Cold War Olympics

The Olympic Games served as a theater for the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, competing to answer the question, who has the better system for maximizing human potential? Matt Andrews delves into these Games, and how they helped to propel black female American athletes and the Presidential Fitness Test. 

 

 

 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, lessons from the world's top professors anytime, any place,
world history examined and science explained. This is one day university. Welcome,

(00:26):
and we're back on the untold history of sports in America.
I'm your host, Mike Coscarelli. Last time, we discussed the
journey of one of the greatest American sports heroes of
all time, Jackie Robinson. Today we'll be discussing international sports again,
as the Cold War takes ahold of the USA. You'll

(00:46):
learn how our feud with the Communists fueled Olympic competition,
and how the rivalry affected physical fitness in America. Yeah,
did you embarrass yourself trying to do pull ups in
gym class? Well, blame the Russians. Here's Matt with Moore.

(01:08):
Today we're going to explore the links between American sport
and the Cold War. And I know you know this,
but I feel like I'm supposed to say this at
least once. It's called the Cold War because there were
a few actual hot military conflicts between the two nations
and a few actual exchanges of bombs and bullets between
the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War

(01:31):
was fought in many venues, though and in many ways
it was an ideological battle between these two nations, and
two nations whose leaders believed that their economic and their
political systems were best. It was a military contest that
was waged on the battlefields of places like Korea and
Vietnam and Afghanistan, where Americans and Soviets fought against people

(01:56):
from other nations, but not against each other. The Cold
War was a scientific race to see who could get
a man into space first, who could developed the most
powerful weapons of mass destruction. This was a race that
almost led to nuclear war in nineteen sixty two during
the Cuban Missile crisis, and the Cold War was an

(02:17):
athletic battle as well. Every four years the Olympic Games
provided a theater for the Cold War where the athletes
from the United States and the USSR competed face to face,
and the metal count provided another way to gauge which
of these two superpowers was the most powerful of all.

(02:39):
And that's our topic today, the way the United States
and the Soviet Union used sports to try to demonstrate
their superiority compared to the other. Maybe one day American
and Soviet soldiers would go toe to toe in a
hot war military battle, But until they did, the Olympic
Games provided an alternate venue in which to watch and

(03:02):
gauge international power. We're going to talk about what happened
when Americans started losing to the Soviets at the Olympic Games.
There were some very interesting and unexpected consequences. I think
you will be intrigued. Let's go back a bit. Last
time we discussed the Olympics, we were talking about Jesse
Owens in the nineteen thirty six games in Berlin. Well,

(03:25):
the next two scheduled Olympic Games, they never happened. Both
the nineteen forty and the nineteen forty four Olympic Games.
They were canceled because of World War Two, and so
the first Olympics of the Cold War era right after
World War Two. They took place in nineteen forty eight
in London. The Soviet Union did not participate in these games.

(03:48):
They were still reeling from a war that killed twenty
one million Soviet soldiers and citizens. And let me repeat that,
twenty one million. By contrast, the United States had lost
six hundred thousand soldiers, not an insignificant number at all,
but not twenty one million either. With many European nations

(04:10):
still devastated by the war. It was the much healthier
US Olympic team that dominated the Olympics. You know. For example,
there was a seventeen year old kid named Bob Matthias.
He graduated from a California high school in June, and
then he won the Olympic decathlon just two months later.
When asked what he was going to do to celebrate,

(04:31):
he said, start shaving. I guess. But by the next
Olympics the whole vibe would be different. The rest of
the world would be back on its feet. Global diets
were improved, athletes everywhere were more fit. But another reason
the nifty two was different is that the Soviet Union

(04:52):
was there. The history of sport in the Soviet Union
is different than sports in the United States, or at
least it starts differently. Initially, the leaders of the Soviet
Union ignored international sports, or more accurately, they rejected international sports.

