1928 United States Olympic trials (track and field)
1928 United States Olympic trials (track and field) | |
---|---|
Dates | July 3–July 7 |
Host city | 1932 → |
The 1928 United States Olympic trials for track and field were held between July 3 and July 7, 1928 and decided the
Both the men's and women's Olympic trials also served as the annual United States outdoor track and field championships. For the last time, the top four athletes in each event qualified for the Olympics; starting in 1932, every nation was limited to three entrants per event.
Official world records were set in the men's meet by
.Qualifying
Athletes qualified for the men's Olympic trials by competing in preliminary tryouts. There were 14 preliminary meetings in total, including regional tryouts and major collegiate meets (the
Men
The men's Olympic trials were contested at
The meeting doubled as the annual
Philadelphia
Event | First | Second | Third | Fourth | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
400 m | Ray Barbuti | 51.6[note 1] | Euil Snider | Hermon Phillips | Joe Tierney | |||
400 m hurdles | Morgan Taylor | 52.0 WR | Frank Cuhel | 52.1e | Johnny Gibson | 52.5e | Robert Maxwell | 52.6e |
Decathlon | Ken Doherty | 7600 | Jim Stewart | 7533 | Barney Berlinger | 7362 | Tom Churchill | 7203 |
The 400 meters final was run in a storm, accounting for the very slow winning time of 51.6 seconds; both Barbuti and Snider had won their semi-finals in 48.0.
The 400 meter hurdles final was run before the storm arrived; Morgan Taylor, the 1924 Olympic champion, set a new world record (52.0) but still only narrowly defeated Cuhel. Defending AAU champion Gibson, who held the world record in the 440 yard hurdles (52.6), placed third.[1]: 67 [5] The old, still listed world record for the metric hurdles (53.8 by Sten Pettersson) was broken in the heats, in the semi-finals, and by all seven men in the final.[1]: 67
In the decathlon the 1928
The rain and wind that disturbed the 400 meters final interrupted the decathlon's eighth event, the pole vault; the last three events were moved to Franklin Field and contested the following day, with the pole vault restarted from scratch.[4][5] Doherty, the Penn Relays runner-up, eventually won from Stewart and Berlinger; he went on to win bronze at the Olympics.[1]: 69 Churchill received the fourth spot on the Olympic team after Elkins's appeal was rejected.
Cambridge
Track
Event | First | Second | Third | Fourth | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
100 m | Frank Wykoff | 10.6 | Robert McAllister |
10.7e | Henry Russell | 10.7e | Claude Bracey | 10.7e |
200 m straight | Charles Borah |
21.4 | Charley Paddock | 21.5e | Jackson Scholz | 21.5e | Henry Cumming | 21.7e |
800 m | Lloyd Hahn | 1:51.4 WR | Earl Fuller | 1:51.9e | Ray Watson | 1:52.3e | John Sittig | 1:53.4e |
1500 m | Ray Conger | 3:55.0 AR | Sid Robinson | 3:55.6e | Nick Carter | 3:55.8e | Orval Martin | 3:55.9e |
5000 m | Leo Lermond | 14:52.8 | Macauley Smith | 14:56e | David Abbott | 14:56e | Charles Haworth | 15:03e |
10,000 m | Joie Ray |
31:28.4 AR | John Romig | 120 yds bh | Verne Booth | 10 yds bh2 | Johnny Zola | 90 yds bh3 |
3000 m SC | William Spencer | 9:35.8 | Jesse Montgomery | 10 yds bh | Melvin Dalton | Walter Gegan | ||
110 m hurdles | Steve Anderson |
14.8 =WR | John Collier | 14.8e | Leighton Dye | 14.9e | Carl Ring | 15.0e |
In the 100 meters four rounds – heats, quarterfinals, semi-finals and the final – were run in the space of one afternoon. Frank Wykoff, an 18-year-old high schooler, outlasted his opponents, winning all four of his races in 10.6.
