Skip to My Lou : Ritter Leaped to a Gold at Seoul, but High Jumping Still Has Its Ups and Downs

Louise Ritter is flopped across the tiny bed in her hotel room. She is bleary-eyed in Osaka, Japan. Don’t ask her what time it is.

If not for the arrival of a room-service hamburger, the day would be classified as a washout. Promoters of the Yomiuri-Chitose track meet paid the Olympic champion a hefty sum to fly through eight time zones and high jump at their meet. Ritter is aware that they paid her all that money to jump high.

The particularly rotten aspect of this day is that Ritter has not jumped all that high. Fact is, she can’t remember when she has done worse. She has disappointed the fans, the promoter and herself. On top of which her stomach has been doing a more successful Fosbury flop than she has.

All of which makes her sigh on the phone line to the United States, laughing almost, when she’s asked about the new-found glamour and riches that come with winning an Olympic gold medal.

“I was just lying here thinking how exhausted I am,” Ritter said.

Still, she will compete in the Times/Eagle Indoor Games Friday night in the Forum.

“I’m too busy, I think that’s what’s bugging me,” she said. “I have been doing too much traveling. It’s caught up with me. I’m trying to capitalize on everything.

“But when I get to the point (that) I did with this meet, I have to reevaluate. I’ve been running myself ragged. If you asked me today if I loved high jumping, I’m not sure I’d say I did.”

Which is unusual. Ritter, who will turn 31 Saturday, has so loved her event that she has persevered despite severe setbacks, including, but not limited to, knee surgery, foot surgery and ankle surgery.

There has been the usual scrutiny accorded three-time Olympians. As the perennial U.S. record-holder and fixture in the world’s top five, Ritter is used to being asked where the world championship titles have been and where, for America’s sake, have been those Olympic medals?

The first question Ritter was asked in the news conference after her Olympic victory at Seoul was, “Louise, do you think this will pretty much put to rest the notion that you are a choker?”

Ritter was too well-bred to say what she was thinking at that moment. Some things have occurred to her since then, however.

“To be real honest with you, until they asked me that question, I never thought of myself as a choker,” she said. “I don’t know a jumper who has been more consistent.”

There is little in Ritter’s athletic resume that she need explain, other than an uncommon streak of bad luck mixed in with the good.

After placing third in the World Championships in 1983, which was about right for her development at the time, Ritter “bombed” in Los Angeles in 1984. A chronic hip injury prevented her from finishing better than eighth in the L.A. Olympics.

Then, 1987 was a great year, until Ritter got sick 10 days before the World Championships at Rome. Ritter, who is 5-feet-10 and usually weighs 130, dropped to 119 pounds. She placed eighth, and picked up the choker label.

Pole vaulter Billy Olson, a former world record-holder and fellow Texan who has been a steadfast friend, gets upset by such talk.

“I don’t know where all this comes from,” Olson said from Dallas. “Lou is one of the finest competitors I’ve ever seen, man or woman. She’s pretty dad-gum gutty.”

People who think all Olympians get rich on cereal boxes should try Ritter’s medal on for size.

“It’s totally overrated,” she said. “People think you win a gold medal and you are going to be rich. I think, in this case, Florence got it all.”

True, it’s tough to compete against the glamour of sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner, but there has been some financial fallout. Since the Olympics, Ritter’s appearance fee has climbed significantly, reportedly as high as $5,000 for an indoor meet, putting her in the upper-middle class of earning power in track.

“I’ve got to jump well in every meet,” Ritter said. “I have an obligation to people. I’m winning more and I guess it’s raised my expectations. But I won’t ever look at it (gold medal) as a burden.”

Except for all this running around. “Her schedule is a joke,” Olson said.

Her home town of Red Oak, Tex., named a portion of a farm-to-market road in her honor. That part of Louise Ritter Boulevard that lies in Ellis County is hers, outside the county is not.

Perhaps Texas is especially delighted with its favorite daughter because of the manner in which she won the Olympic high jump, in Texas showdown style. Ritter was locked into a jump-off with Bulgaria’s Stefka Kostadinova, the world record-holder at 6 feet 10 1/4 inches. The bar stood at 6-8, the height of Ritter’s U.S. record. There were no other jumpers left in the competition, and neither Kostadinova nor Ritter had missed.

Yet both missed three attempts at 6-8. The jump-off began at that height. The Bulgarian was up first and missed. Ritter, after adjusting her approach back one foot, cleared the height on her first attempt.

The celebrations began, both in Seoul and in various outposts in Texas.

“Personally, I just about had a heart attack in the stands,” said Olson, who was in the Olympic Stadium. “I was sitting across from the bar, about half way up. In a sea of Korean people. I jumped up and started yelling, this big blond guy. I think they thought I was crazy.”

Back at Denton, Tex., Bert Lyle, Ritter’s longtime coach, was asleep. A blizzard of phone calls awoke him, but he had already guessed Louise would win.

“Her workouts before she left for Seoul were excellent,” Lyle said. “She was popping. We sat on the pit after her last practice. I told her it was going to come down to three jumpers. But I knew she was going to do it. Lou is tougher than boot leather. She just will not quit. She is going to hang in there.”

Because Lyle was so sure Ritter would win, he went ahead and celebrated the way he always would when she would win a big meet. So it happened that sometime late Sept. 29, the night before Ritter would surprise the track world with her victory, Lyle sat himself down with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a fine cigar.

“I mean a good cigar, costing $2.25, $2.50,” Lyle said, affording the ritual its proper reverence.

Ritter has spent the last few months feeling as if she has to explain her Olympic victory but would rather let her indoor performances make her points.

Before jet-lag disaster (a 6-3 1/4 jump) in Japan last Saturday, Ritter won all seven indoor meets she entered this season.

All this after overcoming a post-Olympic depression that hung on for two months.

“She struggled for a couple of months,” Olson said. “She went into a depression. She’s been in track and field for 20 years. She’s never had a great deal of attention or a great number of demands on her time.”

Ritter referred to the period as “soul searching.” She settled in Dallas, started a business and began to coach a handful of high jumpers at Southern Methodist University.

As for her own training, there is scarcely any to speak of.

“I may have jumped two times in practice since Seoul,” she said.

Olson, a training partner, is in awe of the quality of Ritter’s workouts, if not the quantity. “It’s incredible how little she has to do to get by,” he said. “It’s scary how little she does. That’s what saved her body. She’s skinny as a rail, but she’s strong. Lou gets in a weight room and really goes. She’s just got too much horsepower and too little body. That’s why she’s injured so much.”

Ritter agrees that experience has taught her to be kinder to her body, lest it fail her.

It really hasn’t. After analyzing films of her jumping, Ritter and Lyle, at least, are beginning to think of a world record as a possibility.

“I like to think it’s within my limitations,” she said. “I’ve only had two perfect jumps in my whole life. I think I can do it.”

If form holds true, then it will be Ritter against the world, and her own body. And, again true to form, don’t count out Ritter for anything.

“I hope very much that this has brought the high jump to the light of some Americans,” Ritter said. “I would like to be thought of as a consistent jumper. I would like to be remembered as that. I hope also that we can shed enough light that people will think of it as a glamour event. See, I think it’s exciting, I really do.”

Coming from one tough old boot, it’s believable.