RING LEADERS

Twelve years after listening to the radio as Jesse Owens won four track and field gold medals and smashed Adolf Hitler’s theory of Aryan supremacy at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, diver Sammy Lee won a gold and a bronze of his own in London.

As a child, swimmer Bruce Furniss entertained his parents with an imitation of TV announcer Keith Jackson introducing the field in an Olympic final. All grown up by 1976, Furniss won two gold medals in Montreal.

Leon Wood gaped at the prodigious talent assembled for the 1984 men’s Olympic basketball team, wondering what he, a smallish guard from Cal State Fullerton, was doing playing on such a juggernaut. As it turned out, he helped the United States win gold in Los Angeles.

Athletes with ties to Orange County have established a rich Olympic tradition over the years, particularly in the swimming pool and in team sports such as basketball.

Lee, Furniss and Wood are merely three of the bigger names in the county’s Olympic history. There are plenty of others--winners and also-rans alike. Years have passed, but the memories linger.

Among the many, many others, who could forget:

* Ann Meyers Drysdale, a graduate of Sonora High School in La Habra, who led the 1976 women’s basketball team to a silver medal in Montreal, helping to usher in a new era in sports participation for female athletes in this country.

* High jumper Dwight Stones, an Irvine resident and a track-and-field commentator for NBC, who won over the crowd with his youthful excitement in Munich. Four years later, angry French-Canadian fans booed his every attempt in Montreal.

* Swimmer Shirley Babashoff of Fountain Valley, who accused the East Germans of taking performance-enhancing drugs after they dominated the competition in Montreal, charges that were proved correct in the more open environment of German reunification. However, attempts by Babashoff and others to have the drug-tainted East German performances tossed out were later dismissed.

*

It’s Lee, a retired doctor who lives in Huntington Beach, who stands out as grandest among the hundreds of Olympians with Orange County ties. Certainly, his is a voice from a different era.

When he was 12, Lee recalled driving in downtown Los Angeles with his father, wondering about the colorful flags lining the streets. Why the flags, he asked.

“It’s because they’re having the Olympic Games,” his father had said. “That’s where they crown the greatest athletes in the world.”

It was 1932, the first time Los Angeles would host an Olympics.

Lee got chills.

“Pop, that’s what I’m going to be,” he said.

Lee stood atop the awards podium twice, winning gold medals in platform diving in 1948 in London and 1952 in Helsinki. He also won a bronze in the springboard competition in London.

That he made it to Helsinki at all is a story in itself. A Korean-American, Lee thought it might be best if he joined his countrymen in active duty in the Korean War. One of General Eisenhower’s staff members put him straight, however.

“Major Lee, we’ve only got one doctor who can win an Olympic gold medal,” the military man told Lee. “We’ve got hundreds of doctors who can repair the wounded. You can go, but you better win.”

Lee competed, of course, winning the platform diving gold medal on his 32nd birthday.

*

Furniss, whose older brother Steve also was an Olympic swimming medalist in 1972, neared the wall at the end of the 200-meter freestyle final in 1976, knowing full well what was to come next.

“I put my head down with 35 meters to go and I thought, ‘My God, I’ve done this so many times, either in my dreams or acting it out,’ ” the Foothill graduate said. “As I drove to the wall there wasn’t any question in my mind. I was going to win that race.”

Furniss rallied past countryman John Naber in the final 50 meters, winning by a mere .21 of a second in a world-record time of 1 minute 50.29 seconds. Jim Montgomery of the United States took the bronze medal. Less than a second separated Furniss from fifth-place finisher Klaus Steinbach of West Germany.

Furniss and Naber were hustled off to the interview room, then to drug testing.

“It was a couple hours before we could do our warm-down in the pool,” Furniss said. “It was just John, me and a mass of Gatorade cups all over the pool deck. We started swimming and, after awhile, we fell into cadence. We started looking at each other every time we came up to breathe. It didn’t take long before we were actually racing again. Here we were supposed to be warming down and we were trying to beat each other. It showed you didn’t need 20,000 people to be there.”

Two days later, in front of a large crowd, Furniss and Naber helped the U.S. 800 freestyle relay team win the gold medal.

*

Weeks before the ’84 Games, Wood suspected the U.S would crush the competition in the men’s basketball tournament, whose field was weakened considerably by the Soviet-led boycott. The tryouts proved to be far more difficult than the Games themselves.

“What stands out were the 75 to 80 players who tried out,” said Wood, now an NBA referee. “They were all top-notch players and here I was from Cal State Fullerton. There was [John] Stockton, [Patrick] Ewing, Johnny Dawkins, [Chuck] Person, the North Carolina crew, [Chris] Mullin. [Charles] Barkley didn’t even make the team.”