1924 Olympian Lloyd Hahn, who had won the 1928 AAU indoor title in a world best 1:51.4 (880 yards), reached the same time outdoors in the 800-meter final; his time was an outdoor
There were two high-profile falls in the 110 m hurdles. Hugo "Swede" Leistner, winner of the Pacific Tryouts, fell while leading his heat; Ross Nichols, who led the semi-finals with 14.8, fell while leading the final.[1]: 66 Nichols hit the ninth hurdle and lost his balance; as a result, he crashed into the tenth hurdle, losing his chances of making the team. There was controversy as to whether the ninth hurdle had been misplaced, causing Nichols to trip; a meeting official stated the hurdle had been correctly positioned, and was only knocked out of position when Nichols hit it, but Nichols's supporters did not accept this explanation.[17][18] Steve Anderson won, equaling Nichols's semi-final time of 14.8; both times also equaled the official world record, but were never ratified.[note 3]
Field
Event | First | Second | Third | Fourth | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
High jump | Bob King | 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) |
Charles McGinnis | 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m) |
Harold Osborn | 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) |
Ben Hedges | 6 ft 3 in (1.90 m) |
Pole vault | Lee Barnes | 13 ft 9 in (4.19 m) |
Bill Droegemueller |
13 ft 9 in (4.19 m) |
Sabin Carr | 13 ft 9 in (4.19 m) |
Charles McGinnis | 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m) |
Long jump | Ed Hamm | 25 ft 11+1⁄8 in (7.90 m) WR |
Al Bates | 24 ft 2+1⁄2 in (7.38 m) |
DeHart Hubbard | 23 ft 11+1⁄2 in (7.30 m) |
Ed Gordon | 23 ft 6+3⁄8 in (7.17 m) |
Triple jump | Levi Casey | 48 ft 10+1⁄8 in (14.89 m) |
Sidney Bowman | 48 ft 4+7⁄8 in (14.76 m) |
Bob Kelley | 47 ft 10+3⁄4 in (14.60 m) |
Lloyd Bourgeois | 47 ft 5+5⁄8 in (14.47 m) |
Shot put | Herman Brix |
50 ft 11+3⁄4 in (15.54 m) |
Harlow Rothert | 49 ft 8+1⁄4 in (15.14 m) |
John Kuck | 49 ft 4+3⁄4 in (15.05 m) |
Eric Krenz | 49 ft 2+3⁄4 in (15.00 m) |
Discus throw | Bud Houser | 153 ft 6+1⁄4 in (46.79 m) |
Fred Wiecker | 150 ft 3+3⁄4 in (45.81 m) |
James Corson | 147 ft 10+3⁄4 in (45.08 m) |
John Anderson | 145 ft 7 in (44.40 m) |
Hammer throw | Ed Black |
166 ft 4+1⁄4 in (50.70 m) |
Ken Caskey |
162 ft 9+3⁄4 in (49.62 m) |
Donald Gwinn | 161 ft 3+7⁄8 in (49.17 m) |
Frank Conner | 159 ft 6+7⁄8 in (48.63 m) |
Javelin throw | Creth Hines | 202 ft 1+3⁄4 in (61.60 m) |
Charles Harlow | 201 ft 3+7⁄8 in (61.35 m) |
Arthur Sager | 200 ft 3 in (61.04 m) |
Lee Bartlett | 198 ft 10+3⁄4 in (60.62 m) |
In the high jump Bob King, who was both the defending AAU champion and the 1928 NCAA champion, defeated McGinnis in a jump-off to retain his AAU title; Osborn, who was the reigning Olympic champion and held the world record of 6 ft 8+1⁄4 in (2.03 m), placed third.[19] King went on to win gold at the Olympics, with Hedges taking the silver.
McGinnis also qualified in the pole vault – a double that has never been repeated since – after defeating Jack Williams in a jump-off for the final Olympic spot.[1]: 67 [19] Reigning Olympic champion Barnes won from Droegemueller and Carr in a competition with a deep high-quality field; the United States was the world's leading pole vault power. Carr, Droegemueller and McGinnis swept the medals in Amsterdam.[1]: 67, 75
NCAA champion Ed Hamm dominated the long jump, improving Hubbard's world record of 25 ft 10+7⁄8 in (7.89 m) by a fraction of an inch.[19] In a rarity, three individual Olympic champions qualified for the American team in the same event; Hubbard had won Olympic gold in 1924, Hamm won in Amsterdam, and Gordon went on to win in 1932.[1]: 68 In the triple jump Levi Casey won his third consecutive AAU title; he took silver in Amsterdam, the last American to medal in the triple jump until 1976.[20]
In the shot put Herman Brix was the in-form man at the Olympic trials; defending AAU champion Kuck had unofficially broken the shot put world record earlier in 1928, but at the trials he only placed third.[1]: 68 [6]: 184 At the Olympics Kuck set an official world record, winning gold ahead of Brix.[6]: 184 Bud Houser, the reigning Olympic champion in both the shot and the discus, concentrated on the latter event in 1928; he won at the trials and successfully defended his Olympic title in Amsterdam, with Corson taking the bronze.[1]: 68 The failure of defending AAU champion Eric Krenz to qualify in the discus was a surprise; he made the Olympic team in the shot, but the discus was considered his better event.[21] Some consideration was given by team selectors to adding Krenz in the discus team or moving Anderson to the shot with Krenz in the discus, but these ideas were rejected.[22]
