Track & Field & the Great Refresh & Me
How I came to launch a new career venture
The date was January 3, 1970, and I was sobbing—heartbroken after seeing my beloved Dallas Cowboys shellacked by the Los Angeles Rams in an NFL playoff game.
My dad rushed into the room and asked what was wrong. He shook his head when he realized my tears flowed from a Cowboys loss, saying “Oh, John. Sports are the toy department. They’re not worth crying over.”
Dad was and is a serious man. The second of five kids born to Mexican-immigrant parents, he held a pair of physics degrees from UCLA, worked at an acoustical engineering firm in Santa Monica, California, and had his hands full raising four sons and a daughter with Mom.
Of course he was right about sports – and many other things. Yet my passion, which clearly took me overboard at times, has also served me well. It propelled me through 19 years as a sportswriter with the Los Angeles Times, and it fueled my desire to launch this newsletter once my own two children were grown.
My passion propelled me through 19 years as a sportswriter with the Los Angeles Times, and it fueled my desire to launch this newsletter once my own two children were grown.
Now Track & Field Informed with Johnny O (also known as TFI) will formally launch in one week. You can sign up today and pick from paid or free subscription options. I plan to spend many years writing in this space – combining my great passion for an inspiring sport with the knowledge of a lifetime and skills honed by years of professional work.
Ironically track and field, or athletics as it is called in much of the world, was not always my favorite sport. As a kid I closely followed the NFL, NBA, and major league baseball, in that order. I still have baseball and football cards from the late 1960s and early 70s, along with a homemade scrapbook chronicling the Cowboys’ 1971 season — which followed my crying bout and culminated with a victory against the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI.
My friends and I gathered around a transistor radio at our elementary school lunch table for broadcasts of the Cardinals-Tigers World Series in 1968, and my brothers and I celebrated in front of the television set after the Lakers defeated the New York Knicks in game 5 of the 1972 NBA Finals to win their first title in Los Angeles.
Dallas wide receiver Bob Hayes was my favorite NFL player, and I was impressed to know in addition to playing football he’d also won the 100 meters and brought the U.S. from fifth place to first on the anchor leg of the 400 relay in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
However, it was the hours spent riveted to televised coverage of the 1972 Games in Munich that cemented my lifelong love for track and field above all other sports.
American Mark Spitz, who won a then-unprecedented seven gold medals in swimming, was the individual star of those Games. But the speed, agility, endurance, power, and passion displayed by so many track and field athletes from so many different countries drew me to the sport.
I’ll never forget the excitement I felt watching Dave Wottle of the U.S. come from behind to win the men’s 800 in a photo finish, or seeing John Akii-Bua of Uganda set a world record in the 400 intermediate hurdles while running out of the tight confines of lane one. The joy and wonder expressed by long jump champion Heide Rosendal of West Germany after she held off the favored East German team on the anchor leg of the women’s 400 relay was scintillating to me.
Then there was the unbelievable world-record performance in the men’s 10,000 by Lasse Viren of Finland, who would go on to win the 5,000 in Munich and repeat his 5-10k double in the 1976 Games in Montreal.
Viren was part of the lead pack in the 10,000 when he ran too close to Belgian Emiel Puttemans, just ahead of him. The resulting jostling caused Viren to tumble onto the track, and defending 5,000 champion Mohamed Gamoudi of Tunisia fell over him. Viren bounced up quickly and set off in pursuit of the leaders, but Gamoudi crouched on his knees for much longer before struggling to his feet with the lead pack 100 meters away. He ran for another lap and a half before dropping out of the race.
I felt for Gamoudi, attempting to win his first gold medal in the 10,000 after finishing second in the 1964 Olympics and third in ’68, but I was amazed that Viren appeared unfazed by the mishap. He could have panicked after crashing to the track, but he maintained his composure, took the lead for good with 600 meters left, and somehow crossed the finish line in 27 minutes 38.4 seconds to lower the previous world record by a second.
