Plenty of Stars for Stars and Stripes

The American Olympic happy days continued, and Richie Cunningham and the Fonz undoubtedly were around to cheer.

ABC suffocated its viewers with celebrating American athletes, and the TV viewers seemed to love it. The Times, reacting to a late-breaking event of some magnitude, headlined the victory by the U.S. men’s gymnastics team “The Miracle of L.A.”

The team, with Mitch Gaylord seeking additional points by risking his signature move, the Gaylord III, and hitting it, not only won gold for the first time in men’s gymnastics, but got an Olympic men’s gymnastics medal for the first time in 52 years.

Richard Hoffer, now of Sports Illustrated, waxed eloquent on deadline: “They had flown, flared, floated ... would they ever come down?”

The next day, critics speculated that, had the Soviet-bloc countries competed, the Americans never would have won the gold. It was pointed out, however, that China, which had finished second, had beaten the Soviets along the way.

Life was just as red, white and blue at the swim venue at USC. Five finals were held, and five Americans won.

Rowdy Gaines, one who had been victimized by Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the Moscow Olympics, took the 100 freestyle, his time of 49.80 seconds beating the Olympic record of 49.99 set by Jim Montgomery in the ’76 Games. Theresa Andrews took the 100 backstroke, then marched over and presented her gold medal to her 20-year-old brother, two years younger than she. He had been paralyzed after a bike accident and she had taken a year off from swimming to help with his care.

The demonstration sport of baseball was contributing greatly to the L.A. committee’s bottom line, drawing 52,319 at Dodger Stadium to watch the U.S. team beat Taiwan, 2-1.

The rowing venue at Lake Casitas was having so much trouble with midday wind that some of its events were started at 7:30 a.m.

Vonnie Gros, the U.S. women’s field hockey coach, was pleasantly surprised by the lack of smog. She had trained her team in Pennsylvania, and to get ready for Southern California, had asked officials at Ursinus College to back up four cars to the door of the gym and turn on their engines. Ursinus officials had refused.

News leaked out that Lord Killanin, president of the International Olympic Committee until 1980, and the man who had threatened to take the Games from Los Angeles because of lack of public funding until Mayor Tom Bradley called his bluff, had been rescued by an LAPD officer named Bill Pavelic. Killanin, choking on food at an L.A. restaurant, was saved when Pavelic pounded on his back five or six times. Several unidentified members of the LAOOC said they wished they had been there to help.

Sen. Bill Bradley, the former basketball star, was quoted as saying that Athens should be made the permanent home of the Olympics. Twenty years to the day later, the Greeks were finishing the main Olympic Stadium.