HawkeyeHypnosis
Well-Known Member
Secret Weapon: Gold medalist in '48 returns to support Men's US basketball | Fox News
Great read. Thought some of you might like this. From article:
When the U.S. men play Argentina on Friday night, one 89-year-old basketball fan promises to cheer louder than anyone else.
He's Ray Lumpp, and this isn't his first London Olympics. Back in 1948, he competed on the U.S. basketball team at another London Games.
Lumpp is here at the invitation of U.S. basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski -- a little special something to motivate the team.
Now one might wonder what an elderly New Yorker might be able to tell a group of fantastically gifted athletes quite accustomed to pressure. But Lumpp, who lives on Long Island, has a different Olympic story to tell.
He can share his shock about what he saw in 1948: a bombed-out London still piled with rubble that didn't seem ready for the 4,000 athletes gathering for those games. The country couldn't afford to build an athletes village, so competitors stayed in schools, military barracks and private homes -- anywhere the government could find an extra room for them. Food was still rationed. U.S. athletes brought their own meat and sugar -- and were criticized for it.
"I remember being at St. Paul's Cathedral and there was rubble all around," he told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "I have to admire the English people. They put on a games they could be proud of. ... Everything they had, they shared with us."
Great read. Thought some of you might like this. From article:
When the U.S. men play Argentina on Friday night, one 89-year-old basketball fan promises to cheer louder than anyone else.
He's Ray Lumpp, and this isn't his first London Olympics. Back in 1948, he competed on the U.S. basketball team at another London Games.
Lumpp is here at the invitation of U.S. basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski -- a little special something to motivate the team.
Now one might wonder what an elderly New Yorker might be able to tell a group of fantastically gifted athletes quite accustomed to pressure. But Lumpp, who lives on Long Island, has a different Olympic story to tell.
He can share his shock about what he saw in 1948: a bombed-out London still piled with rubble that didn't seem ready for the 4,000 athletes gathering for those games. The country couldn't afford to build an athletes village, so competitors stayed in schools, military barracks and private homes -- anywhere the government could find an extra room for them. Food was still rationed. U.S. athletes brought their own meat and sugar -- and were criticized for it.
"I remember being at St. Paul's Cathedral and there was rubble all around," he told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. "I have to admire the English people. They put on a games they could be proud of. ... Everything they had, they shared with us."
