“No, I don’t, but I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Colter said with a smile.
“Okay. Sixty-two and oh. That means almost over four decades, in six different Olympics, the United States had never lost a single basketball match. Not one. So we were favored, going into Munich, even though the Soviets were tough bastards and had been wanting to nail us for years. Okay. Munich. That Olympics mean anything to you?”
Colter rubbed at his chin. “The Israeli athletes, right?”
“Right you are. Eleven of those poor guys got killed by terrorists. Most Americans, you mention the Munich Olympics, they remember three things: the Israelis, Mark Spitz getting seven gold medals, and the way we guys on the basketball team got robbed.”
“How did you get robbed?”
Another shrug. “We just did. Look, imagine what it was like, being back there, most of us in our teens or early twenties. Our coach was Hank Iba, a legend. He had coached the Olympic teams in ’64 and ’68 and got a gold medal both times. We went through years of work and training and practice to be picked as part of the team. You know? And when we marched through that stadium with everybody else on the U.S. team, representing our friends and families and everyone back home… well, it made your hair stand up on end.”
“Marcus, too?”
“Sure, Marcus and everybody else. Then we started playing and we just blazed through everybody that was in our way. I mean, Christ, we beat Japan 99 to 33. We met other players, fans… it wasn’t like today, with the dream team playin’, every player demanding his own hotel suite. Nope, we bunked together in the dormitories, just like everybody else. And then the Israelis got killed and the Olympics were postponed for a day. It was awful, it was chaos, lots of rumors…”
Colter said, “And when did you get robbed?”
Glen took a breath, fascinated at how it was all coming back, like the damn thing had just happened last week. “We made it to the finals against the Soviet Union. There we were, college kids mostly, going toe-to-toe with guys that had their entire nation and entire sports ministry behind them. All they had to worry about was basketball, basketball, basketball. That was it. And we played them late on September 9, the damn game didn’t start until eleven-forty-five p.m. Can you believe that? The gold medal finals, starting almost at midnight.”
“Why?”
“Because the schedule and everything else got tossed up in the air after the Israeli massacre, that’s why. So we were playing late, everybody was still jazzed up over the massacre, and pretty soon we were losing to the Russians, and losing bad. I mean, at one point, those guys were ahead by ten points. We couldn’t believe it, that our team, our team, would break a winning streak that had been in place for thirty-six years. We felt horrible.”
Colter kept pen to pad, though nothing had been written in a while. “I take it you and Marcus and everybody else fought back.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and now the old emotions, the old memories, were racing right through him… the smell of sweat and the court, the yells and chants from the crowd, the squeaking of sneakers on the court, the coach yelling and pointing and keeping them together, those damn Russians, staring at them, like they just wanted to crush these college kids and sweep them aside. “We fought back. Man, how we fought back, and at the very end, one of our guys tossed in two free throws, and the score was U.S. 50, U.S.S.R, 49. And there was just three seconds left on the clock. Three seconds. One, two, three. That’s it. And even then, the Russians-with some help-managed to steal it from us.”
“How?”
Another breath, another amazement of how the old feelings of shock and betrayal were rumbling through. “Three times… the Russians were allowed to put the ball into play three times, can you believe that? The first two times, the clock was reset in their favor. And the third time, one of their guys-Belov-managed to make a basket, even though there were two violations against the Russians that the refs didn’t call. Third time was a charm for the bastards, and the score ended up being 51 to 50.”
“Wow,” Colter said. “I’m sorry, it’s just that my parents hadn’t even gotten married by 1972… this is the first time I’ve ever heard of it. What happened then?”
“Well, protests were filed and a five-judge panel reviewed the results, and since three of the judges were from Cuba, Hungary, and Poland, it was a done deal who they were going to rule in favor of-their Russian buddies. Our whole team voted to boycott the medal ceremony, and not one of us agreed to receive our silver medal. We went home thinking we were winners, while the world thought we were losers. So that’s how it’s been for thirty years.”
Colter now made a note in his pad. “And Marcus, he wanted to get his silver medal, all these years later? For the money?”
Glen looked out at the now-empty waters of Walker ’s Lake, where all the boats had finally left the waters in peace. “Yeah. Sorry to say. The silver medals are in a bank vault somewhere, still controlled by the International Olympic Committee, and every few years, they’ve asked us if we wanted to have them, finally. And each time, every one of us said no. We went into the Olympics as a team, we left as a team, and by God, we’re still not going to accept the fact that we got robbed. Those medals can gather dust until all of us are dead.”
“But Marcus changed his mind.”
“Debt can do that to a man,” Glen said. “Thing is, he had an idea. Get the medal and put it up at auction on eBay or something. He figured he could make enough money off that to live quite well, and you know what, he’s probably right. But dammit, thirty years later, we’re still not taking those medals. Some of us are even in worse shape than Marcus, and the fact that we’re still hanging in there, still not letting those medals come into our hands, well, for some of us, that’s the only thing we’ve got going. One guy takes a medal, then the whole team is broke up. That’s the point.”
Another notation in the notebook. “I take it that’s what the two of you talked about?”
“Yep.” He continued to look out on the waters, just letting the words come out mechanically. “I told Marcus not to do it. I told him that I’d give him some money, that I’d contact a couple of other team members… get a package or something together. Just to avoid him taking the medal.”
“And what did he say?”
He kept his view on the lake. “Ol’ Marcus, he wasn’t buying what I was selling. He wanted to do this on his own, and he didn’t want to listen to what I had to say.”
Colter flipped through a page in his notebook and Glen looked at him. The chief glanced up and said, “One thing I don’t understand. Why did he come to see you?”
“Excuse me?”
Colter said, “What was the point of getting on a bus and coming all the way up here? Why not just contact the IOC and say he agreed to take the medal, and leave you out of it?”
Exactly, he thought, and he said, “Thing is, Chief, I’m sort of the guy that keeps in touch with the other guys, you know? I wasn’t team captain or anything, but I’m the one who sort of keeps everybody’s address and phone number up to date. Marcus came up here, sort of looking for permission. Said that if I didn’t make a fuss, then maybe the other team members would cut him some slack.”
“And what did you tell him?”
He took a breath. “I told him that he shouldn’t do it. That he’d be betraying the memory of our team and our coach to do it, that one thing we had going for us was the fact that we had stuck together, had boycotted the awards ceremony, had boycotted the medals for thirty years. I told him that we could help him out, but only if we stuck together. And I reminded him what silver tasted like.”