Good New Article on Billy Olson

[Bubba PV]

Nice photos on the left side. I remember going to Mexico City with Billy, Frank Estes and Don Lee. The next summer I went with a high school kid, Brad Pursely, also mentioned in this article. We got to jump in the Olympic Stadium. Saw them both at Reno this year. Bubba

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2010/m ... st-in-the/

Pole vaulter Billy Olson’s career had, you can joke, its many ups and downs. Thirty years ago, Olson, one of the best in the world at his sport, experienced his biggest down.

In January 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States would boycott the Summer Olympics to be held in Moscow if Russia did not withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan.

Russia did not, and as track and field segued from the indoor to the outdoor season, Carter confirmed American athletes would not participate.

“It seemed like it came out in the newspaper when we were at the Texas Relays. Carter said we weren’t going,” said Olson, who, in 1980, was the second-ranked U.S. vaulter, according to Track and Field News.

The state champion from Abilene High School was having a dominating collegiate career at Abilene Christian University.

“I was grief-struck,” he said. “I was coming on and getting better. I thought I had a good shot” at making the U.S. team.

Don W, Hood, ACU’s track coach at the time, said his young athlete took it hard.

“He was pretty much heartbroken,” Hood said. “It was Billy’s big chance. But that’s life, and Billy learned from it.

“I thought it was the dumbest deal. It didn’t do any good for anyone. There was not a positive for anyone.”

Pole vaulter Brad Pursley, Olson’s ACU teammate, agreed.

“Here in Abilene, Texas, we were cruising along and working hard to get better. We were oblivious to the politics,” Pursley said. “Billy was devastated. He didn’t say much, but you could see it in his demeanor.

“His shot was legitimate.”

In 1984, when the U.S. dominated the summer Olympics in Los Angeles — without the mighty Russian team, which was boycotting them — Olson had a great indoor season but tore ligaments in his left foot on a bad landing early in outdoor competition. Not fully healed by the Olympic Trials held in June, he did not make the team.

Mike Tully, the top-ranked U.S. vaulter that year, won the silver at the Games.

In 1988, banged up again and aging, Olson finally made the American team, but he did not medal.

“His body ran out of power; he was getting old,” Pursley said of Olson, who was retired when 1992 Games were held in Barcelona, Spain.

Olson was not alone in his disappointment. With the Olympics held every four years, athletes train for perhaps their one moment on the world stage.

A missed opportunity often means no second chance.

“A lot of guys were in their mid-20s or late-20s, and they had worked for years and years. This was their last shot, and it didn’t happen,” Olson said.

Carter was not re-elected in November 1980, when he lost to Ronald Reagan. Some say the boycott was the last straw for voters fed up with fuel shortages, hostage-taking and the surrender of the Panama Canal.

“I think it was a small part of it,” Olson said of the boycott. “I don’t want to get into Carter-bashing, but it accomplished nothing. It led to Russia boycotting the 1984 Olympics. The Olympics should be above politics. Most countries are able to keep it that way.

“It seems like it has gotten back to that.”

Olson today owns Abilene Bail Bond and Billy Olson Bail Bond with his longtime friend Pursley, who also once owned the American vault record. They took over SOS Bail Bonds, a business operated by Olson’s father and former police officer, Bill, and another local sports celebrity, wrestler Don “The Lawman” Slatton.

Did Billy Olson believe he had a legitimate chance at winning a gold medal 30 years ago?

“I’m not bragging, but I’d say I was the best in the world at that time,” he said.

WORLDWIDE REPUTATION

Of the many athletes to hail from Abilene or to have once called Abilene home, few aside from 1956 three-event Olympic champion Bobby Morrow can top Olson’s accomplishments on a worldwide scale.

Olson was the first pole vaulter to clear 19 feet indoors and the first American over that height. In 1986, he soared a career-best 19 feet, 5½ inches at an indoor meet in East Rutherford, N.J.

He set 11 world records, the first coming in 1982, his senior season at ACU.

The vaulter to beat in 1980 was Poland’s Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz. He broke the world record three times, won two European indoor championships and won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics.

Olson, before the Games, had beaten Kozakiewicz at a meet in Stockholm.

The slender pole vaulter with flowing rock-star hair from Abilene brought a new element to pole vaulting — speed. He wasn’t just runway fast — he was track fast. Admittedly not the most technically sound vaulter, Olson used his speed and his fearlessness.

“I think I was dang near as fast running with a pole as without it,” he said. “My speed was a blessing, but I also was reckless.”

He said it takes a mindset void of fear to run with a pole about 17 feet in length, plant it in a small box well before the final destination and vault into the sky and then, without worrying that you are two stories above the ground, go over a bar and land on a mat without breaking anything.

Once a vaulter has a bad experience, the nerve often leaves forever, he said.

“Once the fear factor has been broken, it’s hard to get it back,” Olson said.

Fearless and fast, Olson soon launched into a game of one-upsmanship with an emerging Soviet Union vaulter named Sergey Bubka, a battle that intrigued people not generally interested in track and field because of the ongoing U.S.-Soviet rivalry.

In Paris in 1985, Bubka was the first vaulter to top 6 meters (19 feet, 8¼ inches). Nine years later, Bubka, who won Olympic gold in 1988 in Seoul, sailed over 6.14 meters, or 20 feet 1¾ inches in Italy. That outdoor record still stands today.

He also holds the indoor record of 6.15 meters, set in 1993 in Ukraine. In total, Bubka broke 35 world records.

Olson said what made Bubka, who represented Ukraine after the dismantling of the former Soviet Union, the best vaulter ever is that he had Olson’s 100-meter speed, was stronger and knew his stuff.