That point in my life was the first time running appealed to me as an athletic endeavor. The next winter I was cut during tryouts for a local youth basketball team, so the following spring and fall I ran track and cross-country for the first time.
I became a subscriber to Track & Field News in 1974 and never stopped. But more than magazines and television broadcasts fed my romance with the sport.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California offered golden opportunities to witness numerous world- and national-class meets in person through the years.
I saw George Woods set three indoor world records in the men’s shot put in the Los Angeles Times Indoor Games in February of 1974, watched Steve Williams tie the hand-timed world record in the 100 in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships at UCLA four months later, and was awestruck when Edwin Moses ran the second of his four world records in the intermediate hurdles in the 1977 AAU meet at UCLA.
The 6-foot-2, 290-pound Woods had won silver medals in the shot put in the 1968 and ’72 Olympics, but everything came together for him during the 1974 indoor season. He raised the world amateur indoor record in the shot put to 69 feet 10¾ inches (21.30 meters) in late January and improved that mark to 70-4½ (21.45) six days later. In the Times meet the following week, he hit 70-5½ (21.47) on the first of his six attempts, improved to 70-9 (21.56) in the fourth round, and unleashed a mammoth 72-2¾ (22.01) effort in round five that crushed the best-ever indoor mark of 70-10½ (21.60) set by professional Brian Oldfield.
The put was also longer than the standing outdoor world record of 71-7¼ (21.82) and after officials measured it, Woods exchanged bear hugs with fellow competitor and world outdoor record holder Al Feuerbach, posed for photographs, and then took a victory lap on the 160-yard track while receiving an ovation “that would have made the Rolling Stones jealous,” according to a story in Track & Field News. What an electrifying sight.
In another thriller I viewed from the stands alongside my older brother Joe, Moses’ second world record came during a season in which he began a streak that would see him win 107 consecutive finals during the next 10 years. Just a year earlier Moses had burst onto the scene as a Morehouse College sophomore by running an American record of 48.30 in the U.S. Olympic Trials and a world record of 47.64 in the Olympic Games in Montreal.
He was only in his second year of running the intermediate hurdles when he settled into the blocks for the final of the 1977 AAU meet at UCLA. Clad in a black singlet and green shorts, and wearing sunglasses and a leather necklace, Moses got off to a good start and cleared the first six barriers of the race in perfect stride. Joe and I – watching him slice through the air and touch down after the seventh of 10 hurdles – turned to each other and said, “This could be a world record!”
We cheered mightily as he powered down the track in front of us with 70 meters left in the race, and we roared in delight when he crossed the finish line in 47.45. Although Moses deserved all the credit for his superb performance, I left the meet with a warm feeling, like somehow my brother and I had played a small part in it, and were lucky to have done so.
Two years after Moses’ world record, I saw Craig Virgin set a U.S. record in the 10,000 in the AAU championships at Mt. San Antonio College. In 1983, I was in the stands for the U.S.- East Germany meet at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where Tom Petranoff outdueled Detlef Michel in the first competition in history in which two men threw more than 300 feet (91.44 meters) with the old-style javelin.
Then came the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Joe and I, along with a roommate of mine, shelled out close to a thousand dollars each to reserve tickets to all eight days of the track and field competition. As they say, the experience was priceless.
Carl Lewis matched the immortal Jesse Owens by winning the 100, 200, and long jump, and running a leg on the victorious 400 relay in those Games, and Daley Thompson of Great Britain set the fourth – and final – world record of his career in winning his second consecutive decathlon title. Yet my most fond memories are of Brazilian Joaquim Cruz winning the men’s 800 in 1:43.00 – the third-fastest time in history – and of American Valerie Brisco-Hooks having a hand in three Olympic and American records as she won the women’s 200 in 21.81 and the 400 in 48.83, and ran the third leg on the victorious 1,600 relay team that clocked 3:18.29.
