Al Oerter Dies at 71
Al Oerter, a New Yorker who went on to be one of the greatest competitors in Olympic history, died in Florida on Monday morning at age 71.
Oerter was born in blue-collar Astoria, Queens, but his family later moved to the Long Island suburbs. As a student at Sewanhaka H.S. he set the national high school record in the discus, throwing 184-4 in a meet at Randalls Island.
He competed at the Armory in the early 1950s.
After high school, he did what many star high school athletes from the East Coast did in that era: He went west. In his case, he went to the University of Kansas, where he won two NCAA championships for the Jayhawks. One of his teammates at KU was a fellow Easterner, Wilt Chamberlain. (Chamberlain, who went to Overbrook in Philadelphia, was a highjumper for Kansas in the spring once the basketball season ended.) While Oerter was a member of the team, Kansas won every Big 8 championship in track, indoors and outdoors.
In 1956, after narrowly qualifying for the U.S. team, Oerter upset the reigning world recordholder, Fortune Gordien, to win the first of his four Olympic championships. In each of the four, Oerter was considered the underdog. In each one, he was facing the latest holder of the world record. In each one, he set a new Olympic record. “He’s all heart and guts,” said Payton Jordan, coach of the 1968 U.S. Olympic team. “He never chokes.” Oerter won the gold medals in 1960, 1964 and 1968 as well, becoming at the time the only Olympic trackman to win the same event four times. Carl Lewis equaled that by winning the long jump four times, from 1984 to 1996.
1956 Gordien, 37, was in his third Olympics. Adolfo Consolini of Italy, the 1948 Olympic champion, was also in the field. Oerter, just 20 years old and still a college athlete at KU, threw 184-11, a lifetime best and new Olympic record, on his very first throw. “I had a hard time even raising my arm after that,” Oerter said, in a report by Track & Field News correspondent Cordner Nelson, who was there that day in Melbourne, Australia. “I don’t know how I did it. I was sure Gordien was going to beat my mark every time he threw, but I guess he was too tied up. He looked it.” Oerter won by 5 feet.
1960 Rink Babka had raised the world record to 196-6 a week before the Games in Rome. In Round 1, he threw 190-4, and Oerter was behind. “I was so tense, I could barely throw,” he said. In Round 5, Oerter threw 194-2, a new Olympic record and personal best.
1964 Oerter entered the Olympic year as the world recordholder at 206-6 – he set the world record four times in his career, and was the first man to throw beyond 200 feet – but Ludvig Danek of Czechoslovakia broke that by throwing a tremendous 211-9 and was the heavy favorite in Tokyo, especially when Oerter showed up with torn cartilage in his lower rib cage. Doctors advised six weeks of rest. When he tried to throw, the pain was so great that Oerter said, “I was thinking of dropping out.” Danek opened with 195-11, an Olympic record, in Round 1, and improved to 198-7 in Round 4. Oerter was icing his side. In Round 5, he threw 200-1, the first Olympic throw beyond 200 feet. He won his third gold medal by 18 inches. Asked if he would try for an unprecedented fourth, Oerter responded, “I’ll wait until it stops hurting and I’ll just keep going. I’ll be stiff as hell tomorrow.”
1968 Oerter was throwing against the newest American star, L. Jay Silvester, the new world recordholder. He also had a sore neck and was forced to throw with a brace on the back of his neck. “I didn’t think I had a chance this time,” Oerter said. In qualifying, Sylvester smashed the Olympic record, throwing 207-10. In the final, Oerter removed the brace, and in Round 3 threw a lifetime best, 212-6. Sylvester, shattered, finished 5th.
After retiring in the 1970s, Oerter made a comeback and tried for a fifth Olympic team in 1980. He improved his lifetime best, at age 43, to 227-10. He finished 4th in the U.S. Trials, throwing against men half his age. One of those was a UCLA Bruin, Marcus Gordien, Fortune’s son.
In recent years Oerter made several guest appearances at the Armory, including one for the ceremonial opening of the U.S. Track & Field Hall of Fame, where he was accompanied by his wife, Cathy, a former longjumper.
On one of those trips to New York, Al and Cathy later held court at a corner table at Coogan’s Restaurant, around the corner on Broadway. As the evening appeared to wind down, Peter Walsh, the proprietor of Coogan’s, persuaded the Oerters and a few other celebrants to taxi down to a small tap-and-sax club on 125th Street. As the evening headed for dawn, Peter himself belted out a song or two from the tiny stage while Al and Cathy danced the night away in Harlem. The other customers had no idea who Al was.
In thanks, Oerter put a discus in a frame, signed it and shipped it to Walsh, who hung it on the wall above that corner table. It hangs there to this day.
After athletics, Oerter ran a machinery firm on Long Island, then retired to Fort Myers Beach, on the Florida gulf coast, where he became an abstract painter. /JP/