Wood made the squad, and earned a good deal of playing time setting up Michael Jordan, Ewing, Mullin and Co. for easy baskets. The U.S. won the gold medal game, 96-65, over Spain.

“We were probably the second best of all the amateur teams behind the ’60 team,” Wood said, referring to the gold-medal team led by future Hall of Famers Jerry West and Oscar Robertson.

“I have a tape of the championship game and I look at it every now and again,” Wood said. “I get chills--not so much from the game itself, but from the whole atmosphere. Winning also was a relief because of all the hard work we had put in.”

Bob Knight, the hot-tempered coach from Indiana University, put the players through three-a-day practices to start training camp. Knight also scheduled a barnstorming series of exhibition games against NBA all-stars before the team traveled to Los Angeles.

*

Twenty years before the U.S. women’s basketball, soccer and softball teams turned the 1996 Atlanta Games into a showcase for women’s sports, a group of athletes gathered in Montreal hoping for a moment’s notice.

The U.S. women’s basketball team had barely qualified for the ’76 Games and was not expected to do well in Montreal. But paced by Meyers Drysdale and Cal State Fullerton Coach Billie Moore and her standout player, Nancy Dunkle, the U.S. won a silver medal.

In 1996, Meyers Drysdale viewed a videotape of the ’76 Olympic final with some former teammates. Jim McKay and Bill Russell were the commentators for ABC, but their work has not stood the test of time, according to Meyers Drysdale.

“You’d hear things like, ‘Hey, these girls can really pass the ball,’ ” Meyers Drysdale said. “Back then you were proud just to get your sport on TV. Now, you sit there and say, ‘That’s embarrassing and a little demeaning.’ ”

*

Stones has bittersweet memories of Montreal. Four years earlier, he won over the Munich crowd with his exuberance at winning a bronze as an 18-year-old.

Forced to compete in an unfinished stadium and to work out on a poorly designed practice facility, Stones sounded off in Montreal. He railed against the inability of the organizing committee to complete the promised roof at the Olympic Stadium.

Stones caused an international flap when he was quoted in a Canadian newspaper as saying all French-Canadians were rude. Today, he insists he said only that the organizing committee was rude for making him compete in the unfinished stadium.

Dodging raindrops and the barbs of an incensed crowd, Stones finished with another bronze medal. Four days later, at a meet in Philadelphia, he bettered his own world record, clearing 7 feet 7 1/4 inches, a mark almost three inches better than the gold medal-winning performance of Jacek Wszola of Poland.

“I feel strongly that the rain cost me a gold medal,” Stones said. “But there’s a silver lining to every cloud. It prolonged my career.”

Stones made the U.S. team again in 1984, finishing in a tie for third in the Olympic final. He missed out on a third bronze medal by having more failed attempts than China’s Zhu Jianhua. Each cleared 7-7, but Stones had a failed attempt at 7-6 and Jianhua did not.

“I knew immediately that it was a miss I could not afford,” Stones said.

Stones was not the only county athlete to make a fuss in Montreal.

Babashoff, a teen sensation in winning two silver medals in Munich, was expected to strike gold in 1976.

Didn’t happen.

Babashoff then accused the muscular East Germans of winning through better chemistry, a charge that years later was proved to be true. The East Germans, who failed to win a gold medal in 1972, won 11 of 13 events in Montreal.

Babashoff left Montreal with four silvers, one gold medal (as part of the 400 freestyle relay team) and the unfortunate nickname of “Surly Shirley.”

Babashoff initially agreed to be interviewed for this story, but then failed to show up to meet a reporter at the designated time the following day.

Unlike Babashoff, Stones is only too happy to share memories of his trials and tribulations in Montreal. His reflections seem to hammer home the ancient notion that the mere act of competing is of more value than winning medals.

“If it hadn’t rained, I would have set a world record,” Stones said of high-jumping in rainy Montreal in 1976. “When I started to struggle and there was a Canadian kid [Greg Joy] jumping very well that’s when the boos started.

“I was very fortunate to win a medal there. I had a lot to be thankful for, though. It kept me in the sport.”

*

Staff writers Tim Brown, Chris Foster and Bill Shaikin contributed to this story.

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O.C. OLYMPIC MEMORIES

Throughout the years, hundreds of competitors with Orange County ties have made their marks on the world’s greatest athletic stage.

In 13 days the 2000 Summer Games begin in Sydney, where many county athletes will look to carry on the county’s rich tradition.

The Times’ Orange County edition begins a three-part series on county athletes and their Olympic memories.

Today--The athletic competition.

Sunday--The political issues and news events.

Monday--The personal remembrances.