Translated material
The Legend of Al Orter
His earthly journey ended the other day. He died of cardiac arrest, with which he had problems almost from birth. Al was born in the year of one of the most scandalous Summer Olympics, held in Hitler's Berlin, in 1936. Another legendary American athlete, Jesse Owens, shone there, winning both sprint distances and setting a phenomenal world record in the long jump at that time.
What Al Orter will eventually do in sports can hardly be repeated and almost impossible to surpass. Just think about it: this man won four Olympics in a row. This, however, was achieved by another athlete, American Carl Lewis. But Orter is the only person on earth who won all these Olympics with world records. At the Olympics, he beat the current world record holders. He won with injuries that made it almost impossible to move. He received an excellent education and for many years combined playing his favorite sport with working as a computer specialist for a large airline. He became a good artist. He was the one who, with his own life, justified man’s dream of becoming equal to the gods.
He was not even 20 when at the 56 Olympics in Melbourne he beat his compatriot, world record holder Fortune Gordien. Al Orter won the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 with such a pectoral muscle injury that doctors forbade him from making sudden movements, not to mention playing sports. He was injected with a novocaine blockade, he entered the sector and set a world record. Orter won his fourth gold in Mexico City in 1968 with damage to his cervical vertebrae. And again he beat the current world record holder Jay Sylvester. And again he set his next world record.
In 1979, on the eve of the Moscow Olympics, 43-year-old Orter, ten years after finishing his career, decided to return. But he didn’t make it to the 1980 Olympics: big politics intervened; the United States boycotted the Games because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And if I had gotten in, it’s quite possible that I would have become a five-time Olympic champion. At least there is physical evidence: right on the set for television, Orter threw the discus 76 meters 67 centimeters. For comparison, now, almost 30 years after that throw, the official world record of the German Jurgen Schult is 74 meters 08 centimeters.
His phrases about sports in numerous interviews for glossy magazines (alas, serious publications are much less likely to pay attention to such heroes who combine stardom with the traits of truly deep intellectuals) have become popular. Al Orter spoke to match his mythological, almost divine path in sports. “I physically feel the flight of the disk, as if we are one with it”... “An Olympic victory is something for which you can die”... “Only seemingly impossible goals are truly interesting.”
There is a famous sculpture by the ancient Greek sculptor Myron “Discobolus”. If we make a shift in time (and from the point of view of eternity, it does not really matter whether a person lived before or after the new era), it seems that the prototype of the hero of this sculpture was Al Orter.
In essence, the heroes of myths are characters who embody our ideas about an unattainable ideal, who perform actions that seem impossible to us, and who exceed these very impossible goals. Al Orter is one of those heroes who, through their personal fate, justifies the existence of humanity.
People should have practiced discus throwing so that one day someone would be born who, defying illness and injury, the authority of rivals and the resistance of metal, would become the personification of this mythological sport.
In fact, death is the only opponent that Al Orter could not defeat. And this is a sufficient reason for him to remain immortal in people’s memory. The legend of Al Orter must be passed down from generation to generation. Because he was the best, unique, the only one. Because his sporting feat is timeless.