beccali, the Italian who had won the 1932 Olympic 1500m gold; Jerry Cornes, the British runner-up in 1932; and Sydney Wooderson, the bespectacled hero of British athletics who would go on to break the world mile record in 1937.

McConnell's book charts the progress of these runners, plus others, from the 1932 Games in Los Angeles to the Berlin Olympics itself. It also looks at what happened to them after their athletics careers were over.

Such was the anticipation before the race in Berlin, the start was delayed slightly to allow Adolf Hitler to take his seat. The crowd was not disappointed either, as the race was won in style by Lovelock in a world record time.

This is a terrifically researched book and a glowing endorsement has also been given by former AW editor Mel Whatman, who recently reviewed the book in Athletics International and wrote: "Races at these distances are superbly reconstructed by Lynn McConnell, an award winning writer and editor from New Zealand who provides particularly acute insights into the career and personality of his compatriot thanks to reference to Lovelock's diaries.

"The other towering figures of that period are also well drawn and there is much for the enthusiast to savour in this 244-page paperback. It's a terrific, nostalgic story of the fascinating characters who contributed to an enchanting era in miling history."

Review of Conquerors of Time

BOOK REVIEW – New Zealand Herald (Friday, November 27, 2009)

Conquerors of Time
Lynn McConnell
Sports Books

www.sportsbooks.ltd.uk

What a great shame this book could not find a home in New Zealand.

Veteran sports journalist and prolific author Lynn McConnell (this is his 16th book) formulated the idea for this book as a repudiation of some theories posited in James McNeish's acclaimed novel Lovelock. However, his focus soon changed to the quality of the 1936 1500m final and in particular the quality of the field in what was the first competitive era of middle-distance running.

It is a book whose protagonist is a New Zealand hero, though it is not a New Zealand book as such, and perhaps that is what made potential publishing houses here fidgety. It certainly couldn't have been the quality.

This could be considered the mortar around the Lovelock foundation stones – The Legend of Lovelock (1964), by Norman Harris and As If Running on Air (2008), Lovelock's diaries edited by David Colquhoun – but Conquerors of Time is more than that also.

It is a fascinating study into a golden era of the mile and metric mile, perhaps, alongside the race for the four-minute mile, the golden era.

Lovelock is cast, not surprisingly, as the lead character, but rivals such as Italian Luigi Beccali, Brit Sydney Wooderson and Americans Glenn Cunningham, Bill Bonthron and Gene Venzke do not sit idly in the shadow of Jack's brilliance.

Each enjoys their time in the spotlight, with a number of classic races re-run with the focus on one athlete at a time. There were the Race of the Century series at Princeton, the AAA champs in Britain, the 1500m final in Los Angeles '32 and, of course, the 1936 Olympic final in Berlin.

This is meticulously researched, by the time you have finished there is nothing you will not know about the build-up to the great race. If you like athletics, you will love this. If you enjoy character studies into the men who became the first middle-distance track legends, there is plenty for your too.

One minor criticism is that there is perhaps too much verbatim drawing upon contemporary tracts.

- Dylan Cleaver