The Tale of Two Pommels & the 1968 Olympic Games of Mexico City

Olympic Games History

The 1968 Olympic Games of Mexico City

By Bruce Davis, Professor Emeritus Miami Dade College Copywrite 2020

I arrived at Miami Dade Junior College North Campus (MDJCN) in August of 1966 to begin my career as a physical education teacher and men’s gymnastics coach at age 22 and straight out of graduate school. Most of the young men that came out for the gymnastics team had started their gymnastics careers in Dade County high schools that were part of the Greater Miami Athletic Conference.

Miami Dade Junior College North Campus was founded in 1960 and was originally part of the Dade County School System. The gymnastics team was first coached by Dick Gutting for two years (1962-63). Frank Seco de Lucena was the second coach in 1964-65. Seco was still on staff when I took over. I asked Seco to go over a team roster of gymnasts for the 1966 team. Seco did not say one positive thing about anyone on the team roster, so I was not looking forward to meeting the team. Seco was wrong! The 1966 team was extremely talented and one the very best that I was associated with.

In the fall of 1968, MDJCN began classes the last week of August as usual. The Olympic games of Mexico City were scheduled for October 12-27. I liked to conduct gymnastics practices as soon as college classes began. Right away several of my gymnasts started talking about “going to the Mexico City Olympics.” I understood the desire to go; however, what about missing several weeks of classes and practices. Two MDJCN gymnasts ended up going to Mexico City.

Joe Rigol was 2 years older than me. He attended Hialeah HS and graduated in 1961. Joe was drafted for the war in Vietnam and spent 4 years in the Navy floating around the Pacific on a destroyer. After Nam, Rigol enrolled at MDJCN and resumed his gymnastics training to get in shape and because he loved gymnastics training. As a child Joe lived in Spain. His father was from Spain and his mother was Mexican. Rigol was fluent in Spanish and the Catalan language derived from vulgar Latin. Joe’s aunt lived in Mexico City and Joe could with stay with his aunt during the Olympic games. Joe’s aunt purchased the tickets for men’s gymnastics. I did not even realize at that time that Joe was Hispanic and fluent in Spanish because he never spoke Spanish around me. After MDJCN, Joe went to David Lipscomb and earned his teaching degree. He came back to Dade County teaching in the public schools and operating a private gymnastics club. The gym team members and I knew and called Joe “the old man.”

Tom Pica, like many other young men, showed up at MDJCN without any pre-notice. He was from Jersey City, New Jersey and had attended Dickinson HS where he practiced gymnastics. It is thought that Pica went to Rutgers to be a punter on the football squad, but he did not stay. He headed south to the north campus of MDJCN. Pica was muscular, handsome and kindhearted; however, his academic record and grade point average left much to be desired. Joe and Tom were going to Mexico City for the Olympic games.

For the trip, Andy Florio, the MDJCN equipment room manager, issued Joe and Tom two royal blue dress blazers that had Miami Dade Junior College embroidered in white on the breast pocket. These blue blazers could be checked out from the equipment room and were usually to be worn by staff coaches and team managers for team photos and other media events. I rarely wore one during my coaching career. The blazers created a polished look for these two junior college students while they attended the Olympic gymnastics competition conducted the first week of the games.

The year 1968 was a tumultuous one in many ways. North Korean gunboats had seized the USS Pueblo and detained the 83 US crew members for nearly a year. The North Vietnamese launch the Tet Offensive and hundreds of young American soldiers were being drafted and killed each week in Nam. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis in April. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in June. The Parisian student riots took place in the spring in Paris France. Resurrection City was constructed on the Washington DC mall protesting racial inequality. The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. Rioting broke out at Democratic National Convention in Chicago. University student protests took place on Tlatelolco Square in Mexico City and 200 Mexicans were killed just days before the games opened. Thirty-two African nations boycotted the Olympic games due to South Africa being allowed to participate in the games. There were many other major headlines as well.

African American track and field athletes had considered boycotting the 1968 Olympic games as part of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), however; they didn’t but found another way to protest and you had to be an Olympic medalist to do it. Several medalists went up on the stadium medal podium barefoot or wearing a black tam or with track shoes polished black tied around their neck, however; Tommie Smith and John Carlos, wearing OPHR buttons and black gloves, formed the arch of unity during the National Anthem. No one could miss this protest. Avery Brundage, IOC President had them thrown out of the Olympic Village and shipped home for performing their silent gesture of protest during the National Anthem.

Vera Caslavska, the 1964 and 1968 Olympic all-around champion, made her protest in a more subtle manner than the African American athletes by lowering and turning her head to her right shoulder during the Russian national anthem after she was cheated her out of a gold medal on the floor exercise event and again for the balance beam event. She was protesting the invasion of her country Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Caslavska had to leave Prague and hide in the mountains to train for the games in the Moravian forest. She had difficulty gaining permission to go to Mexico City to compete. Vera and Larisa Latynina are the only two gymnasts to win back to back Olympic all-around titles. Vera died in 2016 at age 74 of pancreatic cancer. She is a three-time Olympian who amassed 19 gold medals in international competition. What a democratic patriot!

