Harold Connolly

Athlete

• Born: August 1, 1931
• Birthplace: Somerville, Massachusetts
• Died: August 18, 2010
• Place of death: Catonsville, Maryland

Sport: Track and field (hammer throw)

Early Life

Harold “Hal” Vincent Connolly was born on August 1, 1931, in Somerville, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, to Harold and Margaret Connolly, both of whom were first-generation Americans. Hal began his life under the most adverse conditions. Just before his birth, doctors informed his father they could not save both mother and child. Mr. Connolly told them to do whatever they could, but to be sure to save his wife’s life. Fortunately, they saved both, but the nerves in Hal’s left arm were permanently injured. In spite of operations and constant therapy, Hal’s left arm remained shorter and much weaker than his right. However, Hal became the first American since 1924, and the last before the close of the twentieth century, to win the Olympic hammer throw, an event that combines strength, coordination, speed, and tenacity.

The Road to Excellence

At thirteen years old, Hal told his mother he no longer wanted to go to therapy sessions because he was embarrassed to be considered handicapped; instead, he promised to do his own exercises. He discovered a weight-training magazine called Strength and Health and went to work, strengthening not only his damaged left arm but his entire body. Hal later said, “I wanted to prove myself as an athlete because I came from a family of athletes, mostly boxers.”

Boxing was out of the question, but Hal became an overachiever in high school, where he ran the hurdles, participated in the shot put, and played a very aggressive tackle on the football team. At Boston College, he continued with the shot put, but this field event required a follow-through with the left arm, a skill that put Harold at a disadvantage. By accident, he took up the hammer. His Boston College coach William Galligan lived near the Connollys, so Hal always rode home with his coach after practice. The last athletes Galligan coached each day were the hammer throwers. To speed things up, Hal retrieved the hammers and threw them back to the athletes. When he started throwing the hammers over the athletes’ heads, he had found his event.

The Emerging Champion

Strangely enough, Hal’s withered left arm did not handicap him as much in the hammer throw as it did in the shot put. He compensated by shifting the weight to his legs, with his arms functioning as a whip.

Because little emphasis was placed on the hammer throw in the United States, in 1954, Hal traveled to Germany to work with the legendary coach Sepp Christmann, who had revolutionized the hammer throw by teaching athletes to turn on their heels and toes rather than toe turning and jumping around in the circle. Christmann told Hal that if he worked hard on this new technique, he had a chance to win at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

Hal’s foremost competition in Melbourne came from the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Krivonosov. At the Olympic level, competition is as much mental as physical, and in the months preceding the Games, Hal and Krivonosov not only traded the world record back and forth but also traded verbal challenges. On the first day of practice in Melbourne, Hal waited for his Soviet counterpart and immediately challenged him to see who was the better thrower. The Soviet coaches hurriedly pulled Krivonosov off the practice field, but by then Hal had made it clear that he welcomed the competition. A few days later, he defeated his Soviet rival, setting an Olympic record of 207 feet 3 inches.

Continuing the Story

Hal had fallen in love with Olga Fikotová, the Czechoslovakian discus gold medalist. The couple’s Cold War romance quickly piqued the interest of the international media, and people everywhere began to cheer for a happy ending to this improbable match between the communist Czech Protestant and the free-world American Catholic. In 1957, Hal and Olga married in Prague, with the great Czech distance runner Emil Zátopek serving as best man.

After considerable visa difficulties, Olga left with Hal to begin a new life in the United States. The couple eventually settled in Santa Monica, California, where Hal went into high school teaching and, later, administration. They both continued to compete. Hal extended the world record in the hammer throw seven times, reaching a personal best of 233 feet 9 1/2 inches in 1965. He was also a member of the U.S. Olympic team in 1960, 1964, and 1968, but did not win another medal. Olga became an American citizen and gave birth to four children. She was on each of the American Olympic teams with Hal. She was also on the 1972 team, when her teammates selected her to be the American flag bearer in the opening ceremonies, an honor Hal had earned in 1968 but turned down because he thought the Olympics had become too political.

Summary

Between 1956 and 1965, Harold Connolly raised the world record in the hammer throw seven times and won nine national Amateur Athletic Union titles. Hal will be best remembered for overcoming physical adversity to become an Olympic champion and for his storybook Cold War romance with Olga Fikotová that transcended the political differences of the couple’s respective countries.

Bibliography

Connolly, Olga. The Rings of Destiny. New York: D. McKay, 1968.

Hickok, Ralph. A Who’s Who of Sports Champions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Lawson, Gerald. World Record Breakers in Track and Field Athletics. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 1997.

Mravic, Mark. “Power Couplings.” Sports Illustrated 92, no. 9 (February 28, 2000): 28-29.

Silvester, L. Jay. Complete Book of Throws. Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 2003.

Wallechinsky, David, and Jaime Loucky. The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition. London: Aurum Press, 2008.