The hammer throw was one of the events in which the American team was not as strong as at the 1924 Games.[16] Ed "Rip" Black, the eventual trials winner and Olympic bronze medalist, was only fifth after the qualifying rounds and the last man to make the final; in the final he improved by almost eight feet and won. Matt McGrath, the 1912 Olympic champion, nearly qualified for his fifth consecutive Olympics; he missed fourth place by less than a foot.[1]: 68 [19] In the javelin the top Americans were evenly matched; IC4A champion Hines also won at the trials, with defending AAU champion Harlow the runner-up ahead of Sager and Bartlett. None of the four made an impact in Amsterdam.[1]: 68
Marathon
Event/Location | Date | First | Second | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boston Marathon Boston, Massachusetts |
April 19 | Clarence DeMar | 2:37:07.8 | James Henigan | 2:41:01 |
Long Beach Marathon New York City |
May 19 | Joie Ray |
2:34:13.4 | Albert Michelsen | 2:35:23 |
Baltimore Marathon Baltimore, Maryland |
June 2 | William Agee | 2:57:04.4 | Harvey Frick | 3:00:11.4 |
In the marathon there was no clear qualifying system.[2]: 88 Six entrants per country were allowed, and eight races had been named as Olympic tryouts; in the end, the top two from each of the three races with the highest quality were selected.[2]: 88 Joie Ray, who also qualified in the 10,000 meters, was considered America's best Olympic hope in both events;[16] in the Olympic marathon he was among the leaders for much of the way, but eventually dropped to fifth.[23]
Other AAU championship events
Event | Champion | |
---|---|---|
220 yd low hurdles | Frank Cuhel | 23.6 |
3 mile walk | Harry Hinkel | 21:49.2 |
56 pound weight throw | Pat McDonald |
33 ft 10+1⁄4 in (10.31 m) |
These events were not part of the Olympic trials, but were contested at Harvard Stadium as part of the AAU national championships.[2]: 139 Between 1911 and 1933 McDonald won the AAU weight throw championship ten times; Matt McGrath, who placed second, was a seven-time champion.[2]: 139 [24]
Women
With the inclusion of women's track and field in the Olympic program, women competed at the Olympic trials for the first time in 1928.[1]: 3 The women's trials were held at City Field in Newark, New Jersey on July 4, 1928. Like the men's meet, the women's trials also doubled as the national outdoor championships.[25]: 126, 130 Elta Cartwright of the Northern California Athletic Club was the leading star of the meet, winning the 50 yards, the 100 meters and the long jump; meeting rules prevented her from entering more events.[25]: 130 [26] National records were set by Maybelle Reichardt in the discus throw and Rayma Wilson in the 800 meters; in the shot put, Lillian Copeland equaled her own national record.[25]: 131
Of the twelve events in the AAU championship program, only four were part of the Olympic trials. The team championship was won by the Northern California Athletic Club with 52 points; Pasadena Athletic Club placed second.[25]: 132
Trials
Event | First | Second | Third | Fourth | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
100 m | Elta Cartwright | 12.4 | Betty Robinson | 12.5e | Anne Vrana |
Mary Washburn | ||
800 m | Rayma Wilson | 2:32.6 NR
|
Dee Boeckmann | 2:33.8 | Florence MacDonald | 2:36.0 | Ruth Martin | |
High jump | Mildred Wiley | 4 ft 11+3⁄4 in (1.52 m) |
Jean Shiley | 4 ft 11+3⁄4 in (1.52 m) |
Catherine Maguire | 4 ft 10+3⁄4 in (1.49 m) |
Marion Holley | 4 ft 10+3⁄4 in (1.49 m) |
Discus throw | Maybelle Reichardt | 116 ft 9+1⁄4 in (35.58 m) AR |
Lillian Copeland | 115 ft 1+1⁄2 in (35.09 m) |
Margaret Jenkins | 107 ft 6 in (32.77 m) |
Rena MacDonald | 102 ft 5+1⁄4 in (31.22 m) |
The 100-meter dash was Cartwright's only trials event; she won from 16-year-old Betty Robinson, the eventual Olympic champion. Future star
Other AAU championship events
Event | Champion | Event | Champion | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
50 yd dash | Elta Cartwright | 6.6 | Long jump | Elta Cartwright | 16 ft 10+3⁄4 in (5.15 m) |
220 yd dash | Florence Wright | 27.4 | 8 lb shot put | Lillian Copeland | 40 ft 4+1⁄4 in (12.30 m) =AR |
4 × 110 yd relay | Northern California AC | 52.2 | Javelin throw | Margaret Jenkins | 112 ft 5+5⁄8 in (34.28 m) |
60 yd hurdles | Helen Filkey | 8.4 | Baseball throw | Vivian Hartwick | 228 ft 8+1⁄2 in (69.71 m) |
Cartwright won two more national titles in the 50-yard dash and the long jump; she might have scored even more points, but meeting rules limited her to only three events.[26] Northern California Athletic Club won the 4 × 110 yard relay without Cartwright, and also scored first places in the javelin and baseball throws; in the baseball throw the top three (Hartwick, Jenkins and Gloria Russell) were all Northern California athletes.[25]: 131–132 Lillian Copeland of Pasadena Athletic Club, who won silver in the discus in Amsterdam, equaled her own American record for the eight-pound (3.63 kg) shot.[25]: 131–132
Selections and appeals
The principle that the top four finishers in each event would be selected for the Olympics was not followed completely strictly.
