Olympics: 'Rome 1960'

Author David Maraniss will be online Thursday, Aug. 7, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss his book, "Rome 1960," a look at the 1960 Summer Olympics, a games marked by television cameras, Cold War tensions, the emergence of Cassius Clay and questions about civil rights.

A transcript follows.

Read the Book World review of "Rome 1960": Heroes Once More (Post, July 20)

Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and author of several bestselling books, including They "Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967"; "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi" and "First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton" and "Clemente The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero."

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David Maraniss: Hello everyone...this is David Maraniss. I am writing today from Madison, Wisconsin, my hometown, where I will be through the end of August before returning to Washington. I will be watching the Olympics from here. I had thought about going to Beijing, but was talked out of it because of my chronic asthma and the pollution problems in Beijing. Thats for your interest...David

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Arlington, Va.: David, first of all, I want to thank you for writing this book and for writing about an Olympics other than the 1936 Games. I just got my copy a few days ago, but I won't be able to read too much until after the Closing Ceremonies.

I was only 4 at the time of the Rome Games, and Mexico City was when I had my first real exposure to the Games and became the passionate fan that I have been for 40 years. However, Bud Greenspan's Olympiad shows from the 1970s focused on many events from the 1960 Games and this really brought the 1960 Games to life for me.

There is one trivial matter I like to point out about Rome -- this was the first Olympics where medals were put on a chain or ribbon and hung around an athlete's neck on the victory stand -- in every previous Games, the medal was handed to an athlete in a box. I wondered if you had a chance to interview either Al Oerter before his death or Herb Elliott? Two very great Olympians in my opinion.

I could go on and on about the great athletes and great competitions from the 1960 Olympics but the 1500 with Elliott is for me the highlight. Elliott goes into the race undefeated in his career, and he puts it all on the line, not afraid to run the last half of the race from the front, and set a new world record in the process.

David Maraniss: I was 11 years old when the Rome Olympics were staged. I remember seeing Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson, Cassius Clay, and Abebe Bikila on television, but for some reason my most vivid memory is of the Pakistani field hockey team after they upset India for the gold medal. They were jumping up and down shouting "Wahoo, Pakistan!" - and here I was, a kid in Madison, Wis., knowing nothing about field hockey and little about Pakistan, jumping up and won in my living room shouting "Wahoo, Pakistan!"

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Waterford, Va.: Hi,Was Wilma Rudolph's motherhood accepted or rebuked or unknown to the public? pk

David Maraniss: Most of her high school classmates at Burt High in Clarksville knew that she was pregnant and had a baby. As her college coach, Ed Temple, later said he told her, it is a short distance from a pat on the back to a kick in the butt, and that is what Wilma Rudolph mostly experienced because of her teenage motherhood - some people who had treated her as a hero when she had returned from the Melbourne games in 1956 with a bronze medal, at age 16, turned against her when she became pregnant only a year later...but not everyone. And most people outside of Clarksville never knew that she was already a mother when she came to Rome and won those three gold medals...

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Washington, D.C.: How did you get the idea for this book? How long did it take you to research, and what was the most surprising thing you learned?

David Maraniss: The idea for this book came to me slowly, and mostly by accident. I was researching my last book, on the great Latino baseball player Roberto Clemente, and his first great season with the Pittsburgh Pirates was 1960. As I was examining old sports sections from August and September 1960 looking for stories on Clemente and the Pirates, I kept coming across these amazing names - Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson, Cassius Clay, Abebe Bikila. I couldn't get those names out of my head, even though at the time I was not planning to write another so-called sports book. But it was only when I saw that through those Olympic games I could use the drama of sports to illuminate history and sociology that I decided to go full bore on the book. It took me two and a half years, a little faster than my normal three year rhythm. I traveled around the U.S. and Europe interviewing people and gathering archival documents for a year and a half, then wrote it in a year...

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Washington, DC: David, if you could go back in time and attend any Olympics, which one would you pick? I'd go to Berlin in 1936 because of the historical significance, and to cheer Jesse Owens.

