Never, Ever Clean an Olympic Gold Medal with Fantastic

If you laughed at the joke about the man who liked his gold medal so much he had it bronzed, this story will top that.

In the early 1970s, Gary agreed to let his medals be displayed publically under the care of an NRA Field Rep (a retired Sgt. Major of the Marine Corps!) who would keep them in a display that he took to state and county fairs in his Field Rep territory.   A box with a glass covering was built and titled “The Road to Success.”   The medals were about 1/3 of the design and included Gary’s World Championship Medals from 1966 and his Olympic Medals from 1964 and 1968.  A condition of the loan was that the medals would be taken out of the display and secured in a hotel safe or by some similar means whenever the display was not being supervised.

The medals were traveling throughout Nebraska, from county fair to county fair.  One night, the NRA Field Rep and a friend were examining the medals in a hotel room when they observed that the 1964 Tokyo medal had a polished, smooth finish while the 1968 Mexico City medal had a frosted finish (that was by design).   For some unknown and really bizarre reason, they decided that the Mexico City gold medal would look better if it were also shiny so they began to “polish” it, using Fantastic.

They didn’t realize what a mistake they were making until they noticed that when they held their polished medal in the light, it was turning silver.  If you know that today Olympic gold medals are actually silver medals with gold gilding you can understand what they had done.  They had polished the gold gilding off of an Olympic gold medal!

When the medals were returned to our care, the Field Rep confessed and apologized profusely.  Ruth Ann later took the medal to a jeweler to have it re-dipped, but the integrity of the Gold Medal had been compromised forever.  If you look carefully at the medal you can still see many scratches and a dulled finish. 

Olympic medals were only made of solid gold through the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden.   After 1912, the gold medals have been silver medals gilded with real gold.

Each Olympic Organizing Committee determines the specific design of Olympic medals.  Olympic Gold medals are required to be made from at least 92.5% silver, and must contain a minimum of 6 grams of gold.  All Olympic Medals must be at least 3mm thick and 60mm in diameter.

Gold medals are not worth their weight in gold, but they do command high prices when placed up for auction, typically exceeding the value of the metal. For example, a gold medal awarded to the 1980 Olympic men's hockey team garnered a bid in excess of $310,000.

Did this unfortunate mistake that occurred while Gary’s 1968 Olympic gold medal was being shared with many huge public audiences reduce its value or increase it because now this particular medal has a truly unique “war story” to tell?

Mail Call

Mail Call

Olympic Autograph Requests

After the Olympics in 1964, in Gary’s home state of Nebraska, he had such notoriety around the state that an envelope addressed

​

Gary Anderson

Olympic Winner

Nebraska

would find its way to the post office of Gary’s hometown of Axtell, NE (then the population was 350).  Gary doesn’t often honor requests for his autograph by mail because he just simply does not have the time to do this, but he has been keeping some envelopes requesting autographs for a day when he has time to deal with them.    But, if you are in his physical presence, he never turns down a request for an autograph.

I recently found a pile of over 100 unopened envelopes from autograph collectors, catching up with us at different addresses:

Our current address, Oak Harbor, OH

Our former address, Port Clinton, OH

Camp Perry Training Site, Port Clinton, OH

Sharpsburg, GA and Peachtree City, GA

(we lived there during the 1996 Olympic Games)

U.S. Olympic Committee in Irvine, CA

U.S Olympic Committee, Colorado Springs, CO

Gary’s hometown of Axtell, NE

The National Rifle Association

ISSF Headquarters, Munich

The most envelopes come from  Germany. Next after that, from Czech Republic.    We also have autograph requests from

Austria

Belgium

Estonia

Finland

France

Great Britain

Hungary

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Poland

Slovakia

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

USA

The hobby of collecting autographs is called philography.   Autograph collecting started in the 16th Century when Germans kept albums of correspondence when they traveled.    By the late 18th Century in Europe it was popular to collect letters of famous people.    In the USA, the hobby of collecting autographs took off in the 1980s.    By 1990 the industry skyrocketed and is today worth $500million.