A number of athletes who had placed outside the top four at the trials and not been selected also attempted to appeal their non-selection. The
Hurdler Ross Nichols appealed on the grounds that he had hit a misplaced hurdle in the final; his appeal was turned down as meeting officials denied the hurdle had been misplaced, and footage of the race failed to support Nichols.[34][35] Sprinter Frank Hussey and hurdlers Hugo Leistner and Clyde Blanchard travelled to Amsterdam as stowaways aboard the U.S. team's ship, the SS President Roosevelt; like the other rejected athletes, they were not allowed to run at the Olympics but could take part in other European meets.[36][37][38]
Notes
- ^ All official times at the 1928 Olympic trials were hand-times, taken with the accuracy of one-fifth of a second; for example, Ray Barbuti's winning time in the 400-meter final was 51 3⁄5 seconds.
- ^ Otto Peltzer's world record of 1:51.6 had been set at 880 yards (804.672 meters), and was the official outdoor world record for both the metric and imperial half-miles; it was equivalent to 1:50.8–1:51.0 for the metric distance.[13]: 101, 103 Hahn continued to 880 yards in the trials final in an attempt to break Peltzer's imperial mark, but his time at that point was only 1:52.4.[6]: 56 Hahn's metric world record was superseded before the Olympics when France's Séra Martin ran 800 meters in 1:50.6.[6]: 56
- ^ While the de jure world record for the 110 m hurdles was 14.8, Earl Thomson's world record for the only marginally shorter 120 yd hurdles was 14.4, and Leighton Dye had run the metric distance in 14.6 three weeks before the trials. Like Dye's time, the marks of Nichols and Anderson were not ratified as official world records.[1]: 66, 67 [6]: 116
References
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- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Report of the American Olympic Committee" (PDF). American Olympic Committee/LA84 Foundation. 1928. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
- ^ a b "Final Olympic Tryouts To Start Tomorrow". The Pittsburgh Press. July 2, 1928. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ a b c d Zarnowski, Frank. "History of the Decathlon at U.S. Olympic Trials" (PDF). Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ a b c "Taylor Races Over Hurdles To World's Record". Chicago Tribune. July 5, 1928. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ International Association of Athletics Federations. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
- ^ The Binghamton Press. July 5, 1928. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ "Schuylkill College Wins Race at Penn Relay Carnival". Reading Eagle. April 29, 1928. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
- ^ a b "Elkins Not Included On U.S. Decathlon Squad". Reading Eagle. July 17, 1928. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
- ^ a b c Vosburgh, F.G. (Associated Press) (July 28, 1928). "'Olympic Team That Was Left Behind' Refuses To Stay Home". The Daily Illini. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
- ^ Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö.
- ^ "Martin, Purdue Runner, Trods Path To Fame". Chicago Tribune. April 21, 1929. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
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- ^ a b c Walsh, Davis J. (INS) (July 11, 1928). "America's Newest Army Of Expedition Sets Sail For Amsterdam Olympiad". Indiana Gazette. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
- ^ "Wightman Quits Olympic Body". Reading Eagle. July 11, 1928. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
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- ^ "Athletics at the 1928 Amsterdam Summer Games: Men's 10,000 metres". Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on April 17, 2020. Retrieved October 24, 2015.
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