Moments of Melbourne, Part 2 - Friday, Novermber 23rd, 1956

It had been labelled as one of the great duels of the Games and so it was. On the early evening of Friday, November 23rd, Soviet runner Vladimir Kuts and Great Britain's Gordon Pirie squared off in the 10,000 meters final and delivered a race for the ages. In the end, Kuts took home the gold with Pirie finishing merely eighth - but the duel had been much closer as the result seemed to indicate (picture: racingpast.ca).

Kuts had won the 5000 meters at the 1954 European Championships in Berne, Switzerland, spoiling the anticipated showdown between Emil Zatopek bad Christopher Chataway. Pirie had clocked a new 10,000 meters world record in Bergen, Norway in the summer before the Melbourne Games. With Hungary's Sandor Iharos out after the revolution back home, the stage was set for Kuts versus Pirie.

As expected, the race - starting at 6:00 PM on the sandy track at Melbourne Cricket Ground - became the classical encounter between a frontrunner and a finisher. Kuts led from the beginning, trying to destroy his opponents with continuing intervals of acceleration and slowing down, while Pirie followed in his footsteps. This continued for 21 of the 25 laps, until both runners had virtually run out of gas, which even Kuts admitted later. But the 29 year old navy officer from the Ukraine had one last sprint left in his tank. While Kuts raced to gold seven seconds ahead of Hungary's Jozsef Kovacs and Allan Lawrence of Australia, Pirie dropped back to a disappointing eighth place.

"He murdered me - that's all there was to it", Pirie later told the home press, who put him under crossfire. Meanwhile, Kuts sent his coach Grigorij Nikiforov to talk the media, while giving an exclusive interview to his wife Raissa, who worked as a journalist. The man who was often criticized as a "race robot" and was later even connected to doping allegations by the flamboyant Pirie, was in fact no one-dimensional race horse, but a great tactician with unprecedented stamina. Kuts proved all his critics wrong five days later when he also won the 5000 meters. In this race, Pirie finished second.

News of the day: Charles Dumas (USA) grabs the gold in the men's high jump, while Czech Olga Fikotová wins the women's discus throw +++ Americans Charles Vinci (bantam weight) and Isaac Berger (feather weight) earn the first two golds in weightlifting +++ The fencing team from Italy becomes Olympic champion with the men's foil.

Gunder Haegg - The Unfulfilled Dream, Part 2

Some of the greatest athletes of the world have tried in vain to win an Olympic gold medal. We portray them in this series.

Gunder Haegg was a victim of his time and circumstances. When the Swedish long distance runner was at the height of his career, World War II prevented him from becoming an Olympic champion in 1940 and 1944. In 1948, he was denied the chance to compete in the 1948 London Games because he had been stripped of his amateur status two years before. Allegedly, Haegg had been running once for 400 Swedish crowns (picture: aftonbladet.se).

Haegg could have been a second Paavo Nurmi. The Swede, born in Albacken on the last day of 1918, and the "Flying Finn" were the only two men to hold every single world record from 1500 to 5000 meters at the same time. Haegg also was the first men to run the 5000 meters in less than 14 minutes. His personal best, marked on September 10th, 1942, stood for twelve years. The summer of 1942 was the crown jewel of Haegg's feats, when he clocked ten world records within 82 days. Overall, he smashed 16 world records - but never ran in a single Olympic race.

Directed by his coach Goesta Olander in the training camp of Valdalen, deep in the woods of northern Sweden, Haegg started to use a form of interval training as one of the first long distance runners. He paved the way for the methods later taken to perfection by the likes of Vladimir Kuts and Emil Zatopek, who finally broke his 5000 meters records.

Because of the war, only few footage of Haegg's races has survived. Here are some impressions from his tour through the United States in 1943:

After his athletics career, Haegg lived as unconventional and extraordinary as his running had been. He sold books about his races, was a fire fighter, forest worker, salesman. And he always remained an icon for his country. Sports historian Julin called Haegg "a national symbol for a small country standing at the abyss of war".

Haegg passed away on November 27th, 2004, near Malmoe. But there is one thing he accomplished that even Nurmi did not get: A Swedish band named herself after Gunder Haegg (until they had to switch their name following legal persecution) and dedicated a song to him in 1970. A song about nature, wolves, idealism and "lousy capitalism". Haegg will sure ly have liked this one (picture: racingpast.ca).