(05:12):
As the Soviet leaders saw it, international sports and the
Olympic Games, these were the playthings of the West, the
capitalist West. Competition and the obsession with winning and setting records.
These are symptoms of nations with competitive capitalist systems, winners

(05:32):
and losers and so the Soviets said, we're not interested
in these sports, the Olympics. That's what the Americans do,
that's what the Nazis do. But after World War two,
the Soviet leadership is going to change its mind. After
the war, in order to try to maximize their influence
throughout the world, and in order to try to counter

(05:53):
the influence of that other superpower in the United States,
the Soviets are going to begin competing in international sports.
Soviet leaders are going to embark on an athletic project
really with one goal in mind to defeat the United
States at the Olympic Games. And so the Soviets got busy.

(06:16):
After the war, the Soviet government created something called the
National Research Institute for Sports Culture. And what this institute
did was it ran sports training sites across the country
where they looked for young athletic talent. Soviet boys and girls.
They stood in line and then showed off their gymnastics skills,

(06:37):
their ice hockey skills, and the best and most promising talent.
It was then sent to Moscow for advanced training where
these young Soviets would be molded into future Olympic athletes. Now,
for many Americans, this Soviet sports system was the perfect

(06:58):
example of what was wrong with the Soviet Union. Here
was a system in which individuals did not have a
free choice, a system in which they were directed where
to go and told what to do by their government.
But for Soviet officials, this was exactly what the socialist
system could achieve. Everyone pitching in, doing their part, developing

(07:23):
whatever particular skill they possessed, and using that skill for
the betterment of the nation. So here's the key idea
at these Cold War Olympic Games. You know, on the
one hand, we might argue that a victory and international
sports is meaningless fine, that American can throw the javelin further,
or that Soviet is the best at the high jump,

(07:45):
so what who cares? But if you dig deeper, the
question being answered at these Cold Ore Olympics is this,
who has the better system in which to create strong
human beings? Which nation has the best system for maximizing
human potential? Is it a system based on individualism and competition,

(08:08):
you know, American capitalism, or is it a socialist system
in which centralized planning is emphasized, you know, in which
everything is directed by the state and athletes are said
to represent the collective and selfless essence of communism. Both sides,
the Americans and the Soviets. Both sides said our system

(08:30):
is best and we're going to prove it at the
Olympic Games. So this was not just sports. These Cold
War Olympic Games were referendums on the political system of
each nation. It wasn't a javelin toss or a basketball
game or a wrestling match. It was our way of
life against theirs. So the Soviets attend their first Olympic

(08:56):
Games in the summer of nineteen fifty two. These games
were in Helsinki, Finland, and by nineteen fifty two, the
Cold War was read or ice Cold. I'm actually not
sure how that goes in. The Soviets had detonated their
own atomic bomb. That superpower just got more powerful. The

(09:19):
U s and the U s s are They found
themselves on opposite sides of the Korean War. The US
had soldiers in Korea, and the Soviets were supplying the
Chinese and the North Korean troops that the Americans were
fighting against. By nineteen fifty two, the world seemed caught
up in an all out struggle between the American way
of life and the Soviet way of life. And then

(09:43):
came the Olympic Games. There was a widely read columnist
for the New York Times. His name is Arthur Daily,
and just before these games, just before they begin, he
gave his American readers a sense of what was at stake.
He wrote, there will be seventy one nations in the

(10:04):
Olympics that help sinky. The United States would like to
beat all of them, but the only one that counts
is Soviet Russia. The communist propaganda machine must be silenced
in sports. The Red Brothers have reached the put up
or shut up stage. Let's shut them up. It's in

(10:25):
the context of the Cold War that the metal count
became a phenomenon at the Olympic Games. And this means
counting up which nation won how many medals, and then
saying which nation had won the Olympic Games. The International
Olympic Committee they always wagged their finger and they said
no such counting is allowed, but everyone did it. And

(10:45):
the accepted practice back then was to give a nation
three points for a gold, two for a silver, and
one for a for a bronze. And I think this
is reasonable, So let's apply this to Helsinki. The American
domination in past Olympic Games, it came from their victories
in men's track and field and swimming, and that's where

(11:07):
many of the American medals came from here in Helsinki.
But the Soviets came into their first Olympics having rigorously
prepared for every event gymnastics, fencing, wrestling, weightlifting, shooting, everything.
And where the Soviets really had the American's number and

(11:28):
where they will have it for the next few Olympic
Games is in women's sports. The Soviets were better in
women's sports than the Americans because the Soviets actually cared
about and supported female athletes. They spent resources on women's athletics.
There was no system for women's sports in the United States.

