It’s hot and steamy in Rome these days. The weather, in combination with the fact that everything in the Eterna is closed, make it hard to motivate the staff here at the eCool compound. Hence, the scarcity of posts. Most days, when we saunter into the compound after a few iced coffees and a leisurely stroll through the city’s deserted streets, we find our eCool employees hunkered down in front of the television, watching the Beijing Olympics. The minute we switch off the set and demand that they start writing and photographing, the whole team heads for the glorious swimming pool that’s been put up “in the shadow of the Colosseum” on the Caelian Hill. (If you’re sweating it out in Rome this summer and you’ve not yet been to this pool, run there!) It’s hard to get any work done in this national holiday month!
The eCoolers did show a bit of excitement when we suggested they write about the Olympics instead of just watching them. And so, today, we bring you news of a new book by Pulitzer Prize winner, David Maraniss, titled Rome 1960. The Olympics that Changed the World.
Rome’s 1960 Olympics happened half a century after they were first planned. The Eternal City was awarded the Olympics in 1908, but the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in 1906 forced the city to decline the honor, which was passed to London. Thus, there was much celebration when, in 1955, the International Olympic Committee selected Rome as the host for the XVII Olympiad.
Like all Olympic cities, Rome went to work when the announcement was made. The entire city’s infrastructure, from the transportation system to the water supply, was significantly upgraded, and a number of new sporting venues were constructed. None of the new stadiums were as interesting as the ancient settings in which some sporting events were held: the wrestling competition was held in the Basilica of Maxentius in the Roman Forum, the gymnastic events were staged at the Baths of Caracalla, and the marathon — won by the Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila who set a new world record while racing barefoot — finished under the Arch of Constantine.
The athletic competitions at the Rome Olympics proved to be just as spellbinding. The Soviet team, backed by generous Communist athletic subsidies, trounced the Americans by winning more medals than ever before. Supercharged sprinter Wilma Rudolph broke racial barriers when she won the gold despite a bout with childhood polio that left her in leg braces. America’s number one hope for a medal, sprinter Dave Sime, was recruited into an effort to convince a Soviet long jumper, Igor Ter-Ovanesyan ,to defect to the United States during the Games. And the gold-medal-winning marathoner, Bikila, had the satisfaction of achieving athletic triumph on the streets of the very country that had annexed and ruled his own for several decades in the first half of the 20th century.
While David Maraniss’s book is about such athletic achievement, it is also about the changing world in which the 1960 Olympics were staged. Political and social events play a central role in the story of the Rome Olympics, from the rise of Communism and the advent of the Cold War to the slow disintegration of racial barriers. As well, Maraniss chronicles changes in the culture of athletics that still affect the sports world today.
As Maraniss himself says in an interview posted on his website, the Rome Olympics heralded the beginning of our modern world:
In so many ways, the 1960 Olympics marked a passing of one era and the birth of another. Television, money and doping were bursting onto the scene, changing everything they touched. Old-school notions of amateurism, created by and for upper-class sportsmen, were being challenged as never before. New countries were being born in Africa and Asia, blacks and women were pushing for equal rights. For better and worse, one could see the modern world as we know it today coming into view.
