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

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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.