We know that autograph collector clubs are very popularg in Germany.  Many of the typed letters requesting a signature are form letters.  Handwritten letters are rare.    Collectors try more than once to get an autograph.  Apologizing for their English is common:   "Excuse me please my bad English," or "Sorry I no write this letter in your language but I have not talent for foreign language."

After opening over 100 envelopes with requests for Gary’s autograph, I learned a few things about collectors:

They pay for return postage four ways:

1. Using an international postage coupon for return postage: 

2.  A prepaid cancelled postal mark is on the envelope:

3. Include a postage paid envelope with uncancelled USA stamps (they can get stamps from the Internet).  

4. Include 1USD for postage.    Very rarely is a request sent without return postage.

They never want just one autograph.    Multiple white (index) cards are for swapping with friends.   “Because of the possibility to change great sport autographs with other collectors we have included a large number of cards.  If you think we are asking for too much, we naturally prefer a signed card each before nothing.”

Some of the white cards are personalized: 

Four examples of stylized autograph cards made by collectors

If a photo is enclosed, they want the signature on the front of the photo; it must be an original signature, and signed with a water proof pen.

A collage of some of the photographs sent by collectors for autographs, 
all easily available on the Internet.
Notice the directional arrow for placement of an autograph on the bottom left!

They want addresses of other shooting Olympians:  i.e. Jack Writer, Martin Gunnarrson, Launi Meili, Nancy Johnson, Lanny Basham, William McMillan, Huelet Benner, Arthur Cook, and Don Halderman and “any other Olympic champions working for the UIT (ISSF); please send addresses of future Olympic winners."  

And here’s a really bold  request:

“I also collect Olympic tickets, starting numbers, stamps, sportswear.    It would delight me if you have anything for my collection that you can lack.”

One collector compliments Gary with the following:  "What a fine and classy and outstanding and remarkable shooting personality you have been always.  I admire you and your cutting from a magazine."

Of special interest:

"With this letter I dare to ask you a favor."

Another enthusiast sent a sample page from his collection of 3100 pages.

One included a post card of his home town in Slovakia with a letter which simply says, “I want your autograph and your signature.”

Request for autographs for a celebrity auction -- not one, but several.

"If you have any photographs to give away, please send two" --- or four or six!

Autograph seeker making a book for his children requests original signed autograph cards (no stamped autograph) WITH the event “Olympia 1964-1968 Gold” included and remarks “about your meaning of life.”

One autograph hopeful wishes to be Gary’s "pen friend" and sends a picture of himself.   And he wants a UIT (ISSF) badge (that probably means a pin).    He writes, "please return fluently and answer the questions:  Where, when, and how did you begin your shooting competition?  And since that time, what is your work in shooting?"

The task of keeping autograph collectors satisfied is not a priority in the Anderson household simply because the time to do this is not available.

Two Farm Stories - A Pheasant and Some Kerosene

One day soon after Gary returned to his hometown of Axtell, Nebraska after the 1966 World Shooting Championship in Cairo, he went pheasant hunting west of his boyhood home.   Apparently, so the story goes, Gary flushed a rooster pheasant, shouldered his shotgun, and MISSED. His father Roy had lots of fun with this story about the World Champion missing a shot at a pheasant; humility was a desired family trait.  So the story was circulated around Gary’s small hometown and eventually made a mention in an Omaha World Herald article about Gary.  

The Anderson farm in 1954.   Today Gary and Ruth Ann own the farm.

Gary's father was picking corn with Maurice Knutson (who later farmed our farm) and neighbor Les Carlson in October, 1968 when he was informed that Gary had just won his second Olympic gold medal.    Roy did not take time to celebrate until after all the corn harvest work was done for the day.  Getting the day’s work done always came before the fun stuff.

