Seen at the gym

Unsurprisingly, the television sets at the gym have been turned to the Olympics this last week or so.

Which means I've watched a lot of sports I rarely see on TV, like track and field, swimming (obviously), diving (meh), volleyball of the indoor and outdoor variety, rowing and several others. I remember watching sports like these on the old Wide World of Sports on ABC. When we would visit my grandparents over a weekend and the Saturday weather kept us inside, WWS and Jim McKay were called into action. They led into Hee-Haw around dinnertime.

With WWS gone, a lot of these sports don't end up on TV very often anymore. ESPN will show them sometimes -- they manage to show a lot of women's beach volleyball for some reason. But realistically, a sport such as the discus throw, where the competitors spin around in a circle and fling a roughly four-pound (men's) or two-pound (women's) metal disc as far as they can isn't built for modern TV coverage or modern TV audiences.

American Stephanie Brown Trafton won a gold in that event and she has a great story. She attended the 1984 Los Angeles games and became an instant and devoted fan of gymnast Mary Lou Retton, but her height (she's 6-4 and could probably step over the balance beam) quickly put gymnastics out of her reach. She wound up in field events at college after an injury ended her basketball career. In her post-win interview, Trafton put out a televised plea to meet her idol, which I imagine will probably happen, if only to see the foot and a half difference in height between them.

And women's discus in the U.S. is an interesting story itself. Trafton follows Lilian Copeland as only the second American woman to win gold in the event. Copeland, then a law student at USC, won in the 1932 Los Angeles games. She was Jewish and she boycotted the 1936 Munich games because Adolf Hitler refused to allow Jews on the German Olympic team and the International Olympic Committee, as unconcerned with the host country's treatment of its people then as it is now, looked the other way. Copeland, at the time a world-record holder in several women's field events such as the javelin and shot put, never competed at the international level again. She joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office in 1936 and worked as a juvenile officer until 1960 and died in 1964 at 68.

Trafton made a point for her faith as well. In her post-competition interview she spoke of praying for peace of mind and concentration before her throw. She offers her testimony via the 4 Winds Christian Athletics organization, and some of her statements will be broadcast to the underground church in China.