Modern Olympian Ode #32 by Michael Ceraolo

 Modern Olympian Ode #32 (1928, 1936)  I'm Not Quite Dead Yet

Charles Price, a high school track coach

at Thornton Township High in Harvey, Illinois

saw a girl sprinting to catch the train he was on;

the train was moving and he thought the attempt would be futile,

so imagine his surprise when she actually made the train

He encouraged Betty Robinson to start training,

thinking she could make the 1932 Olympics,

but she had her own timetable,

qualifying for that year's Olympics in only her third meet

(faced with competing versions of the Olympics,

the IOC had reluctantly agreed to add

women's track and field to the Olympic program

for 1928 in Amsterdam)

                                      And Betty Robinson,

the girl first seen sprinting for a train a few months earlier,

was the first-ever gold-medal-winner,

and in the signature event, the hundred-meter dash

She then returned for her senior year of high school,

where her yearbook profile related her ambition

"To be a coach of the 1936 American Olympic Team"

She continued to train for 1932 while attending college,

but then came June 28, 1931,

when she was a passenger in a plane that crashed

A body-chaser who had seen the crash,

seeing an opportunity to earn extra cash during hard times,

took her to a local funeral parlor,

where the mortician realized she was still breathing

and sent her to a hospital

Multiple leg fractures

A fractured left arm

Internal injuries

Memory loss from being concussed

These led to her being hospitalized for eleven weeks,

and it was six months after the crash

before she was able to walk on her own

The 1932 Olympics were now out,

so she modified her ambitions a bit:

she would try to compete, not coach,

in the 1936 Olympics

Because of the injuries,

she could no longer start from a crouch,

so qualifying for an individual race

was going to be difficult if not impossible

But she didn't have to crouch in a relay,

and she was still fast enough starting upright

to qualify as one of the runners

on the 4 x 100-meter relay team,

and the team went on to win the gold medal