Maurice Knutson and Les Carlson
Photo permission:  Roberta Knutson

Gary as a toddler with his dad 

Gary's stepmother Ruby used an old fashioned method for cleaning greasy, dirty work overalls.    She soaked them in kerosene in the laundry room washer and had done this for years without incident.     On the day Gary won his second gold medal, Roy was in the field, and Ruby had just put a load of overalls in the washer with some kerosene.     Then the phone started ringing with the news of Gary's victory.  Neighbors were calling or coming over after they heard the news and Ruby totally forgot about the clothes.     We do not know what ignited the kerosene, but suddenly during all this commotion there was a big explosion that blew out most of the windows in the main story of the two-story home.     Fortunately, there were no injuries.  This story, too, was mentioned in the Omaha World Herald.

Gary's boyhood home
Axtell, NE

Standing Eye to Eye with the Silver Medalist

   Gary has often said that winning his second Olympic gold medal 

   was much more difficult than winning the first one. 

In 1968 there were only seven events in shooting, with 63 nations entering athletes in shooting.   Gary's event (300m free rifle) was the last of the seven, and the USA did not have any gold medals at that point.  There were moments of drama before and during this competition.  At the equipment check before the competition, the Russian Anatoli Bogdanov, while serving as a member of the Rifle Jury, (coincidentally, Gary's idol and hero when he started shooting) (see “Meeting Bogdanov Face to Face,” published March 21, 2012), refused to pass his leather shooting mitten because the knitted liner was not attached to the leather shell (never mind that there was nothing in the rules about this).    But Gary foiled the attempt by asking friend Ralph Rodriquez of Puerto Rico, who was standing a little further back in the equipment control line, to take the glove through equipment control.   The glove was passed, it was not even questioned, even though Ralph is a right-handed shooter and Gary is left-handed.

The Russians tried to have Gary disqualified by
challenging the legality of his shooting glove.

In the late afternoon on the day before the 300m rifle competition, Gary went alone to the 300m range and stood on the firing point where he would compete the next day.  It was a final step in mental preparation and he had to see himself shooting well the next day because he was now the favorite who had a great reputation to live up to.  He reminded himself that he was prepared, well trained and had run through his head every possible scenario that could go wrong and how he would respond.

Then on the morning before the competition as they were departing from the Olympic Village, 25m rapid-fire pistol teammate Bill McMillan, a 1960 gold medal winner in that event, put his hand on Gary's shoulder and said, "You are our last chance for a gold."  Gary said he felt like the weight of the world had just been placed on his shoulders.

Bill McMillan †

Four things occurred during competition that could have derailed Gary:

       1.   The competition began with a unique coincidence because the Jury draw (supposed to be a random draw) for firing positions in the 300-meter match placed the two leading medal contenders in the middle of the range, standing eye-to-eye with each other.  Gary shoots left-handed and was squadded on the right of the right-handed Russian Valentin Kornev.    Gary had not mentally prepared to face his rival in this way.   But it turned into a good thing, because Gary realized he could watch Kornev's shots through his telescope and know pretty much shot for shot where Kornev was in the competition.  He said afterwards that it probably bothered Kornev more than it bothered him.  The fact that the two leading medal contenders were shooting side-by-side meant that as many spectators as possible were gathered in the middle of the range behind them.  That made the struggle for both more difficult, but in the end added to the sense of triumph they experienced from having performed well in front of such a huge crowd.

