Months later, when the couple wed in Prague, overcoming communist red tape and criticism from government officials who deemed her a traitor, some 30,000 well-wishers and curiosity-seekers attended. The historic Old Town Square was filled with people trying to catch a glimpse of the couple before they departed. America. “Love Triumphs Ideology,” declared a Life magazine headline.
Ms Connolly later told the Financial Times: “'Fate' used Harold and me to explain that we could choose to fight or be happy together.”
The marriage did not last long, and Connolly and her husband separated after 16 years, and their divorce was finalized in 1974. However, she built a new life in the United States and continued her activism, even as she embraced activist causes as a feminist and environmental activist. Discus record. She went on to compete in all four Olympics as an American, and was selected by her fellow athletes to bear the flag at the 1972 Munich Opening Ceremony, a rare Olympic victory in which she won a gold medal in one country and carried the flag in another. He became a player.
Connolly, who died on April 12 at the age of 91, said: “The Olympic experience opened up the world to me in every way. It made me the person I am today.”
Her Olympic gold medal victory was all the more impressive given that she was still a relative novice at the sport, having started throwing discus less than two years by the time she arrived in Melbourne at the age of 24. It was noteworthy. Czechoslovak authorities even before she fell in love with someone behind the Iron Curtain.
As an adult, she recalled being kicked out of school because she came from a “reactionary family.” In Melbourne, she was reportedly the only member of her home country's team who refused to join the Communist Party due to the risk of reprisals due to her Protestant religious beliefs.
It was in part her independence that attracted her future husband to the Olympics. “I charmed Harold,” she told an interviewer in 2015. “Because he never imagined that communists – I was not – could be so free.”
Olga Fikotova was an only child, born on November 13, 1932 in Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic. Her father worked as a security guard for Tomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia. According to his family, he was persecuted during the Nazi occupation and was sent to prison for two years after the Communists took power in 1948.
During that time, Mr. Connolly and his mother moved to a small town outside of Prague, where his mother worked in a coal mine.
Mr. Connolly, who was 5 feet 11 inches tall, had by then established himself as a talented athlete. She competed in international basketball and handball tournaments while spending part of each summer doing her forced manual labor. One year, she joined other members of the Czechoslovak junior basketball team in the Slovak city of Košice, where she was assigned to help build a railway.
In 2012, she told PBS' Southern California affiliate, “Because of the regulations, we were all able to train for half the day.” She “spent the other half doing strength training, breaking rocks and wheelbarrowing.”
Connolly was studying medicine at Charles University in Prague in 1954, with the aim of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, when he started throwing the discus with the encouragement of coach Okar Jandera, a former Olympic hurdler. He introduced her to the basics of the sport and showed her how to twirl to her waltz while playing her “Blue Danube” on a loop on her speakers.
The following year, she made her breakthrough at the International Athletics Championships in Poland. She finished 28th out of 28 throwers, but the next day during practice she was approached by Nina Ponomareva, the discus champion who brought the Soviet Union its first Olympic gold medal. Feeling sorry for her Miss Connolly, she offered her technique tips and instructed the young Czech athlete to bulk up her body.
“She said if I followed her advice we could meet in Melbourne next year,” Ms Connolly recalled. Ponomareba was right. The following year, Ms. Connolly won the gold medal with a throw of 176 feet, 2 inches, setting a then-current women's Olympic record. Reigning Olympic champion Ponomarewa took third place. “She was very angry,” Ms Connolly said.
Connolly planned to return to Prague after the competition to complete his medical degree. But soon after she arrived in Melbourne, she met Harold, the first American to win a gold medal in the hammer throw since Fred Tootel in 1924. Connolly recalled that the players literally bumped into each other and struck up a conversation after the accidental collision. along with another American as she jumps out of an equipment trailer.
Speaking broken English and German, they struck up a relationship over the objections of the leaders of the Czechoslovak delegation when Mr. Connolly tried to introduce them to his new American friend. Harold promised to come to Prague to get married after the convention, and arrived in the capital in early 1957 while visiting Europe as a State Department goodwill ambassador.
Mr. Connolly returned home to a mixed reception. She said some government representatives told her, “I'm a traitor'' and “she's on the run with American fascists.'' For a time, it seemed as if her marriage would not go through, but the situation generated international media speculation, with journalists asking US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the Eisenhower administration would somehow I asked if there was a possibility of intervention.
“Mr. Dulles said he did not know,” United Press reported at the time. “But he said it is basic American policy to believe in romance.”
In the process of seeking a marriage license, Connolly was assisted by her friend Emil Zatopek, a long-distance runner and one of Czechoslovakia's most famous athletes. He arranged for her to meet with her country's president, Antonin Zapototsky, who told her that he would “put in a kind word” for her proper licensing authorities. A few days later, the paperwork was completed and the groom was allowed to have three weddings: civil, Protestant, and Catholic.
Connolly said she had hoped to continue competing for Czechoslovakia after moving to the United States (her husband sold one of his hammers to pay for the transatlantic trip), but the country's 's Olympic Committee effectively sent her a letter disavowing her. She obtained US citizenship and helped her parents immigrate to Southern California, where she settled with her husband in 1959 and was hailed as a celebrity.
The couple appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and were serenaded by Louis Armstrong, who described them on air as “one of the greatest love stories to come out of sports.”
Connolly and her husband went on to have four children while continuing to compete in the Olympics. Although neither of them won a medal, Ms. Connolly was a five-time U.S. discus champion, and she finished seventh, 12th, sixth and 16th in the next four Olympics.
Ms Connolly said that while Harold was “basically married to a hammer”, Harold had become interested in life outside of the sport and gradually grew estranged from her husband. It didn't help her, she said, that journalists and others insisted on treating them as a group rather than individuals, or that they considered her a mere appendage of her husband. Ta.
“One of the first things I didn't understand was why that email was addressed to 'Mrs. Harold Connolly.'” I was “Olga.” “I felt depressed in this country,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1976, adding, “Her self-confidence was being undermined by her negative attitude toward women in this country.” ” she added. (Harold He passed away in 2010.)
After leaving discus, Mr. Connolly served on the Culver City School Board, coached intramural sports at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and coordinated educational programs for children and seniors, including a residence in San Pedro. .
She also wrote newspaper and magazine essays on sports, arguing that the Olympic movement was inappropriately focused on entertainment rather than promoting humanitarian causes. And she continued her activities until her late 80s, when she ran a fitness program and worked as an athlete at the University of California, Irvine. She is a trainer at a gym in Las Vegas.
Her death from breast cancer that had spread to her lungs was confirmed by her daughter Melya Connolly-Freund. Connolly was living with one of her sons, Jim Connolly, in Costa Mesa, California, and receiving hospice care.
In addition to Melha and Jim, survivors include two children, Nina Southard and Mark Connolly, and three grandchildren.
Along with the gold medal, Connolly said her proudest accomplishment was raising the American flag at the 1972 Olympics, over the objections of U.S. Olympic officials who criticized public opposition to the Vietnam War. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, American athletes were asked to reconsider choosing Connolly as her standard bearer, but she refused to change her mind.
After the opening ceremony, Connolly said he heard from U.S. Olympic officials who sarcastically congratulated him on the success of the march. “You must have forgotten,” she replied. “I found out about it at a May Day parade in Czechoslovakia.”
