Bill's Car is Red and Blue

[DoubleRBar]

Happy birthday today (Wednesday) to an Olympic champion with two gold medals from the same Olympic Games.

Our birthday athlete was born on a Sunday the same year William Howard Taft was inaugurated as our 27th president. Our birthday champion was born the same day Rufus Peckham died (Rufus Peckham was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court).

This gold medalist was born in a town named for a bluff on the Arkansas River. Dallas Long and Charlie Greene were also born in this same town.

Graduating from high school the same year Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean, our birthday athlete graduated from college six years later, but not before he won two Olympic gold medals.

He set a world record in winning the first of two Olympic gold medals. His second Olympic gold medal was also a world record.

After the Olympic Games, our champion broke both ankles in a car accident. He also broke his pelvis and this ended his track and field career.

During World War II, this person was involved in U.S. Naval Intelligence. He met his wife in China and they had one son named Allin.

Death came on a Friday in Tokyo for our birthday athlete. He was only 56 years old at the time of his death.

You can forget about the hurldes or any field events when trying to figure our birthday athlete's name.

Who is this Olympic champion from the past?

[catson52]

Bill Carr. Wasn't Sonny Liston also born in Pine Bluff?

[DoubleRBar]

Bill Carr is correct, catson52. I don't know where Sonny Liston was born (maybe Arkansas). I do know that Bill Carr was born 103 years ago today and he died 46 years ago last January. Carr had a quite a track career before he ever graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Who knows what he could have done had he not been involved in the automobile crash?

[dj]

Bill Carr is correct, catson52. I don't know where Sonny Liston was born (maybe Arkansas). I do know that Bill Carr was born 103 years ago today and he died 46 years ago last January. Carr had a quite a track career before he ever graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Who knows what he could have done had he not been involved in the automobile crash.

Not much more than he had already accomplished.

Carr, who was planning on retiring after a 1933 summer track tour of Europe, said later that year that in some ways the accident was a blessing, allowing him to go out on top. He just didn't have the motivation going into the 1933 season as he'd already accomplished everything he set out to do, which in itself was more than he expected to do. In fact, the plan for the year was for him to run the 100 and 220, with his only 440s coming on relays.

The accident occurred on the night of March 17, 1933, the night of St. Patrick's Day, a fact which was kindly omitted from all newspaper reports. He had been standing on the running board of a car driven by a classmate. Another car apparently ran a stop sign, causing Carr's friend to swerve and throw Carr even before the autos collided.

Carr suffered two broken ankles and a fracture of the right side of his pelvis, in addition to numerous cuts and bruises. It was not the first time Carr had broken both ankles, as had done so before while high jumping for Pine Bluff (Ark.) High School. In fact, Carr had only recently recovered from a sprained knee, which he suffered while playing football in the fall of '32.

The first person to come across the accident was Carr's coach, Lawson Robertson, who stopped to help without realizing who was involved. Robertson picked up the 5-8/145 Carr, put him in Robertson's car and drove the five miles to University of Pennsylvania hospital, catty-corner from Franklin Field.

Carr's was not the only 1932 Olympic gold medalist and world record holder to have his career ended that spring, as 110-hurdler George Saling died in an auto crash less than one month after Carr's accident.

[DoubleRBar]

George Saling died April 15, 1933, almost exactly one month after Bill Carr's accident of March 17, 1933.

I realize Carr wasn't going to continue running, but I always wondered what he could have done in Berlin (1936) had he kept training (without the car accident).

[dj]

George Saling died April 15, 1933, almost exactly one month after Bill Carr's accident of March 17, 1933.

I realize Carr wasn't going to continue running, but I always wondered what he could have done in Berlin (1936) had he kept training (without the car accident).

That's just it, regardless of the accident he wasn't going to be continuing to 1936. And his final season of 1933 wasn't going to include and 400s. Everything he was going to be famous for is what he'd already done.

And if you're asking what he might have done if he reneged on his plans to conclude his career, I don't think he'd have improved much, if at all. The Archie Williams of 1936 was not as great a threat as the 1932 Ben Eastman, and no one in the '33-34-35 would have pushed him as much as Eastman.

Carr was all about winning the race, the times were incidental. It was in many ways the opposite of the approach Eastman had taken with coach Dink Templeton.