Valentin Kornev, Silver Medal Winner

         2.  An over-zealous American spectator, who will go unnamed, was in Mexico to watch the competitions.  He started a tit-for-tat protest series after he noticed that Kornev's teammate, Shota Kveliashvili (Olympic silver medalist, 1964 Tokyo Olympics) was placing his butt-plate hook on his side well below his shoulder in the kneeling position.  This was not illegal at the time, but the spectator complained to USA Team Captain Harry Reeves and convinced Reeves to complain to Rifle Jury Chairman Otto Horber.  Horber inspected Kveliashvili’s position and decided it was OK, but this was unfortunate because Kveliashvili’s kneeling score was substandard for him.  Gary was not aware that this was going on until after the match and he always felt badly about this.   Retaliation came during the standing stage when the USSR team leader complained to the Rifle Jury that Gary's shooting jacket was illegal.   What followed was one of the classic examples of the mental preparations Olympic champions do.  The Chairman of the Rifle Jury approached Gary, informed him that his jacket had been protested.  He proceeded to make a couple of superficial tugs on the jacket closure and pronounced the jacket legal.  While this was going on, Gary had a big, calm smile that spectators didn’t understand.  He was smiling because one of the scenarios he had mentally rehearsed in the months prior to the Olympics was of Jury Chairman Horber inspecting his shooting jacket during the competition.  Gary knew his jacket was legal and that the purpose of any protest would be to disturb him so he imagined himself remaining cool and calm while this happened.

For the second time, the Russians tried to
derail Gary by demanding that his leather
shooting jacket be measured during the
competition. 

         3. During prone, Gary fired a perfect 100 in the first series, but in the second series, he had five 9s including four in a row at the end of the series.  His confidence in his rifle and ammo was shaken.   He gave the rifle to his coach, Bill Pullum, who took it to the team gunsmith.  When Col. Pullum returned, he said "the rifle is fine now."   Gary does not know to this day what was done on the rifle, but he got back in position and finished with 99-100.    Although Gary was an overwhelming favorite to win his second gold medal, he was tied for seventh place after 40 shots prone, four points behind Kornev.

Gary is talking to coach Bill Pullum after shooting
four 9's in the second string prone.

        4.  Gary went into the kneeling position needing to gain back those four points and then to beat Kornev in standing.  Gary had the best kneeling score on the line, with a 97-96-99-97-389, so he picked up five points on Kornev and took a one-point lead into standing.   Now the pressure was really on; the gold medal would be decided in standing.  In their first series, Gary gained one more point, 95 to 94.  They were even in the second series, both with 93s.  When they got into their third series, Gary started seeing 8s and 9s being signaled on Kornev’s target.  He sensed that things were beginning to go his way.  Then a Russian coach began yelling at Kornev from behind the firing line.  This was when Gary knew the gold medal was his if he could just keep shooting like he had been shooting.  That third series went to Gary 93 to 88.  Kornev gained one point back on the last series, but it was too late.  Gary’s 374 standing tied Switzerland’s Kurt Muller for the high standing score.  He finished with a new world record of 1157, six points ahead of Kornev’s 1151 and nine points ahead of Muller’s bronze medal score of 1148.   It had been a grueling six-hour competition and maybe the most memorable of all the matches in Gary’s competition career.

Ruth Ann strains to see the results on the scoreboard.

Gary's final score of 1157 was a new World Record, New Olympic Record, and a Gold Medal score.

This is a preliminary scorecard, not the final result.
The standing score was 375 for a total of 1157.

The first thing Gary did after he finished was to go over and give Ruth Ann a long embrace.

Gary with his rifle soon after the competition

"When Gary's feat was announced, there was great cheering from practically all the countries, not just from the U. S. and the polite Mexican hosts.  The crowd all but mobbed him in a true tribute to a great and superb competitor."  (footnote:  American Rifleman, Volume 116, No. 12, December 1968, page 26)

Ruth Ann called Gary's father, Roy, but it wasn't easy.     First she had to go to the International Phone Booth on the range, ask for the international operator, deposit enough Pecos for a three minute call -- and wait.

The Awards Ceremony came the day after the competition.  It was held late in the day, well past the time when there was good lighting for photography.

Girls in typical Mexican dress carried the medals to the victory stand.

Photo credit: 1968 United States Olympic Book, p. 178

In the medal presentation box, there was supposed to be a 1968 Olympic lapel pin for the Gold Medal Winners.  Gary's pin was stolen before the Awards Ceremony and was never replaced.     At this Olympics, all Gold Medal Winners were also given a box with olive branches from Olympia, Greece.

