Speed Kings by Andy Bull

Author:Andy Bull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

Hank Homburger and his Red Devils, Lake Placid, 1931.

CHAPTER 9

THE NEW US TEAM

The snows came late to Lake Placid that winter. There was a single heavy fall at the beginning of the season, which was reckoned by many to be a good omen. It wasn’t. November turned to December, Christmas and the New Year came and went, and all the while the few citizens of the small town grew ever more anxious. The land was colored in bleached-out browns and greens—wet mud, dank grass, and bony trees, their brittle branches shorn of leaves. Above, blue skies and bright sun. The few clouds that did come carried rain. No one could remember a winter quite like it. The New York State weather bureau said that it was the warmest they’d recorded in the 147 years they had been taking measurements.

The athletes began to arrive. They traveled from New York by train up the Hudson Valley. The river was open water all the way up to Albany. The Norwegian team was the first to get to Lake Placid, followed closely by the Japanese. The locals were happy to see them. The Depression had grown so severe that a lot of countries had been having second thoughts about coming. Great Britain was sending only four athletes, all figure skaters; Argentina wasn’t sending anyone at all. Godfrey Dewey had dispatched a special envoy from his organizing committee on a six-month tour of Europe to whip up enthusiasm overseas. Even so, some of the national Olympic committees had even suggested postponing the Olympics until the economy had begun to recover. In the autumn of 1931, using the contacts he’d made through the club, Dewey persuaded the North Atlantic Steamship Line to grant a 20 percent reduction on round-trip tickets and the New York Central Railroad to cut the cost of a return trip from Manhattan to Lake Placid to fifteen dollars. Even Congress got involved: a resolution was passed exempting foreign athletes and officials from the usual visa requirements, waiving an eight-dollar tax, and granting free entry to baggage and equipment. They were extraordinary measures. But then, there was an extraordinary amount at stake. The townspeople were in for around $1.5 million, all told. “The tiny village has gambled in an effort to establish itself as the winter sports capital of America,” wrote Edward J. Neil of the Associated Press. “Every merchant, every citizen, has in one way or another contributed to the total.”

That January of 1932, the town itself was ready. The streets, Dewey wrote, “were a riot of color,” decorated with flags, colored lights, and sprigs of evergreen. “It was in gala attire. The flags of nations flew everywhere. Great hotels and clubs, cottages and private homes, and business hotels were brave with bunting. There was a tenseness in the air as of something impending.” The one thing they didn’t have was cold weather. The organizing committee actually started to bring in wagonloads of snow from across the Adirondacks so they could spread it around the ski trails.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.