(11:49):
There was no investment coming from the state that the
colleges and universities that turned out great male athletes in
the US, they totally ignored women's sports. And now this
sexism was going to hurt the United States in the
metal count. At the nineteen fifty two Games, the Soviets
got out to an early lead in the medal count

(12:11):
on the strength of their female athletes, and some Americans
complained about this that that New York Times columnist Arthur
Daley he argued that women's sports shouldn't be part of
the medal count. Well, sorry, macho man, they count. The
United States did storm back based on their domination of
the track and field events, and the Americans did win

(12:34):
the medal count. Using that three to one system, it
was one hundred and seventy five points for the Americans
one forty five for the Soviets. So this was an
American victory. But the United States was a long time
Olympic veteran. The Soviets they were rookies at these games.
It was not nearly as big a victory as many

(12:54):
Americans expected, and then the medal count would change at
the next Olympics in nineteen fifty six. These nineteen fifty
six games were in Melbourne, Australia, and with four more
years of training behind them, the Soviets routed the Americans.
They won more of every kind of metal, more gold,

(13:15):
more silver, more bronze. The final tally was two hundred
and one for the USSR one and sixty three for
the USA. And this loss at the Olympic Games, and
that is how Americans thought about it. If we don't
win the most medals. If the Soviets win more than us,

(13:36):
it's a loss. This loss unleashed a lot of soul
searching in the United States. American leaders said, we need
to do better, and let's talk about what came next,
because if you grew up in the United States, what
happened next had an effect on your life. American leaders

(13:57):
decided that if we wanted to compete with the Soviet
sports machine, and and that's how the uss ARE was
described in the United States, they zest and almost inhuman
sports machine, Well, if we wanted to compete against that machine,
something had to change. The n Olympic Games suggested that
Soviets were stronger than Americans, Americans were weaker than Soviets,

(14:20):
and one of the culprits, some argued, was our national wealth.
Critics pointed to the affluence of American culture and argued
that American children were spoiled, they were soft. I think
this is interesting because American affluence, our material affluence. It
was often held up as a sign of American superiority

(14:43):
to the Soviets. You know, our our powerful automobiles and
our modern kitchen appliances. The widespread availability of these creature comforts,
comforts that most Soviet citizens didn't have. This was evidence,
many said, of the superiority of the American system. But
here a different argument is being made. The exact opposite

(15:05):
argument is being made. Here. The argument is that all
this affluence has made Americans week, you know, sitting in
their air conditioned homes, eating TV dinners, drinking Coca cola,
and watching Saturday morning cartoons. All this has made American
children soft. Suddenly there was anxiety that America was a

(15:28):
nation of weaklings. And so in response, you get a
Cold War era push to whip American school children into shape,
and it comes straight from the top. In nineteen fifty five,
President Dwight Eisenhower created the President's Counsel on Youth Fitness,
and this was a direct response to the growing belief

(15:50):
that American children were less fit than their Soviet counterparts.
And so this was created one year before the disaster
of nineteen fifty six, but the program was emphasized even
more after those Olympic Games, and the goal of this
program him was to encourage physical fitness among young Americans.
Push ups, pull ups, the standing broad jump. This would

(16:12):
now be part of the everyday school curriculum of American children,
just like math or spelling. Did you do the Presidential
Fitness Test as a kid in elementary school? Well, that's
where it comes from. It was a test created in
the nineteen fifties as a way to mold American school children,
you know, you and me into future Olympic athletes. We