This is one of Ruth Ann's favorite
photos from the Olympics in 1968.

For the Olympic Games Closing Ceremony on October 27, each nation could nominate six athletes to represent their country.  Gary and five other outstanding athletes were chosen by the entire US delegation to represent the United States. 

Gary's home town of Axtell, Nebraska, honored him with a welcome home program and banquet in mid-November 1968.    U.S. Senator Carl Curtis said "Gary Anderson is an ambassador of good will who has set a noble example before the world."    The city fathers presented Gary with a key to the city of Axtell.

When Gary caught up with his mail, he received a letter from then Governor of California Ronald Reagan, offering his congratulations:

In late November 1968, Gary and Ruth Ann departed NYC for Munich where they would experience life in Germany for a year as members of the Hauptschützengesellschaft München.  

Walking Into the Olympic Stadium

GARY'S SECOND OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL

Walking into the Olympic Stadium

1968 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson was President; USA was raging war in Viet Nam; North Korea captured the USS Pueblo; Richard Nixon declared his candidacy for president; Martin Luther King was assassinated;  Robert Kennedy was assassinated; Apollo 7 was launched from Florida, Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis, and on October 12, the XIX Olympic Games opened in Mexico City.  

So many un-ticketed Mexicans wanted to see the Opening Ceremony
that they climbed on top of the stadium and watched from there.

These were the first Olympic Games staged in Latin America and the first staged in a Spanish-speaking country.    Other cities bidding for the Olympics were Detroit, Lyon and Buenos Aires.   The high elevation of Mexico City influenced many of the events, esp. track and field.  Mexico City’s thin air also affected shooting enough that the USOC provided a high altitude training camp for USA shooters at Santa Fe, New Mexico.  No Summer Olympic Games before or since have been held at such high elevation.   

The Mexico City Olympics took place in the shadow of a massive student protest over grievances against the Mexican government and the Olympic Games (“no queremos  olimpiadas” we don’t want Olympics).  The protests grew until on the 2nd of October, 10,000 high school and university students assembled in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas with 5,000 soldiers standing guard.  It is still disputed as to who fired the first shots, but estimates of the number of students killed ranged from 30 to 300.  At that same time, the USA Olympic Team was staging in Denver and the flight that was to take Gary and the USA shooters to Mexico City was scheduled for the following day.  The USOC considered not going, but decided that the plane would fly.  The student protests stopped after that, but their protests and deaths became a lasting memory of those Olympics for athletes like Gary.

African American athletes Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) staged a civil rights protest by raising black-gloved fists and wearing black socks instead of shoes.  IOC banned Smith and Carlos from the Olympic Games for life.  IOC President Avery Brundage said political statements had no place in the international forum of the Olympic Games.  Interestingly, Gary was in the stadium when Smith and Carlos made their protest.

This was the first Olympic Games where a woman had the honor of lighting the Olympic torch in the Olympic Stadium (sprint hurdle champion, Norma Enriqueta Basilio de Sotelo of Mexico).   This was also the first Olympic Games where the opening and closing ceremonies and many of the events themselves were transmitted to the world in color.  Unfortunately, Olympic Games live television coverage was not extended to shooting until the 1992 Games.

In the sport of shooting, skeet was introduced as a second shotgun event, but there were only seven events in shooting total -- 300m rifle three position; 50m rifle three position; 50m rifle prone; 50m pistol; 25m rapid fire pistol; trap; and skeet.   In the last summer Olympic Games in London 2012, 15 shooting events were on the roster; 15 will be on the roster for Rio 2016.

