THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9606290390
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 62 lines
Finding it hard to work up a respectable Olympic fever? Does the wild commercialization of the Games leave you weary? Maybe the Norfolk Sports Club has your tonic.
Eight former Olympians from our shores have been asked to unlock their Olympic memory vaults Monday at a special Sports Club program at the Holiday Inn Executive Center.
No old or new business on this agenda. Instead, the noon luncheon has been designated a ``Salute to our Olympians,'' open to anyone with $8 for the meal and an interest in finding out what the Olympics are really all about.
Sprinter Steve Riddick, field hockey players Beth Anders and Yogi Hightower-Boothe, basketball player Medina Dixon, wrestler Gray Simons, swimmer Tom Trethwey, rowing's Skip Sweetser and canoeist Frank Havens will get about five minutes each to spin tales about themselves and their Games.
For Havens, particularly, self-editing will take an Olympian effort.
This chipper 71-year-old, a resident of Harborton on the Eastern Shore, is a four-time Olympian, a gold and silver medalist and a former world record-holder.
Havens won silver in the 10,000-meter Canadian singles in 1948 in London. He won gold and set the world record in the same event four years later in Helsinki.
His Olympic career continued in '56 in Melbourne, Australia, and ended in Rome in '60. But he won no more medals, in part because ``Australia was a catastrophe,'' he says.
The U.S. team's boats didn't arrive until three days before the Games. Havens' training was disrupted, and as he slipped from peak condition he hoped the damage wasn't irreversible.
What he didn't count on was getting his thumb slammed in a limousine door outside a formal dinner the night before his event.
``The trainer drilled a hole in the nail; the blood hit the ceiling,'' Havens says. ``I was ready for Melbourne before I left, but it was a complete disaster. A horrible mess.''
For 36 years until he retired to Harborton in 1984, Havens was an insurance appraiser in Northern Virginia. He trained out of Georgetown's Washington Canoe Club, for which Havens says his father became ``the best C-boat paddler'' in the country in 1924.
Bill Sr.'s job prevented him from becoming an Olympian, but he trained his sons Frank and Bill Jr., and they blossomed together. In '48, the brothers were Olympic teammates, Bill Jr. paddling to fifth place in the 1,000-meters.
While training for '52, though, Bill Jr. tore tendons in his hand while pushing a car from a snowbank. The Olympics were out, but Bill, now 77 and living in Manteo, and Frank still tear it up as a two-man team in the World Master Games.
``It's in Seattle next year,'' Frank says. ``You bet we're going. All our competition is either dead or disabled.''
Most mornings by 6 or so, Havens is out on one of the creeks, Taylor or Pungoteaque, near his home in ``the land of pleasant living.'' He's had a knee replacement - he hurt it on the football field, not in the boat - and at 200 pounds, he's about 20 over the competitive weight of his prime.
But since then, let him tell you, plenty of time and water have passed under the bridge and over the paddle.
``I don't know how they expect me to tell all this in five minutes,'' Havens says. ``I'm going to have to condense a little bit.'' by CNB