TRIALS & TRIUMPHS: MORMONS IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES; by Lee Benson and Doug Robinson; Deseret Book; 261 pages; $12.95.
From from media reports to television commercials to food packages, Americans have been bombarded with hype of Olympic proportions about the upcoming Summer Games in Barcelona.Fortunately, there are only six more days until the opening ceremonies, at which time NBC and cable companies will, hopefully, quit begging people to order the "Triplecast."
The over-commercialization of the Olympics this year may cause sports purists to reminisce of earlier Games when the athletes were true amateurs and pride and medals were the incentives rather than big endorsements checks.
That's the way it was in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912, during the Fifth Olympic Games of the modern era. Alma Richards, a high-school dropout from Parowan, Utah, surprised everyone, including himself, by winning the gold medal in the high jump.
After the Olympics, Richards not only finished high school but went on to graduate from college and earn a law degree. His story is one of 12 in-depth profiles of former Olympic athletes in the new book "Trials and Triumphs: Mormons in the Olympic Games" by veteran Deseret News sports writers Lee Benson and Doug Robinson.
The authors list 64 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that have participated in the Games over the years. In addition to the dozen in-depth profiles, nearly fifty LDS athletes, from `A' (Anders Hilding Arrhenius, shot put 1972) to `Z' (Walter Ward Zobell, Jr., international trapshooting, 1984), have biographical sketches about them in the book.
As former Los Angeles Raider and television broadcaster Todd Christensen points out in the foreward, it is not just a "golly-gee-whiz look at champions in an effort to make us feel warm and fuzzy inside." In fact, only five of the 12 athletes in the detailed profiles earned Olympic medals of any kind. Instead the book looks at the dedication that it took these athletes just to make the various Olympic teams and, more often than not, the disappointment of not doing as well as they would have liked at the Games.
The book details the career of steeplechaser Henry Marsh, who made four Olympic teams and was ranked in the top 10 in the world for 12 years, much of the time at No. 1, but never earned an Olympic medal. In contrast, it tells of the story behind Peter Vidmar winning three gymnastics medals, two gold, in 1984 just a few miles from where he grew up.
It profiles Clarence Robison, who ran the 5,000 meters in the 1948 Games prior to becoming BYU's track coach for 40 years and Jay Lambert, who tried to knock people down as a heavyweight boxer in the '48 Games, but for the last four decades has helped people get back on their feet as a physician.
Other profiles are of diver Paula Jean Pope, gold-medal rower Robert Detweiler, discus thrower L. Jay Silvester, Canadian basketball star Karl Tilleman and runners Doug Padilla, Paul Cummings and Ed Eyestone.
Reading the personal stories of these athletes can restore faith in the Olympic spirit, just as the upcoming 17 Days of Glory in Barcelona will likely overshadow bad taste left over from overabundance of pre-Games hype.
Here's a suggestion: try reading "Trials and Triumphs" during commericals and coverage of "sports" like syncronized swimming and rhythmic gymnatics during the network's coverage of the Games. It may not be the "Triplecast," but, hey, it'll be a lot less expensive.