Bill O’Neil read with interest the “Olympic Generations” series in The Herald sports section recently.
The week’s worth of profiles honored local Olympians of the past and introduced area athletes now in Athens.
O’Neil read all that and picked up the phone.
“Maybe,” the Everett man said, “you might want to talk with me. I never made it to the Olympics.”
He was laughing a bit, but I certainly did want to talk. What a coincidence. I never made it to the Olympics, either. How about you?
Just about all of us share the never-made-it story. And who doesn’t have an Olympic dream? I have summer and winter versions – Julie the marathoner, Julie the figure skater. Olympic pipe dreams, that’s what those are.
It is fun to imagine as we watch the elite of the elite, being that fine or that fast.
O’Neil, 78, can do more than daydream. He knows what it’s like to fly over high hurdles. He came closer to Olympic glory than anyone else I know. Fifty-six years after the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, O’Neil can tell you in an instant who won the gold.
“Bill Porter,” he said. “I ran against Bill Porter many times. Bill and I used to sit in the stands and talk when he was at Western Michigan University.”
O’Neil was in South Bend, Ind., back then at the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated in 1946. He was captain of the track team and named an All-American.
In an old newspaper clipping, a grainy picture of a string of hurdlers, O’Neil has proof of his near-Olympic moment.
“There’s Porter, and there I am,” said O’Neil, pointing out two young men in the 1945 photo.
That one time, captured in the picture at a track meet at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois, O’Neil bested Porter. But he didn’t win the 110-meter hurdles that day. Jack Taylor, from the University of Idaho, won. O’Neil has no idea what became of Taylor.
Porter, who died in California in 2000, not only won gold in the 110-meter hurdles at the games in London, he set a record of 13.9 seconds.
“Porter and I ran against each other nine or 10 times,” O’Neil said. “I know exactly what his back looks like.”
O’Neil never came close to the Olympics, nor even the Olympic trials. He and his wife, Nina, raised seven children in Everett. Rather than sour grapes, O’Neil relishes that for at least a few moments he was a faster hurdler than the man who became the world’s best.
“I was elated to think I had done it once,” he said.
Coming to Notre Dame from Gonzaga Preparatory School in Spokane, O’Neil found out how plans take unforeseen turns. A prep football player, he chose the university after seeing “Knute Rockne: All American,” the 1940 film about the famed football coach.
When he arrived at Notre Dame, football coach Frank Leahy “did me the biggest favor he ever could have done – he didn’t want me,” O’Neil said.
The erstwhile football player became an All-American hurdler instead. But O’Neil has the last laugh.
At Notre Dame reunions, he’s seen former classmates limping from old football injuries.
“I got in 31 days of skiing last year,” he said.
At 78, that’s better than gold.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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