SOMEWHERE, WHEREVER Olympic champions go, Ray Ewry is in a good mood. He's gotta be smiling. It isn't every century you defend your titles, especially when you're dead.
You may have missed the recent announcement out of Lausanne, Switzerland, that two Americans - Kareem Streete-Thompson and Dwight Stones - would attempt to better Ewry's world records in the standing high jump and standing long jump.The occasion was the opening of a new exhibition at the Olympic museum in Lausanne, headquarters of the International Olympic Committee. In an attempt to add some spark to the event, the organizers asked Streete-Thompson, a long-jumper, and Stones, a former world record holder in the high jump, to take a public shot at Ewry's records.
This is the IOC. The people with little conscience. This is the same organization that recently voted to hike its retirement age because the president was about to reach it.
They had no qualms about getting rid of Ewry's records.
Even if you've never heard of him - which you probably haven't - Ewry is without equal in Olympic history. No one, not Jim Thorpe, not Carl Lewis, not Jesse Owens, not Sonia Henie, not even Paavo Nurmi, has ever won 10 gold medals, which is how many Ewry won in the Games of 1900, 1904, 1906 and 1908. (The two he won in 1906 in Athens - the so-called Intercalated Games in Athens - aren't official, but nobody knew that when they competed for them).
And neither has any Olympian ever won three gold medals in a single afternoon, which is what Ewry did on July 16, 1900, in Paris.
Ewry's specialty was jumping from a standstill. He competed in the standing high jump, the standing long jump and the standing triple jump. In each event he set a world record that, nearly a century later, has never been bettered.
Granted, the reason Ewry's records still, uh, stand is because his events were dropped from the Olympic program after 1912, not long after he retired. But the marks have nonetheless remained on the books ever since. Through the years they've served as an enduring testament to a remarkable example of persistence and determination.
Ray Ewry spent his childhood in a wheelchair.
He contracted polio in 1883, when he was 10 years old, and was so debilitated that all his doctors could suggest was to exercise his legs by flexing them and then relaxing them.
So for years, that's what he did.
Finally, the polio retreated, and what was left was a tall (6-foot-3) young man who knew the propriety of efficient movement. Every time Ewry jumped, he jumped as if he were leaving that wheelchair. He jumped for the sheer joy of being able to. He jumped because he could.
He became an accomplished all-around athlete at Purdue University, where he played on the football team and captained the track team while earning bachelor's and graduate degrees in mechanical engineering. He moved on to a rewarding career that covered more than 40 years with the New York City Water Dept. as a hydraulics engineer. Every four years he would ask his supervisors for time off so he could compete in the Olympics.
How good was he? So good that his standing high jump of 5-foot-5 in the 1900 Games would have placed seventh in the running high jump. No one else came within a half-foot of him.
So good that the running high-jumpers and long-jumpers flocked to watch when he jumped, in an attempt to copy his style.
So good that the New York Herald called him "The greatest jumper who ever lived."
He retired after the 1908 Games . . . having never tasted defeat.
It was that legacy that the keepers of the Olympic flame were messing with last week in Lausanne. After all these years, they wanted to take Ray Ewry's name out of the record books. To that end they recruited athletes of the late 20th Century, bigger, stronger, and faster.
But not better.
The long jumper, Streete-Thompson, went 11-3, nearly two inches short of Ewry's world record 11-4 7/8. The high jumper, Stones, who once jumped a world record 7-7 in the running high jump, went 4-9, eight inches below Ewry's world mark of 5-5.
Somewhere, wherever Olympic champions go, you just knew Ray Ewry was getting mobbed. Still undefeated, after all these years.