2. Joy of Effort
Joy of Effort in the Olympics is the amazing feeling you get when you get a medal, a
personal best or that you felt you preformed to the best of your abilities. Knowing that you
trained for four years just for a few races. The pictures below show the happiness of the
athletes and how the celebrations have changed over time.
3. Bobby Pearce
Bobby Pearce entered the amateur national
sculling championships in 1927, ( also he retained
it in 1928 and 1929). This gained him selection
for the Olympics in 1928, where he was the only
rower selected in Australia. At the games, he
carried the Australian flag at the opening
ceremony. He won his heats relatively easy
beating his 2 opponents Schwartz and Flinsch. In
the quarter final he was easily beating French
opponent Saurin when a family of ducks strayed
into his lane. Pearce momentarily stopped
rowing to let the ducks pass he still won by 20
lengths and broke the course record. Bobby was
challenged by David Colletin the semis and won
by 1.5 seconds. In the finals he became the first
Aussie single sculler to win gold beating Kenneth
Myers by 9.8 seconds and got a world record
around 25 second faster than the other one. The
next Olympics he successfully defended his
Olympic title in 1932 winning by 1.1 seconds over
William Millar the remainder of the scullers
trailed by nearly 30 seconds.
4. Fred Lorz
In 1904 The New York Times published that the
Metropolitan Association were holding a 5 mile race and
the top 8 finishers would win a paid trip to compete in the
1904 St. Louis Olympics for marathon running. Lorz got in
and was listed as 1 of the 19 favorites. In the race Lorz
stopped after 9km from exhaustion his manager gave him
a lift in his car for the next 11 miles when it broke down.
Fred started back on foot for the rest of the way. When he
got back to the stadium he arrived 45 minutes in front of
everyone else and set a new record. He went along with it
while soon later admitting he cheated and saying it was a
prank and claimed he didn’t run the whole way. Thomas
Hicks later became the winner. Lorz was banned for life
by the Amateur Athletic Union, but let back in later after
apologized for the stunt.