“He had equal speed, or more speed, and unbelievable technique,” Olson said. “He was the fastest big guy in pole vaulting.”

The Olson vs. Bubka heyday was 1986.

“We went back and forth breaking indoor records. NBC and CBS would televise the meets, and there were huge crowds,” Olson said. “There had never been an athlete like him (in pole vaulting).”

Olson said the athletes were hardly cordial to each other.

“He was more serious than I was. There was pressure on both of us,” Olson said. “I was a fierce competitor. I had this tunnel vision, and nothing got in my way. But it was different with him.

“He and I were never friends. I tried to be friendly, but I think he viewed me as a threat to him. He made fun of my technique, even after I won.”

On reflection, Olson called the 1980s “the golden age of track and field.” A combination of great athletes — including great women athletes — plus a wealth of big meets across the world that provided moneymaking opportunities and intense international rivalries sparked interest in the sport.

“Now, it’s hard to get two people to come out and watch,” Olson joked. “Top athletes aren’t competing but one or two times a year. Interest is down, probably because they are competing in one or two meets.”

Hood said that as a coach, he favored the throwing events, although he was a 10-6 pole vaulter back in the 1940s. But pole vaulting changed his emphasis and reputation.

“It was very exciting,” said Hood, who’s from Marlow, Okla., home of another great vaulter of that era, Joe Dial. “I knew his dad and thought he was coming here until Oklahoma State hired his dad as pole vault coach.”

Hood said he put the pole vault and pit right in front of the viewing stands at ACU’s Elmer Gray Stadium because it had become such a spectator favorite.

“I wanted people to be able to see it and enjoy it,” he said.

BEST OF THE LOCALS

What makes the homegrown Olson story more special is that he was not a solitary figure of success in pole vault.

Olson was pushed most by a protégé out of Merkel — Pursley.

When Pursley began reaching Olsonesque heights, it became clear something good was going on in Abilene, which had produced McMurry’s four-time collegiate champion Rickey Parris a few years earlier.

“I was just getting started. Billy was well-established and took me under his wing,” Pursley said.

One great vaulter after another emerged at Elmer Gray, including Tim Bright, who later climbed to No. 3 nationally and competed in three Olympics (twice as a decathlete and in 1992 as a pole vaulter, finishing 12th).

Others were Cooper’s Frank Estes and Snyder’s Dale Jenkins.

In 1981, Olson was No. 2 among American vaulters and Pursley No. 3. Olson vaulted by Earl Bell to No. 1, nationally and in the world, in 1982. Olson was ranked among the nation’s top 10 from 1978 to 1989.

Pursley was listed in the U.S. top 10 by Track and Field News from 1980-1987.

The friendly Olson-Pursley rivalry was part of a Sports Illustrated story in February 1983 about America’s return to pole vaulting prominence.

Olson doesn’t mention it, but Pursley noted the missed financial opportunity of the 1980 boycott. Track and field athletes were not rolling in money back then.

“If you won a gold medal, it could be a financial windfall,” Pursley said.

While Abilene last season celebrated its first state football championship in 53 years, few may remember that the school’s last major sports championship came in 1976. That’s the year that Olson and a group of “speed merchants” won the Class 4A state track championship. AHS clocked a 40.6 in the sprint relay, then the second-fastest ever by a schoolboy foursome in the nation.

Olson vaulted 15 feet, 10 inches to set the Texas schoolboy standard. He contributed 10 points to the Eagles’ state championship effort.

So how did a vaulter who benefited from West Texas’ famous prevailing wind out of the southwest do so well indoors?

“I got extra bounce on the boards,” he said of the wooden runway used indoors. “And I was healthy during the indoor season. By the time I got outdoors, I was worn out completely.”

Olson said he had some indoor experience gained by vaulting indoors in Abilene. In a warehouse on Walnut Street with a 25-foot ceiling, a runway was built.

“It was plywood, 2 feet at the widest. Pretty rickety. A lot of guys couldn’t stay on it,” Olson said, laughing. “It was just as cold inside as outside.”

IRONIC ENDING

Although the United States pulled out of the 1980 Games, the Olympic trials went on as planned in June at Eugene, Ore.

Olson was not much interested but showed up anyway.

Not one to expend his energy in warm-ups — he rarely jumped at all, in fact — Olson soared 18-6 on a practice vault that dropped jaws. The world record at the time was 18-8.

However, he got no higher than 18 feet in the competition and did not make the top three, or what would have been the U.S. team.

“I kind of choked,” Olson said, laughing now.

Pursley said Olson, the warrior competitor, did not have his heart in it.

“He always seemed to do better when the bright lights were on,” Pursley said.

Thirty years later, there is this irony: The United States, not Russia, has troops in Afghanistan.

“The athletes were confused,” Pursley said of the 1980 decision. “They were being used as pawns to make a political point. It was an extreme downer.”

[joebro391]

Good Article. I wish I knew of more video footage of him. I also wish I had his speed -6P

[ifavault]

There is a quick shot of Billy Olson in the introduction of the Doug Lytle video at this website:

http://www.xtremeathleticskc.com/pole_v ... lytle.html

He is the 7th vaulter over a bar (about a third of the way into the video) just before the sprinters come around the corner of what is probably the 200m.

You don't get to see much of his approach, but you can see his ("ahem") plant/take-off, swing, and clearance.

There is another video out there somewhere of him missing a bar and pounding his fist after hitting the pit. I can't remember if it is in this same Doug Lytle video, the Don Hood (ACU) one, or something else, but you can see his speed down the runway better.

ifavault