The 1964 Summer Olympics

One of TigerBlog's favorite channels is the Olympic channel.

He likes to watch the documentaries on each of the various Olympiads, with all of the different events, highlights and backstories. Most of them have the same narrator, the one with the deep, completely unemotional voice.

The show that TB stumbled on yesterday morning was from the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. These games were just a bit before his time in terms of TV viewing, though he had already been born by that point.

When TB turned it on, the first highlights he saw were of fencing. After that was judo.

That was followed by basketball. TB was especially interested in that.

Princeton Athletics was well-represented in Tokyo, including by the captain of the U.S. basketball team, Bill Bradley. In fact, Bradley was a Princeton senior when the Games were played, since they actually occurred in October.

And there was Bradley, scoring two baskets and setting up two others for easy layups with assists. It was typical Bill Bradley. 

The 1964 Summer Games actually ended on Oct. 24. According to Wikipedia, the October schedule was due to the mid-summer heat and then the September typhoon season. The 2021 Tokyo Olympics (the ones that were supposed to have been this past summer but were postponed by the COVID pandemic) will be from July 23 through August 8.

Bradley wasn't he only Princetonian in Tokyo in 1964. In fact, there were four Princeton athletes who competed there, and three won medals, including two golds.

Frank Anger fenced there but did not win a medal. Seymore Cromwell won a silver medal in double sculls rowing.

Jed Graef won the gold medal in the 200 backstroke in Tokyo, just a few months after he 1) won the NCAA 200 backstroke and 2) graduated from Princeton. 

Graef won the 200 backstroke in a time of 2:10.3, which was the world record at the time. He led a 1-2-3 American sweep in the event.

Graef's Olympic teammate, Gary Dilley (who swam at Michigan State), set the Olympic record in both the preliminary round and the semifinals, while Graef had the second-best time in both. In the final, Graef edged Dilley by two-tenths of a second, while the bronze medal went to Bob Bennett (a USC grad), who was nearly three seconds behind. 

Graef and Dilley went on to from their swimming careers and returned to school, as Graef earned a Ph.D. in psychology and Dilley became an orthodontist. 

As for the 200 backstroke world record, Graef's record stood for three years. Today, the record is actually 1:51.3, set by American Aaron Peirsol back in 2009.

As for Bradley, he was the captain of a basketball team that went 9-0 and won the gold medal, defeating the previously unbeaten Soviet Union team 73-59. That 14-point win was actually not the closest game the team played, as there was also an eight-point win over Yugoslavia in the preliminary round.

The 1964 U.S. team included Larry Brown, the same Larry Brown who played at North Carolina and went on to a long coaching career in college and the pros, as well as future NBA standouts including Walt Hazzard, Jeff Mullins, Lucious Jackson, Mel Counts and Jim Barnes.

The leading scorer on the team was Jerry Shipp, who was also the oldest player on the team. Shipp, who was 29 years old, graduated from Southeastern Oklahoma State in 1959 but passed on playing professionally to maintain his amateur status (playing for AAU teams) so he could play in the Olympics.

That patience paid off four years later, when was part of the gold medal U.S. team at the Pan Am Games, and then the following year, when he averaged 12.4 points per game to lead the U.S. team in Tokyo. His best game was when he went for 22 against the Yugoslavians.

As for Bradley, to show you the respect he earned, he was voted team captain despite being the youngest player on the U.S. team. Bradley was the second-leading scorer for the U.S. in Tokyo at 10.1 points per game.

He of course returned to Princeton, and five weeks after the gold medal game, he started his senior year with 29 against Lafayette. 

He ended it in March with twice that many in his final college game, setting a Final Four record that still stands with 58 in the third-place game.