The Road to Athens
A famous phrase, coined by our own favorite sports writer, Grantland Rice, was "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game."
Well our Olympians going for gold in Tokyo are really going to be in for a rough one with zero fans in the host city, no family or friends allowed, and a ban on cheering!
It's lucky for us, that there's no trait more American than the spirit of healthy competition...
There's a great example of this in the old time radio show The Road to Athens, a 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...
Click here to listen now
Sports have been around nearly as long as humanity itself. In fact, prehistoric cave drawings have depicted various sports activities. Men and women have always loved to discuss, remember and relive the sporting events of our youth, even arguing about sports and sporting events from time to time!
Sports are an enjoyable part of life, and so were always an important part of old time radio too. Look out for a new quiz series on RUSC this week called The Sports Answer Man. I've added the first show to the series today, called Olympic Champions Colleges.
Happy listening my friends,