(16:37):
need to win the Cold War Olympic medal count against
the Soviets. We need to toughen up American kids. So
let's test them, let's challenge them in sports. I vividly
remember I had my certificate from Jimmy Carter attesting to
the fact that I could achieve a certain standard in
five events. Though I'm going to come clean right here

(17:01):
and right now, with the microphone in front of me
and the recorder on, I want to admit that I
cheated on the pull ups. I didn't think it was
fair that you had to do the pull ups front handed,
you know, with your knuckles facing you, so a pull
up and not an underhanded chin up. I could do
chin ups, but for some reason I couldn't do pull ups,

(17:22):
so I lied about my number. I know, terrible, but
in my defense, this was the nineteen seventies. You know,
so I did all this in the shadow of Watergate,
so I think it's justifiable. But my point right now
is not that I lied to my government. My point
is that those tests were a direct response to the

(17:42):
Cold War in the name of winning the Cold War
Olympics and demonstrating to the world the superiority of the
American system. Johnny and Sally need to be more fit
than Sergey and spent Lata. After the break, Wilma Rudolph dominates.

(18:20):
Here's another long lasting result of the Soviet performance at
the Olympic Games in the nineteen fifties. Since metal counts
did not discriminate based on sex, Americans realized we need
to do a better job developing women's sports. A gold
medal won by a female athlete counts for three points,
just like a gold medal one by a male athlete.

(18:41):
And the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European nations,
they had developed their women's sports programs, and they were
far ahead of the United States when it came to
funding and developing women's sports, and they actually cared about
women's sports in the Soviet Union, So now the United
States needed to catch up. There's a lesson here. Sometimes

(19:04):
progress comes unpredictable places, and that's the case here because
it's losing the Cold War metal count that prompted Americans
to finally start to care at least a little bit
about their female athletes. Now, real progress in this arena
is not going to come until the nineteen seventies when
Congress passes Title nine and mandates that schools spend money

(19:26):
on girls and women's sports programs. And we will talk
about that. But what happens here in the nineteen fifties
and early nineteen sixties is this, And I find this fascinating.
The Cold War made America care about their female athletes,
and especially, and somewhat surprisingly, if you know the history
of American sports, the black female athlete. The Cold War

(19:51):
took the African American female athlete who lived in almost
absolute obscurity, and it turned those black female athletes into
national heroes. They became celebrated Cold warriors. Until the Cold War,
black female athletes were little more than an afterthought in
American culture. I mean, they were certainly off the radar

(20:12):
of the American press, and I mean both the white
press and the Black press. Almost no one wrote about
black female athletes. Black female athletes were doubly discriminated against.
They were discriminated against and it ignored because they were black.
And in the masculine world of sport, they were discriminated
against and ignored because they were women. It was a

(20:34):
double burden. This is the story of black women in
the twentieth century more generally discriminated against because of their
race and their sex. But in the world of sports,
it's the Cold War that's going to lead to a
rethinking of this. It's going to lead to a celebration
of the black female athlete in the United States, or

(20:55):
at least the celebration when they can help the United
States win the metal count. The best example is a
young black woman from Tennessee, Wilma Rudolph. The story of
Wilma Rudolph is one of those stories that just makes
you proud to be a human being. I mean, it's
the story of the American dream, the the rise from

(21:16):
very humble beginnings to fame and glory. Let me just
very briefly tell you her story, because it's amazing. Wilma
Rudolph was born in nine in Clarksville, Tennessee, and she
was the twenty of twenty two children, and so her
mother deserves the gold medal. When she was six years old,

(21:37):
she was diagnosed with polio and she spent a full
year in bed, and then her legs were placed in
in cumbersome metal braces, and every night her mother would
come home from her job as a maid and she
would massage her daughter's aching legs late into the evening.
At age twelve, Wilma finally got to remove these braces,

