Miller Was No Flash in the Pan

The U.S. women’s basketball team, a huge favorite, had started slowly against Yugoslavia until Cheryl MiIler began leading both by word and by deed. Between spats with and yelling at her teammates, Miller, who had led the USC women’s program to national prominence, scored 23 points and added eight rebounds and five assists. All eight of her rebounds were offensive rebounds.

When it was over and Team USA had won, 83-55, Yugoslavia star Jasmina Perazic was asked about Miller.

“She is, how you say, flashy,” Perazic said.

Also flashy was Bela Karolyi, U.S. women’s gymnastics coach, who hadn’t liked some of the judging marks that day. Rick Reilly, then of The Times and now of Sports Illustrated, wrote: “When Karolyi got mad Monday, he picked English to do so, which is an adventure.” Reilly wrote that Karolyi wanted one judge kicked out “to go do agriculture.”

Swimmer Anne Ottenbrite won the gold in the 200-meter breaststroke, which was unusual on two counts. She was the second Canadian to win a gold medal that day -- Alex Baumann had won the men’s 400 individual medley earlier -- and before that, no Canadian had won a swimming gold in 72 years. And Ottenbrite had won despite dislocating her kneecap two months earlier when she lifted her leg to show a friend a new pair of shoes she had purchased.

Italy upset West Germany in basketball, mostly because it held in check a German player named Detlef Schrempf.

The L.A. organizing committee had its first negative moment to handle. A New Zealand archer, partially paralyzed and competing in a wheelchair, was lifted out of that chair for a security check at the athletes’ village at UCLA. Security personnel said they hadn’t expected an Olympian to be in a wheelchair. The LAOOC apologized for the lack of sensitivity.

The Times’ parent corporation at the time, Times-Mirror Co., ran a full-page ad commemorating the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, which had opened on July 30.

Among those honored in the ad was Bill Henry, one of the first sports editors of The Times, who left the paper just before the ’32 Games to work for the Olympic Committee. Among the roles Henry played during the Games was that of public address announcer.

From that, he gained his 15 minutes of fame. During competition one day at the Coliseum, American fans booing non-American athletes were stopped in their tracks when Henry, on the PA system, reminded them that “these athletes are our guests.”