The Favorite Sports Stories of Grantland Rice

With the Olympic games under way, Joy and I have been hooked to the television and radio - watching or listening to the coverage 24/7.

As there are so many events happening simultaneously throughout the day, there have been many different commentators. Some of them have been great - but some have been not so great - with the coverage from NBC being particularly infuriating.

It made myself and Joy remember the good old days of sports commentary, and one particular sports writer, Grantland Rice.

He wrote one of the most memorable quotes of all time, coining the famous phrase "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." 

Grantland Rice is considered to be one of the best known sports writers of the day, with his expressive writing helping to raise sports players to near demigod status, and he and his writing are among the reasons that the 1920s in the United States is sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of Sports.

NBC aren't all bad though, as in 1943, they announced that there was to be a new radio series, called The Favorite Sports Stories of Grantland Rice. It was also known as The Sportsmen's Club, and included the most exciting and inspirational stories from the world of sport - and Joy and I are happy to say that we've begun adding these shows to RUSC.

The first story is called The Road to Athens, and is the wartime tale of a well-known athlete, an Olympian who ran both the 100 and 220 yard dash, within one tenth of a second of the record. 

The story begins in the ancient Greek town of Marathon, where two Nazi officers stand chatting on a street corner. Unbeknownst to them, the man shuffling in the shadows, posing as the town halfwit, is an undercover lieutenant of the American army - and also an old rival of one of the Nazis, from the 1936 Olympic Games at Berlin...

Happy listening my friends,