Snapp Shots: Cal’s ’72 Olympics sprinter Hart joins Bay Area Hall of Fame

It isn’t every day that I get to write about one of my heroes, but today is definitely one of them. Last month, the great UC Berkeley sprinter Eddie Hart was elected to the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame (bashof.org), along with swimmer Missy Franklin, rugby player Jack Hart, baseball player Brandon Crawford and football player Jesse Sapolu.

What makes him my hero isn’t a race he won. It’s a race he never ran. The scene was the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Eddie, who was the world’s reigning record holder in the 100-meter event, was disqualified from advancing to the finals because he and his teammate, Rey Robinson, missed their qualifying heat.

Without much evidence, the blame immediately fell on Stan Wright, the American team’s sprint coach. I was watching on TV when Howard Cosell interviewed Wright and the two runners after the race. Cosell, who was known for his cruelty, tore viciously into Wright, who was in tears by this time, and he invited Eddie to join in the persecution.

Eddie was polite about it, but he resolutely refused, no matter how much Cosell kept egging him on. I said to myself, “His parents must be so proud of him!” I’m happy to say I was right.

“My father said, ‘I’m sorry you were disqualified, but I’m proud of you for doing the right thing,’ ” says Eddie. “My mother, who was very religious, didn’t care about medals; she cared about my soul. To her, everything was secondary to my salvation.”

After the Olympics he went back to Cal to get his degree, then spent his life working with young people, teaching them not only track skills but also the difference between right and wrong, as his parents taught him. Ten years ago, he partnered with Dave Newhouse, the dean of Bay Area sportswriters, to write a book about what he saw and did in Munich, titled (of course) “Disqualified.”

It’s about much more than what happened to him. The 1972 Olympics are among the most famous of all for several reasons, some good, some bad.

These were the games when a plucky 17-year-old Soviet gymnast from Belarus named Olga Korbut charmed the whole world, especially Americans (I can still hear my mother calling from the kitchen, “Is my Olga on yet?”), beginning the elevation of women’s gymnastics from a niche sport into the glamour event it is today.

They were also the games when the American men’s basketball team, which had never lost in the Olympics, was upset in the gold medal game by the Soviets, thanks to some dubious calls by the refs, and American swimmer Mark Spitz became Michael Phelps before Michael Phelps, winning seven gold medals. Most of all, though they’re remembered as the games when terrorists massacred 11 Israeli athletes.

Eddie was an eyewitness to all of it, and he and Dave talked to everyone they could find, including traveling back to Munich. The best story is from Spitz, the most prominent Jewish athlete in the games, who returned to his room to find none other than Willy Brandt, then-West Germany’s chancellor, waiting for him.

“We are here to protect you,” said Brandt, who was worried that Spitz might be next on the terrorists’ hit list. So instead of staying for the rest of the games, he was spirited out of the country and flown to London. Then, while phony rumors were planted that he was hiding in Italy, he was secretly flown to San Francisco, where then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan met him at the airport and ordered a cadre of bodyguards to drive him home.

That missed qualifying heat haunted Coach Wright for the rest of his life. He knew he wasn’t at fault but assumed responsibility because he didn’t want his runners to take the blame. He never knew that an investigation for the U.S. Olympic Committee would clear him after his death and lay the blame on a bureaucratic foul-up.

Eddie married his teenage sweetheart, Gwen, and they have two children and three grandchildren. He still teaches Sunday school at the same church he attended as a little boy, Christian Methodist Episcopal in nearby Pittsburg.

“He remains an integral, though heartbreaking, part of Olympic lore,” says Newhouse. “Eddie Hart is Munich, and Munich is Eddie Hart. They are tethered forever.”

Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.