(21:59):
and she exercised as a way of overcoming her disability.
And after years of being pent up in those braces,
her speed was unleashed. Have you ever read the book
or seen the film Forrest Gump? You know, young Forrest
is saddled with cumbersome leg braces, which one day he
sheds and it is revealed that he is a tremendous runner. Well,

(22:22):
the author of that book, Winston Groom, he got his
inspiration for that storyline from Wilma Rudolph. Anyway, one day,
while playing basketball in high school, Wilma Rudolf was spotted
by a guy named Edward Temple. He was the track
coach at nearby Tennessee State. This was a segregated all
Black college, Wilma Rudolf went to Tennessee State and she

(22:45):
ran for the Tennessee State Tiger Bells. That was their nickname,
a mix of tigers and Southern bells, and these tiger
bells they dominated. The next Cold War Olympic Games, the
nineteen sixty Summer Olympics in Rome. Wilma Rudolf in particular dominated.
She won three gold medals on two and then the

(23:07):
four by one relay. Rudolph was the American star of
the nineteen sixty Summer Olympics, and the press they loved her.
They they followed her everywhere, and men too, including a young,
love struck American boxer who also won a gold medal
at those games, Cassius Clay, soon to go by the
name Muhammad Ali. Cassius Clay was infatuated with Wilma Rudolph.

(23:31):
She said that Clay talked too much. We'll do a
deep dive on Cassius Clay next time. But the Cold
War is the reason that black female athletes like Rudolph
were suddenly given the attention and some of the resources
that they deserved, because once again, now they weren't just
black female athletes. Now they were Cold Warriors. The Cold

(23:55):
War provided the international setting in which these black female
athletes could become national sports heroes. Let me dig just
a little bit deeper here. Maybe the most interesting thing
that happened was not just that national support for black
female athletes increased, but some of the long time widely

(24:18):
held disparaging views about black women in general they began
to change as well. You know, the propaganda coming from
both the United States Olympic Committee and the American press.
They suddenly worked very hard to accentuate the the grace
and the beauty and the and the femininity of black
female athletes, especially in comparison to what at that same

(24:42):
time the American press described as the mannishness of their
Soviet and Eastern European counterparts. If you grew up in
the Cold War era, you're familiar with the stereotype Russian
and Eastern European female athletes were described over and over
in the American press is hairy, thick, thighed, unattractive Siberian women.

(25:05):
And by contrast, Wilma Rudolph and the other Tennessee State
tiger bells. They were suddenly being celebrated as graceful, beautiful,
feminine beings. It's a problematic quote, but it speaks to
this phenomenon. One of the track coaches for the Olympic

(25:25):
team was Ed Temple, Wilma Rudolph's coach back at Tennessee State.
When comparing the young women of his program to the
Soviet female athletes, Ed Temple like to say, we're foxes,
not oxes. I know it pretty sexist from our modern perspective,
but think about what's going on here. In the context

(25:46):
of the Cold War. The femininity of these black female
athletes is being emphasized as a counterpoint to the stereotype
of Mannish Soviet female athletes. And I want to impress
upon you for an American culture that had long described
black women in terrible, lead demeaning ways, describing black women,

(26:08):
you know, as anything but feminine and beautiful, well, what's
going on now marked a change in thinking. Here's an
interesting term. Oval tracks were made of crushed cinder, So
some creative soul came up with the idea of calling
these black female Olympic track stars Cinderella's, a name that

(26:30):
suggested their beauty, their femininity. In the context of the
Cold War, the once ignored and marginalized black female athlete.
She had become the Cinderella of sport, and of course,
Wilma Rudolph she was the ultimate Cinderella, with her remarkable
rise from illness and poverty to international fame. Okay, but

(26:55):
don't think for a moment that the Cold War actually
fixed the problem of race in the United States. This
will be made very clear by a pair of black
athletes who will use the Olympic medal stand as their
platform to tell the world about American racism in n

(27:16):
That's all for now. Next time on the Untold History
of Sports in America, presented by One Day University. He's handsome,
he's fast, he's pretty, and he can't possibly be beaten.
He's Muhammad Ali