Friday, February 7, 2014

Franz Klammer's 1976 Gold Medal Run, and "The Agony of Defeat"



As a young lad, one of my earliest sports memories was as an 8 year old watching the great downhiller Franz Klammer win gold in the downhill at the "famed" Kitzbuhl in his native Austria. The breathless excitement of the announcers, coupled with the cool-for-the-time electronic split timing, was awesome television for a boy stuck indoors in the winter before iPads and the internet were invented.

The other most iconic clip in Olympic-related history (because technically, it wasn't in the Olympics) is the wipeout by Slovenian Vinko Bogotaj who lost his nerve on the ski jump and authored the most epic yard sale in TV sports history.

3 comments:

  1. Thought I'd share.

    So I frequent the website, and enjoy your posts. I think we agree on most things politically and I enjoy your take on sports, in general.

    I'll start on Friday morning. I called my dad on my way to work just to check in, and given recent events, the Winter Olympics came up. During our conversation, he brought up the fact that one of the memories he has is Franz Klammer's run in 76 and he'll never forget the announcer yelling, "He's all over this mountain!"

    So I found it interesting about an hour later when I hit your site and saw that you had posted a video of that gold medal run ... which I had never seen.

    Then I watched the 'agony of defeat' clip about Vinko's unfortunate spill on the ski jump.

    This morning at church, the message was all about leaving behind your 'baggage' and being able to get back up after a fall and perservere. One of the illustrations the speaker used was that of Vinko's fall.

    yessir .... you have your finger on the pulse of the world, Czabe. haha

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice head gear back in the day. A knit cap with a little white ball on top.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Was that the ghost of Joan Rivers?

    ReplyDelete