Olga Fikotova Connolly, who won gold in track and field for Czechoslovakia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, watched American Harold Connolly win the gold medal the next day, and in March 1957 wrote the highlights of the fairy tale “Cold War”. married him as. Romance passed away on April 12th in Costa Mesa, California. She passed away at the age of 91.
Her daughter Maya Connolly Freund said the cause was breast cancer. Connolly Freund said she died at the home of her son Jim, who was receiving hospice care.
The governing body of European Athletics Federations has announced that Olga Connolly is the last living women's gold medalist from the Melbourne Games.
Her competitive accomplishments as a discus thrower were extraordinary: five Olympic Games (four as an American citizen and representative of the United States), five American Championships, and four American records. Harold Connolly, a hammer thrower from Massachusetts, competed in the Olympics four times.
But it may be their unlikely Olympic romance that will be most memorable for both of them. The New York Times recalled in 1972:
“One morning he went to the equipment storage area in the Olympic village to check out his practice hammer. Olga Fikotova, an attractive female discus thrower from Czechoslovakia, happened to be in the shed at the same time. 4. A month later they were married.
Getting to the point of exchanging vows wasn't easy. Czechoslovak communist government officials did not allow the wedding to proceed until President Antonin Zapotocki intervened, more than three weeks after the couple first asked for permission. “They said I was a traitor and was on the run with American fascists,” Connolly told Radio Prague in 2008.
The couple, she was 24 and he 25, had planned a small wedding in Prague, with former Czech Olympic champion Emil Zatopek and his wife Dana Ingulova Zatopkova as witnesses. But as word spread, a crowd estimated at 25,000 to 30,000 people flocked to the historic Old Town Square to see the couple.
“Somehow fate brought us together,” Olga Connolly said. And when I looked, we were very similar. ”
The Connolly family settled in Southern California, and Olga became a U.S. citizen. She went on to compete as an American in four Olympic Games (Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City, and Munich), but she did not win any more medals.
She and her husband had four children, all of whom became athletes. Mark was a college basketball player and briefly became a boxer. Jim is an outstanding decathlete and javelin thrower. and their daughters, Melja, a national volleyball player, and Nina, a tennis player.
In addition to twins Melja and Jim, she is survived by two other children, Nina Southard and Mark Connolly, and three grandchildren. From 1959 until the early 2000s, Olga lived in Culver City, California. After that, she lived primarily in Costa Mesa.
She was a medical student while winning a gold medal at the 1956 Olympics, but never returned to medical school. Instead, after her marriage, her non-competing time was spent working on environmental issues, becoming a personal trainer, selling mountaineering equipment, lecturing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and throwing the discus at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. and coached shot put. She oversees sports programs for preschoolers and seniors.
Olga, along with her husband, also enjoyed a degree of celebrity. She was a mystery guest on an episode of the game show “Tell the Truth” in 1958, and the couple appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with a warm introduction by Mr. Sullivan and a serenade by Louis Armstrong.
In 1968, she wrote a book about her romance with Connolly called The Ring of Destiny. In 1997, her portrait was chosen to appear on a 10-cent stamp when the United States issued a series of stamps honoring women who shaped American history.
However, the marriage did not last long. The Connollys separated after 16 years, and their divorce was finalized in 1974. Olga never remarried, but in 1975 Harold married Pat Daniels Winslow, a track coach and former Olympic 800-meter runner and pentathlete. Their son, Adam, became a nationally ranked hammer thrower. Harold Connolly passed away in 2010 at the age of 79.
Olga Fikotova was born on November 13, 1932 in Prague. Her father, Frantiček Fikota, was a legionary in the Czech Army and a bodyguard to Tomas Masaryk (1850-1937), the first president of Czechoslovakia. When Olga was a girl, visiting her father on business, she would be told to stand upright when President Masaryk rode by on his horse.
After World War II, the family moved to the Czech village of Libis. Olga's mother, Lyudmila (Ulova) Fikotova, supported her family as a worker at a chemical factory.
As a teenager, Olga attended a Czech gymnastics education program known as Sokol. She realized that she was an outstanding athlete.
Standing 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 176 pounds, she played for the Czechoslovakia national team in basketball and team handball. Two years after starting her discus throw, she won the Olympic gold medal with her 53.69 meters (176 feet 1 inch).
Olga Connolly said her proudest moment was when she carried the Stars and Stripes onto the stadium at the opening ceremony of the Munich Olympics (as Soviet heavyweight wrestlers did with one hand before carrying the national flag).
“Amazingly, the captains of every sport within the Olympic team selected me to carry the flag at the opening ceremony,” she told the Baltimore Sun in 2004. “But the team's manager canceled the election results.” She voiced her opposition to the Vietnam War, and she campaigned again. She popularized democracy. The team selected me again. ”
But to sports historians, she is undoubtedly best remembered for the romance that captivated the imagination of a tense world decades ago and broke through the Iron Curtain to become front-page news. The day after the Connollys' wedding in 1957, The Times wrote:
“H-bombs will cover us like a cloud of doom. It will be almost impossible to endure the subway at rush hour. But Olga and Harold are in love, and the world will not say no to them. ”
frank ritskyAlex Traub, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018.