An American gymnast, who was not making any protest in spite of the unfair judging that occurred on the pommel horse event, lost his opportunity to Olympic medal when a low score on his optional routine (9.6) placed him in a four-way tie for fourth place for finals. David Thor did not make finals because he had a lower all-around score than the other three gymnasts that he had tied with. David Thor could have been the first American gymnast to medal in the Olympic games since the 1932 games if the judges had scored him fairly on his routine. He was deprived of that opportunity by bad judging. The US would have to wait eight more years to win their first post WWII Olympic medal when Peter Kormann won a bronze on floor exercise in Montreal.

As the men’s finals ended at the Auditorio Nacional (National Auditorium) an informal press conference was taking place on the podium near the pommel horse. Tom Pica and Joe Rigol looking official in their matching blue blazers came down from the spectator seating and joined

in the press conference. Joe even got involved in the Q and A. His being fluent in Spanish helped. It seemed that many others participating in the press conference thought these two junior college guys were a media team covering the meet. At a later point the pommel horse was moved off the podium and over against a wall with all the disassembled competition equipment. It was an opportune time for Pica and Rigol to remove the pommels from the horse and tuck them under their shirts and leave the auditorium. When Tom and Joe got back to MDJCN, I remember hearing talk about the pommel theft, but soon all was forgotten and time marched on.

52 years have passed since the 19th Olympic games in Mexico City. Recently, I have been talking to many of my MDJC gymnasts who are attempting to get together and talk about old times at MDJCN on a Zoom call. Dale Smith, a former MDJCN gymnast and I were conversing by telephone and Dale informed me that Tom Pica was deceased. Dale and Tom were good friends. Tom had gone up to Temple, Dale followed the next year and they were roommates for a year. They roomed in a row house at 759 Corinthian owned by Joe “Travis” Trabaccone who also attended MDJCN. Dale credits Tom Pica with teaching Dale how to survive in the rough neighborhoods surrounding Temple.

Tom Pica met David Thor who became the head gymnastics coach at Temple for three seasons in the early seventies. After Dave Thor left Temple, he moved to Marin County, CA where he taught math at the prestigious Katherine Branson school from 1976 until 1979. Tom Pica arrived in Petaluma, CA north of Marin County a little later and he was an apprentice learning to do tree trunk carving with a chainsaw. Tom had been coached and taught gymnastics by Thor at some the camps and clinics during the previous summer. Tom liked Dave’s coaching and knew that Thor had been shafted in Mexico City. Tom gave Thor one of the Olympic pommels. Yes, nearly ten years after Mexico City!

At the 50th year reunion of the 1968 Olympic athletes, Dave had Olympic teammates Steve Hug and Steve Cohen sign the top of the pommel and then in 2019 Sid Freudenstein and Fred Roethlisberger both signed the pommel. Richard Lloyd and Kanati Allen, two other team members are deceased. Second team alternate Jim Culhane feels uncomfortable signing the pommel because he was not part of the travel team. Come on Jim, you are very deserving, so it is time to sign the pommel.

After my telephone conversation with Dale Smith about the pommels; I sent Dave Thor an e- mail asking if he still had the pommels. Dave replied: “What do you mean pommels. I only have one pommel.” Where was the other pommel? Could the other pommel be lost forever? I called Joe Rigol. Mystery solved, “the old man” has the other pommel.

Did you know

1. Vera Caslavska and Czech track star Josef Odiozil were married in Mexico City on Oct.16.
2. American Hammer Throwers Olga Fikatova Connolly and Hal Connolly were the Maid of Honor and Best Man for the wedding.
3. Vera’s Caslavska’s FX music was “Jarabe tapatío” The Mexican Hat Dance.
4. The communist regime would not allow Vera Caslavska to leave Czechoslovakia for many years because she had supported the Dubcek Regime.
5. Tommie Smith had a stride 9 feet long.
6. Tommie Smith was one of twelve children in his family & they all picked cotton in Texas.
7. Tommie Smith held eleven world records in Track and Field.
8. Triple jumper Arthur Franklin Walker & Tommie Smith roomed with the US men’s gymnastics team because the Track & Field contingent did not have enough beds.
9. Australian Peter Norman, Silver Medalist in the 200 meters was considered the world’s fastest white man.
10. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were pallbearers at Peter Norman’s funeral in 2006.
11. Peter Norman was wearing Olympic Project for Human Rights button on the medal podium and in support of Smith and Carlos.
12. The Australian government would not allow Peter Norman to race again.
13. Running events were on a new solid surface instead of cinders for the first time.
14. Light air in high altitude and the new running surface may account for many world records being set in the 1968 Olympic Games.
15. Dave Thor accidently met commentator Howard Cosell when Cosell was looking for Tommie Smith the day after the Arch of unity.

POST-SCRIPT

THE POMMELS OF THE 1968 OLYMPIC GAMES POMMEL HORSE HAVE BEEN REUNITED

THE END