Cruz, who had finished his sophomore year at the University of Oregon two months earlier, put on a superb display of speed and stamina – plus what I would call youthful exuberance – in the 800. In a little more than 48 hours, he ran 1:45.66 in the first round, 1:44.84 in the quarterfinals, and 1:43.82 in the semifinals. No one had previously come close to running so fast in the qualifying rounds, and it was logical to wonder if expending all that energy in qualifying would hurt his gold medal chances in the final.
It did not. The long-striding Cruz got out well, moved into second place behind Edwin Koech of Kenya 200 meters into the race, and held that position until he took the lead entering the home straightaway. World record holder Sebastian Coe of Great Britain and Earl Jones of the U.S. were nipping at Cruz’ heels at that point, but the Brazilian shifted into a gear neither one of them had and powered away to the finish line.
You can imagine my excitement, then, a little more than a year later when I got a big break and landed a job with the Valley edition of the L.A. Times. Although I covered numerous beats over the next 19 years, track and field and cross-country were my favorites.
I wrote about a slew of outstanding prep track athletes during that time, with Quincy Watts, Marion Jones, and Allyson Felix topping the list. My job was fun, entertaining, and fulfilling (and I’ll share more about that in a later post), but I stepped down in 2004 to accept a buy-out package that allowed our family of four to move to my wife’s native Michigan and transition into a career with more family-friendly work hours.
My new career in philanthropy gave me the opportunity to raise funds and write promotional materials for non-profit organizations advocating for the environment, higher education, and health care. Importantly, it gave me the chance to be around for my daughter and son, but it never excited me the way sportswriting did.
Now I’m grateful to find myself part of what some have termed the “Great Refresh” – a behavioral phenomenon I’ve heard described as people rethinking their lives and what matters most in the wake of upheaval and uncertainty created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now I’m grateful to be part of the so-called “Great Refresh” — rethinking my life and what matters most as a result of upheaval and uncertainty created by the pandemic.
When the public health crisis took hold in the U.S., my children were nearly seniors—daughter Carmen in college and son Isaac in high school. I, like millions of people across the country, began to take a hard look at different facets of my life, including work. I’d never lost the desire to return to my sportswriting roots, but I was too cautious – and perhaps too pragmatic – to step down from my full-time job as a marketing specialist with a hospital to pursue that endeavor.
Instead the decision was made for me. When my position was eliminated because of declining revenue related to the pandemic, I figured it was time to make the leap.
With encouragement from my wife Brenda, I dove into weeks of compiling a plethora of statistical lists which will be incorporated into numerous articles in the weeks, months, and – hopefully – years ahead.
I will incorporate expert knowledge of the history of track and field into features, profiles, commentaries and analysis on today’s world-class athletes from around the globe. I will keep tabs on the collegiate scene in the U.S. and on the top high school performers from the Southern and Los Angeles City sections in Southern California. In addition, I will write occasional stories about historically significant meets, races, or field-event competitions that took place 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years ago.
Consider signing up for a monthly or annual subscription to this publication, become a founding member, or try it out by reading the free content. Your support will help me build a community of readers, produce two to three timely posts per week in-season, and deliver additional content in the off months.
It’s been fun and exciting and hopeful preparing to launch Track & Field Informed with Johnny O over the past several months. I’ve reconnected with old co-workers, coaches, athletes and acquaintances. My family – including brother Joe – has cheered me on.
And fittingly, my dad jumped to be first to sign up when I shared the news about TFI with him these many years after his advice not to take sports too seriously. I guess now that we’re older and wiser, we’ve both come to realize life is too short not to spend some quality time in the toy department.
Track & Field Informed with Johnny O
Features, profiles, lists, analysis, commentary, and historical perspectives: You won’t find track and field coverage this compelling and in-depth anywhere else. Don’t miss a single word—make sure every new edition of TFI goes directly to your inbox.
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John is a passionate and very knowledgeable fan of track & Field. I have no doubt that his blog will be a great source of info. and inspiration.
Congratulations! Your memory for track stats is amazing! We enjoyed reading about family Track and Field and other sports memories. We especially enjoyed your comments about the "toy department!" Best wishes, success and HAVE FUN!!