David Maraniss: The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were certainly fascinating. I wonder how it would have felt to be in Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II, when it was already obvious what Hitler and his henchmen were up to but the full extent of their horrendous enterprise had not yet unfolded. I would have loved to have seen Jesse Owens, too, one of the great athletes of all time, and singlehandedly putting it in the face of the notion of Aryan superiority.

But much had already been written about Owens and the 1936 Olympics. One of the reasons I was attracted to Rome is because I think it was underappreciated and had a wider canvas of change and transformation. I would choose Rome, I think.

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Phiadelphia: How cool would Michael Phelps be if he refused to swim unless Joey Cheeks' visa is granted? That act, especially, if they revoked Phelps' visa, would dwarf any of his athletic accomplishments. He would become a historic figure.

David Maraniss: It would be a very bold move. Just the small act of a few Americans wearing masks in Beijing has upset the Chinese government. I am of mixed minds about boycotts, in general, but an individual should always have the freedom to do what he or she believes is right in situations like that. It was upsetting earlier when it seemed that a few western countries would try to silence their athletes in China. My feeling is that everyone should go, and say whatever it is they want to say while there.

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Arlington, Va.: There have been a lot of complaints, including some in the Post, that having the games in China is the last straw in selling out its original values. Do you agree, or were those values already being compromised in 1960?

David Maraniss: The Olympics has never fully lived up to the Olympic Ideal, and probably never will. I don't think China is the ideal spot for the Olympics, largely because of its horrendous pollution problems. The human rights record of modern China is unacceptable, but that in itself is not reason to keep it from holding the Olympics, in my opinion. The hope, always, is that having the entire world watching China will be at least a small step in opening up the culture. Perhaps that is a naive belief, but it is no more naive than thinking China will go away or change any faster if the world shuns it.

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Columbus, Ohio: Isn't the title of your book a bit of an exaggeration? Many would argue that the Olympics did not change the world.

David Maraniss: Thanks for the question.

The title of the book is Rome 1960.

The subtitle of the book is The Olympics that Changed the World.

I did not write the book with that argument in mind. I wrote the book to focus on a time of transformation, when the whole world was on the same stage at the same time, for 18 days, and one could see the modern world coming into view, for better and worse. These were the first commercially televised Olympics; the first doping scandal happened in Rome; the first athlete paid for wearing a certain brand of shoes was in Rome. Rome saw the first African American to carry the US flag. Rome saw the first black African to win a gold medal. Rome saw women competing in more events than ever before.

Whether the Olympics changed the world is debatable either way. I don't write books to make polemical points. I have to take responsibility for the subtitle, but it was not mine, nor was it the reason I wrote the book.

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Washington, D.C.: Ok, I'll bite -- where IS your ideal location for holding the Olympics?

David Maraniss: Thanks for biting.

Rome!

or L.A.

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Phaladelphia, Pa.: How has television altered our view of the Olympics and how the Olympics views the world? Is the requirement of visual interest detracting from the spirit of competition?

David Maraniss: First, consider what the first commercially televised Olympics were like. CBS bought the rights to broadcast the Rome games. They paid about a half million bucks. NBC for Beijing is paying over a billion dollars. NBC has sent 2,900 employes to Beijing. CBS sent fewer than 50 to Rome. It was just before the era of transatlantic satellites, so the games were not televised live in the US. Film and videotape cannisters were loaded onto commerical jets in Rome and flown back to New York every day. Jim McKay, hosting his first Olympics (for CBS...ABC would hire him the following year) was not even in Rome, but at the New York studio, tapping out his evening script on a portable typewriter.

That is how it all began.

It is impossible to overstate the effect TV had had on the Olympics since then. The synergy of television and commericalism made things grow exponentially. I have always heard complaints that it is hard to just watch the events on TV without wallowing in all the excesses of the coverage that have nothing to do with the sports themselves.