By the time of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, 

1. Gary and Ruth Ann were married on June 13, 1965; 
2. Gary had graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary on June 13, 1968 (Summa Cum Laude).  (See Farm Boy Meets City Girl, posted March 14, 2013).    
3. Gary stunned the shooting world in 1962 at the Cairo World Championships by winning four Gold Medals and setting three World Records (see "1157", posted October 26, 2012)  
4. At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Gary won his first Olympic Gold Medal (300m three position) with a score of 1153 and setting a new World Record.  (See Gary's First Olympic Gold Medal - The First Record Shot was an Eight, posted August 18, 2013).  
5. In 1966 at the World Championships in Wiesbaden, Germany, he broke his own 300m record set in Tokyo, and won three gold medals, two silver and one bronze. (See The Team to Beat was the Russians - posted July 18, 2014).   
6. He knew before he left Wiesbaden that he wanted to defend his title at the Mexico City Olympics.

The tryouts for the 1968 Olympic shooting team were held in San Antonio, TX.    Gary and Jack Foster were selected to represent the USA in 300m rifle 3-position.  Gary and Lones Wigger competed in the 50m rifle prone event; Jack Writer and Jack Foster shot in the 50m 3-position event.  One month prior to the Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team traveled to Santa Fe, NM (altitude 7000’) to train at high altitude (the altitude of Mexico City is 7283’) and used the rifle and pistol ranges at the State Penitentiary.  

Rifle Team Coach Bill Pullum, Jack Foster, Gary Anderson, Jack Writer and Lones Wigger

`

Before the competition, Ruth Ann made this dress of
navy polyester, and wore a red, white and blue scarf.

Ruth Ann, along with Mary Kay Wigger and Ginger Writer, were invited to stay in the home of Olegario and Gela Vazquez Rana in Mexico City during the duration of the shooting events.   Olegario was shooting for Mexico during the Games.  Gary’s connection to Olegario goes back to 1963 when Olegario and Gary competed in rifle events.  They both competed in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games the 1966 World Championships in Wiesbaden and the 1967 Pan Am Games in Winnipeg.   Olegario later set air rifle world records in 1973 and 1975.  (See The Families Rana, Schreiber, and Krilling-published August 26, 2014).    Since 1980 Olegario has been President of the International Sport Shooting Federation.    He became a hugely   a successful Mexico City entrepreneur who manages a diverse portfolio of businesses.

Gela and Olegario opened their home to the three wives of the American rifle team, giving up their own bedroom so the three ladies could be together.   Gela was the ultimate hostess, always looking to our needs.  Gela herself drove us to the range or the Olympic Village every day.    This was before security was an issue.  We had no identity cards, but we could walk into the athlete's dining hall (we were not authorized to eat there!), and the athletes' lounges.   We could stand outside the dormitories where the shooting team was staying.    The wives and the shooting team husbands were together at other venues, not just the shooting ranges.  For example, we were in the stadium when Bob Beamon made his very remarkable  Gold Medal long jump of 29'2.5" (a record which stood for 22 years).

Gary's Identity Card from Mexico City

Olympic Village Housing for Athletes. 

Gary's room in the Athlete's Dormitory.
His roommate was Lones Wigger

The Olympic Village Dining Hall

The ladies and the guys had some time to take in a Mexican bullfight:

Normally, Gary handles all the photography on shooting trips, but Ruth Ann took a few pictures at the Opening Ceremony, as Gary was with the US Team marching into the stadium.   The Opening Ceremonies were held on October 12, 1968.    

Gary stated in an Oral History interview, (www.www.starkcenter.org/olympicstudies/1968ohp_media/)
that walking into the Olympic stadium
was, for him, one of the highlights of being an Olympian.    

Young Mexican boys getting ready to release the homing pigeons.   This practice
started at the Olympic Games in 1896.    Usually the caldron was lit first, then
the pigeons were released.  For some reason in Seoul 1988, the pigeons were released
first, then the caldron was lit, bringing many of the pigeons to their demise.
The practice was discontinued in 1988.

Releasing the homing pigeons is a matter of angst for athletes and spectators alike.  

Eleven days after the Opening Ceremony, Gary won his second Gold Medal on October 23, 1968, but not without disruptions involving over zealous Americans, USSR protests and Jury inspections during the competition.