The Track in the Forest

The Track in the Forest
Author: Bob Burns
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-10-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1641600802

The 1968 US men's Olympic track and field team won 12 gold medals and set six world records at the Mexico City Games, one of the most dominant performances in Olympic history. The team featured such legends as Tommie Smith, Bob Beamon, Al Oerter, and Dick Fosbury. Fifty years later, the team is mostly remembered for embodying the tumultuous social and racial climate of 1968. The Black Power protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the victory stand in Mexico City remains one of the most enduring images of the 1960s. Less known is the role that a 400-meter track carved out of the Eldorado National Forest above Lake Tahoe played in molding that juggernaut. To acclimate US athletes for the 7,300-foot elevation of Mexico City, the US Olympic Committee held a two-month training camp and final Olympic selection meet for the ages at Echo Summit near the California-Nevada border. Never has a sporting event of such consequence been held in such an ethereal setting. On a track in which hundreds of trees were left standing on the infield to minimize the environmental impact, four world records fell—more than have been set at any US meet since (including the 1984 and 1996 Olympics). But the road to Echo Summit was tortuous—the Vietnam War was raging, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and a group of athletes based out of San Jose State had been threatening to boycott the Mexico City Games to protest racial injustice. Informed by dozens of interviews by longtime sports journalist and track enthusiast Bob Burns, this is the story of how in one of the most divisive years in American history, a California mountaintop provided an incomparable group of Americans shelter from the storm.

Game Changers

Game Changers
Author: Molly Schiot
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 518
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1501137115

“The embrace of women’s sports sometimes feels almost like a political act...Molly Schiot’s Game Changers: The Unsung Heroines of Sports History is so valuable.” —The Wall Street Journal “A thoughtful, exhaustively researched, and long-overdue tribute to the women who have paved the way for the likes of Serena Williams, Abby Wambach, Simone Biles, and more.” —espnW Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, a celebration of the pioneering, forgotten female athletes of the twentieth century that features rarely seen photos and new interviews with past and present game changers including Abby Wambach and Cari Champion. Two years ago, filmmaker Molly Schiot began the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroines, posting a photo each day of a female athlete who had changed the face of sports around the globe in the pre-Title IX age. These women paved the way for Serena Williams, Carli Lloyd, and Lindsey Vonn, yet few today know who they are. Slowly but surely, the account gained a following, and the result is Game Changers, a beautifully illustrated collection of these trailblazers’ rarely-before-seen photos and stories. Featuring icons Althea Gibson and Wyomia Tyus, complete unknowns Trudy Beck and Conchita Cintron, policymaker Margaret Dunkle, sportswriter Lisa Olson, and many more, Game Changers gives these “founding mothers” the attention and recognition they deserve, and features critical conversations between past and present gamechangers—including former US Women’s National Soccer Team captain Abby Wambach and SportsCenter anchor Cari Champion—about what it means to be a woman on and off the field. Inspiring, empowering, and unforgettable, Game Changers is the perfect gift for anyone who has a love of the game.

A Hurdler's Hurdler

A Hurdler's Hurdler
Author: Steven McGill
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2018-08-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1476632421

In September 1972, Rodney Milburn of Opelousas, Louisiana, won the Olympic gold medal in the men's 110-meter high hurdles. Raised amid segregation and poverty in the 1950s and 60s, Milburn honed his skills on a grass track over wooden hurdles. In a career that spanned more than a decade, he established himself as the greatest hurdler of his era and one of the greatest athletes in track history. This biography chronicles Milburn's rise from poverty to international athletic stardom. Loved ones, as well as track legends Renaldo Nehemiah, Dwight Stones, Tonie Campbell, Brian Oldfield and Bill Collins, relate Milburn's remarkable achievements and humble nature.

Track and Field's G. O. A. T.

Track and Field's G. O. A. T.
Author: Joe Levit
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre: Athletics - Sport - Biographies
ISBN:

On your mark! Get ready to sprint, jump, and throw alongside the fiercest competitors in track and field history. Discover amazing stats, thrilling comebacks, and athletes who shattered barriers.

The Complete Book of the Olympics

The Complete Book of the Olympics
Author: David Wallechinsky
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9781845136956

David Wallechinsky's compendious book has long been the preeminent point of reference for sports enthusiasts and journalists alike Every sports writer assigned to cover the Games ensures they have their early copy of this prodigious work of reference, packed with absorbing anecdotes and essential statistics. A treasure trove of 116 years of Olympic history, it is also an amazingly readable book, for in the course of recording every single Olympic final since 1896, it concentrates on the strange, the memorable, and the unbelievable. Who knew (until reading this book) that croquet was once an Olympic sport, or tug of war, or that a 72-year-old once won a silver medal for target shooting? This new edition also has every finals result, recorded by the top eight competitors in every event at the Beijing Olympics, and full descriptions of rules and scoring for every event included for 2012. It is the one truly essential Olympics book.

Who Was Jesse Owens?

Who Was Jesse Owens?
Author: James Buckley, Jr.
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0448483076

At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more than a sports story. Born in rural Alabama under the oppressive Jim Crow laws, Owens's family suffered many hardships. As a boy he worked several jobs like delivering groceries and working in a shoe repair shop to make ends meet. But Owens defied the odds to become a sensational student athlete, eventually running track for Ohio State. He was chosen to compete in the Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany where Adolf Hitler was promoting the idea of “Aryan superiority.” Owens’s winning streak at the games humiliated Hitler and crushed the myth of racial supremacy once and for all.

Above and Beyond

Above and Beyond
Author: Bill Livingston
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780873389747

Readers will discover how Tim Mack struggled and endured while working in a factory, and how he changed his training and revamped his body and mind in a three-year programme that made his Web site, Goldnathens, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Track and Field's G.O.A.T.

Track and Field's G.O.A.T.
Author: Joe Levit
Publisher: Lerner Publications ™
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2021-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1728435730

On your mark! Get ready to sprint, jump, and throw alongside the fiercest competitors in track and field history. Discover amazing stats, thrilling comebacks, and athletes who shattered barriers.

Slaying the Dragon

Slaying the Dragon
Author: Michael Johnson
Publisher: Harpercollins
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1996
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780060392185

The Olympic track and field athlete relates his road to victory and offers advice for obtaining similar goals