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Bethesda:"The hope, always, is that having the entire world watching China will be at least a small step in opening up the culture. Perhaps that is a naive belief, but it is no more naive than thinking China will go away or change any faster if the world shuns it."

Maybe so, but IOC seems to have backflipped from saying that having the Olympics would pressure China on human rights, etc. to complete acquiescence with China's crackdown. For example, now that China is denying visas to anyone who might breathe a dissenting word, the IOC issues bland statements about deferring to the host country on such matters. I think the whole thing is going to be a big happy-faced whitewash -- "nothing to see here, everything's fine." I wish the athletes luck, but I'm not going to watch a minute of it.

David Maraniss: The IOC has indeed backflipped. That is very disappointing, but...looking at the history of the IOC...unfortunately not surprising. It is part of the central hypocrisy of the Olympic movement...the claim that it is above politics...

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Pittsburgh: This is unknowable, of course, but how many 1960 Olympians do you think might have used performance-enhancement substances, legal or otherwise? Isn't it just a matter that back then there wasn't very good technology for testing? After all, nowadays it's a matter of using what hasn't been banned... yet.

David Maraniss: You are absolutely right. There was NO drug testing in 1960, so not only was the technology inadequate, but the process was not in place, imperfect as it would always be. Along with the Danish cyclist and blood doping, some athletes, in both the Soviet Union and the US, were experimenting with anabolic steroids at the 1960 games. They were not caught, and the effects were not clearly known then, either in terms of how steroids would strengthen the body or harm the body. Also, going back to the 1930s, there had been reports of widespread use of amphetemines. My basic philsophy is that human nature does not change, but the culture changes around it. In other words, the athletes of that era were not morally superior to those of today, but the temptations were fewer.

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Arlington, VA: Hi David!

Your favorite translator here. I've been really enjoying your book. Thanks for writing another fascinating page turner.

Can I ask if you might be kind enough to give us a teaser of what you'll be researching next?

We can't wait.

Take care!

David Maraniss: Ah, yes, my favorite translator. I should say for Rome 1960 I used more translators than ever because of the many languages of the archival material I needed for the book - German, Italian, Russian, Danish, French.

I am not certain what my next book will be but I have two projects in mind. I am writing about Barack Obama for the Post, my first article to be published Aug. 24...and I am talking to Billie Jean King about writing a social biography of her amazing life.

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Silver Spring, MD: What about the male/female shot-putters on the Russia team? It was the beginning of the steroid era.

David Maraniss: Yes as to males. Female use of testosterone began just after Rome. The East German sports federation began, after Rome, probably the most rampant and tragic use of steroids for their women athletes in history.

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Rockville: This may sound jaded, but do the Olympics actually have a purpose anymore beside making money?

David Maraniss: It is a valid question. With all the commercialism, professionalism, egotism, television...one wonders. But even with all that, sports provide uncommon drama and entertainment, if nothing else, even, sometimes, for the jaded. Plus, even with all the professionalism, the average Olympic athlete today is doing it for the love of sport, not the money.

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East End, DC: Heard you on Sunday's edition of "Bob Edwards Weekend." I recognize your arguments about transfigurative moments throughout the Rome 1960 Games ... so when are your 1968 and 1972 manuscripts going to the printer?

David Maraniss: When I told friends that I was writing a book about the Olympics, most automatically assumed it would be about 1968, with the black power salute of Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City, or 1972 and the tragedy in Munich. Those are very important stories. But they are better known, and in my mind Rome, lesser known, had a quieter but much broader transformative effect. Change does not always come with confrontation or violence; important change sometimes only becomes apparent in retrospect.

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Washington, D.C.: Where do you see the Olympics going in the future?

David Maraniss: Literally, to London, then Chicago wants them after that but South America has never hosted an Olympics and they might be the favorites for 2016.

But that of course is not what you meant. Good question. I think the trend of commercialization will not slacken. The politics will always be there. The sports will change. And somehow the Olympics will go on.

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David Maraniss: Thank you all very much for your interest...David

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