With the world watching the 76 Olympic controversy around the actual sex of some female athletes, who would have thought that one male gold medalists was contemplating a gender switch the other way.
In the summer of 1976 Montreal hosted the Summer Olympics. I was a fresh high school graduate and enjoyed every bit of the festivities. The city was abuzz twenty-four hours a day for the duration of the games.
I recall one of the major concerns of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), aside from the use of performance enhancing drugs, was the actual gender of the competitors. Were those East German water polo ladies really female? Were they men competing as women against women?
It has always been part of the ’76 Games lore that the only athlete who did not undergo a sex test was Princess Anne who competed in the equestrian events.
Isn’t it ironic that while there was great concern about men competing as women, the decathlon gold medal winner, Bruce Jenner, was on the verge of beginning to transition to a woman? He was not undergoing hormone therapy at the time, which would in fact have reduced his testosterone and made him arguably less competitive, but competed clean, however the coincidence interests me.
But not as much as the name coincidence; that a guy named Jenner should change gender. Shouldn’t it be Bruce Jender? Then again it still strikes me that the poor guy who fell to his death at an Atlanta Braves game, landing in the parking lot was named Homer. He was not the first, nor the last homer to land in that parking lot.
Garry says they are talking about putting American Pharoh on a Wheaties box. Do horses eat wheaties? Maybe athletes should eat oats?
Poor Homer. A sad, yet appropriate, end for a baseball fan.