The headline: "Richards returns from Olympic games; Utah high jumper who won first place in Sweden will be banqueted," Deseret News Aug. 19, 1912.
Aside from a brief notice, the Deseret News could hardly have been said to be wildly enthusiastic about the remarkable feats of Utah's first Olympian, Alma Wilford Richards.
The young man from Parowan returned from the fifth Olympics of the modern era in Stockholm with a gold medal in his pocket. He had set a record in the running high jump, but the 2-inch Deseret News story said only that he was "in the best of health and says he enjoyed the trip immensely."
Several earlier Deseret News sports page stories had heralded the triumphal return of the American Olympians from Europe with more medals than any other country, but there was no mention that a Utahn was among them.
If Salt Lake City was lukewarm, Provo turned out in droves to welcome home a local hero. The Provo City Band blared, and everyone who could muster a "horseless carriage" chugged up to form a parade. More than a thousand people were at Union Pacific passenger station to cheer the returning hero.
Richards dedicated his gold medal to Brigham Young University Coach Eugene L. "Timpanogos" Roberts.
It was Roberts who looked past the ragged rural edges of a young student at Brigham Young High School and saw a world-class athlete. Before that, the rangy youth had competed in track and field events only once, aside from local meets. In his first state meet, he represented Murdock Academy of Beaver, where he had returned to school at age 19 after dropping out of Parowan's schools in eighth grade, a common practice for many young men in that era.
A chance meeting with a Michigan State University professor put Richards into reverse and sent him in search of more learning, according to a biography in "Trials and Triumphs," a collection of stories about Utah's Olympic athletes by Deseret News sports writers Lee Benson and Doug Robinson.
"Get an education and you can travel as I do," the professor told him.
Prospects of a lifetime riding the range lost luster as Richards contemplated the larger possibilities. He went to Beaver to live with a sister and enrolled at Murdock. Coaches at the school suggested he go out for track. During the state meet at the University of Utah that year, Richards scored first in the high jump and shot put and second in broad jump and pole vault. He was awarded a gold medal as the outstanding performer, and his team outscored much larger Salt Lake City 32-22. Not bad for a young man whose earliest training consisted of chasing jackrabbits in the fields around Parowan.
Richards met Roberts when the student moved from Beaver to Provo to attend 10th grade at Brigham Young High School. The coach happened to catch Richards topping the high jump at 5 feet 11 inches and recognized him as the most gifted natural jumper he'd ever seen.
Roberts began grooming the young athlete for the upcoming 1912 Olympics, but when it came time for the U.S. Olympic finals, he couldn't raise enough money for both of them to travel to Chicago. With $150 donated by BYU, Richards made the trip alone, using the long hours on the train to memorize Rudyard Kipling's inspiring poem, "If," which Roberts recommended to him.
In Chicago, Richards went straight from the train to Northwestern University and jumped 6 feet 2 inches just to work out the kinks of the ride. Amos Alonzo Stagg, the famous Chicago University coach and a member of the U.S. selection committee, was watching. He took the young Utahn under his wing and helped prepare him for the Stockholm meet.
On the boat trip to Stockholm, Richards developed an eye infection, and he wore a floppy felt cap to keep the sun out of his eyes. He kept the cap on throughout most of the competition, adopting it as a good luck charm.
Among the 57 high-jump contestants from 20 countries was fellow American Jim Thorpe, the amazing American Indian whose athletic abilities became legend. But Thorpe was out when Richards and German Hans Liesche remained the two finalists.
Facing a bar 6 feet 4 inches off the ground - an Olympic record - Richards felt the need for extraordinary support. Walking to the edge of the field, in full view of 22,000 noisy spectators, he dropped to his knees and prayed.
Afterward, he wrote, "I felt as if the whole world was lifted off my shoulders." His confidence restored, he thought about his family and his fans, his coaches and all those he most wanted to please, took his running leap and cleared the bar with an inch to spare.
Liesche, who had topped the bar on his first try each time it was raised, had the misfortune to begin his run just as the crowd began screaming to acknowledge the last moments of the final 800-meter race. The jumper failed on his first attempt and two subsequent tries.
Swedish King Gustav presented the gold medal and an olive wreath to the young man from Parowan, Utah. But the king never could quite pronounce "Parowan," though Richards prompted him.
Richards and Liesche looked forward to another meeting in four years, but World War I intervened. Richards enlisted in the U.S. Army, and Liesche served his country.
Years later, the two athletes exchanged notes. Richards said he had felt bad that Liesche's final jump was marred by the distractions of the crowd and that he thought the German probably was the better jumper.
"When I went to Europe as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1918, I prayed that I wouldn't meet you on the field of battle," he wrote.
Liesche responded that, "Having heard what you said about me, I was deeply touched. But the best high jumper on that particular day in Stockholm was not Hans Liesche . . . but certainly Alma Richards, USA."
While serving with General John J. Pershing's 8th Division in Europe, Richards participated in the American Expeditionary Forces Track and Field Championships at Colombes Stadium in Paris. Then 29, he placed first in high jump and standing broad jump and second in the hop/skip/jump and third in the broad jump. His score was four points ahead of the next contestant. Pershing himself presented the awards.
A list of the events in which Richards placed during more than 20 years of competition covers five pages of typewritten copy.
Before the war, Richards had enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., on an academic scholarship. He joined the school's track team at age 24 and in 1913 won the AAU championship high jump, followed by first place in the high jump in the Penn Relays in the spring of 1915. In the latter event, he set a collegiate record of 6 feet 5 inches.
During the 1915 AAU championships, held in San Francisco in conjunction with the World Fair, he entered the 10-event Decathlon. By more than 1,000 points he beat the highest score ever attained by Thorpe, who had gone on to professional football.
The Utah native also outscored the redoubtable C. Avery Brun-dage as well as topping his own Stockholm scores. By now, he was being hailed across the country as America's most outstanding athlete.
Richards paid his own way to San Francisco. The debate over where athletes must draw the line between amateur competition and professional sports was hot and heavy at the time.
"I hope I never need money that badly," said Richards as he turned down a $1,000 offer to tout tobacco.
After graduating from Cornell, he went to Stanford University, then earned a law degree from the University of Southern California. As a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, he continued to compete. In 1922, during a meet at Occidental College, Richards, now 32, won the discus, 56-pound weight throw and high jump, defeating many top college performers. He also took third in the shot put and fourth in hammer throw.
He never practiced law but turned to a profession where he felt he could make more difference - teaching. He joined the staff of Venice High School in Los Angeles and taught science for 32 years.
In 1947 when Utah celebrated the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Mormon Pioneers in Salt Lake Valley, Roberts was asked to help draw up guidelines for identifying Utah's most renowned track and field athlete of the first century. While willing to develop such guidelines, Roberts wrote, "I cannot refrain from saying that the one most outstanding track and field star of the century was Alma Richards."
Richards was honored during a Centennial Track Meet at the U. near the spot where he had represented Murdock Academy in his first significant athletic contest.
Although he made California his home for many years, it was Richards' desire to be buried in his hometown. Dozens of Utahns have since competed in Olympic events with varying degrees of success, but a simple grave above Parowan is the resting place of the first and certainly at least one of the best.