No change in my physical therapy this morning. I did the same small exercises as in my first session on Monday.
I think there are two guys running the place with lots of younger colleagues guiding people through their paces. During the massage portion I had the other main therapist. Today was the man moving gracefully into middle age. The therapist looked like the man that sits down a few rows on the other side of your church.
His fingers were a little more narrow than his partner’s, this process takes plenty long to consider good metaphors for the therapist’s digits, but no less painful. His fingers are more the size of a screwdriver handle. He works the shoulder. There are two muscles in the damaged and surgically repaired area that go to the scapula and that, he said, explains the almost-muscle spasms.
He spends a lot of time over the incision itself, a cruel mixture of mild sensation and extreme sensation owing to the vagaries of the damaged nerves and “Hey watch it, there’s a huge surgical cut there!”
The point is to break up the scar tissue, a little now is better than a lot later. Holy moly they can work you over. He raised up my arm, impressed with my range of motion — with a little effort I can put my hurt wing completely over my head, like a touchdown call.
“There’s a big difference” he said, between 180 and 135 degrees of rotation. “Be happy with that. It takes a lot to get there.”
Things to read: Army SPC Josh Wetzel, a Glencoe, Ala. native, was wounded in Afghanistan. I wrote about him this summer for TWER.) The most recent piece of his storyinvolves a now famous picture of the Auburn fan from Walter Reed Medical Center that hangs in the White House:
The president was so moved by us praying with him on his visit that he chose this picture from the film his photographer took, had it blown up, and it now hangs in the West Wing of the White House. We said a prayer around the picture today that it would touch the lives of those who saw it and would be a catalyst for positive decision making in the Obama administration.
Seeing the picture for the first time was amazing but I think the coolest thing about it was the tour guide behind us was showing the next group the picture and said “The family in front of us is the family in this picture and the gentleman in the wheelchair is a one of our country’s wounded warriors.”
We in news and media should bring those strands together to knit a mobile strategy around learning about people and serving them better as a result — not just serving content on smaller screens. Mobile=local=me now. We should build a strategy on people over content, on relationships.
That’s what mobile means to me: a path to get us to the real value in our business.
If you view business as grounded in a relationship (some refer to it as the loyalty of, their customer) then you find that businesses need to create and then restrengthen those relationships. Media outlets, Jarvis says, need to return to that approach. The audience has to be a part of that, which may sometimes be a tricky sell. The next thing, though, would be to also monetize it.
Speaking of money, how much did USA TODAY and the Suffolk University Political Research Center spend on this survey?
Call them the unlikely voters.
A nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll of people who are eligible to vote but aren’t likely to do so finds that these stay-at-home Americans back Obama’s re-election over Republican Mitt Romney by more than 2-1. Two-thirds of them say they are registered to vote. Eight in 10 say the government plays an important role in their lives.
Even so, they cite a range of reasons for declaring they won’t vote or saying the odds are no better than 50-50 that they will: They’re too busy. They aren’t excited about either candidate. Their vote doesn’t really matter. And nothing ever gets done, anyway.
Fine story to find out their motivations — or de-motivation. There are some great statistical points of interest:
Many of the nation’s unlikely voters report hard times over the past four years. Only a third call their household finances good or excellent. Close to half say their annual household income is less than $60,000 a year. They tend to have lower levels of education than likely voters; nearly six in 10 have no more than a high school diploma.
I love the subhead. “They could turn a too-close-to-call race into a landslide for President Obama— but by definition they probably won’t.”
Maybe “They could turn a too-close-to-call race into a Reaganesque landslide for Romney — but by definition they probably won’t” didn’t sound as good around the newsroom. Or perhaps the assumption is that staying home will, in fact, do just that. The piece estimates that more than 90 million won’t vote. The subhead, then, could just as easily say “They could bolster a growing movement for the resurgent Green Part — but by definition they probably won’t.”
The story notes “Two-thirds of the unlikely voters say they voted four years ago, backing Obama by more than 2-1 over Republican John McCain.”
Some time back, on a rainy Tuesday, I spent part of an afternoon in the special collections section of the university library. I’d stumbled across an interesting title on e-bay and thought to look it up. The library had it — Good! Saving me a few bucks! — and I went searching for it.
As so often happens I stumbled across something else interesting. Libraries are very distracting.
Since the library was slow, and the librarian didn’t seem too concerned and because I look so trustworthy, he let me sit in the back section of the special collections section. Apparently you are supposed to sit in the front so they can “keep an eye on you” and make sure you are “reading only their material” and not “studying.”
So I’m in the back, reading this first-hand account of local history. This is printed on onion paper. These are the pre-World War I recollections of Mary B. Reese Frazer, who authored the 14-page manuscript under her married name, Mrs. W. B. Frazer. At that link you’ll learn that there are a small handful of these personal histories and anecdotes that contribute to the local primary source material. I read two of them. Like I said, it was raining; libraries are distracting.
Anyway, Frazer writes of some of the old preachers in town:
(L)et me give you the name of one of our Ministers: Edwin Champion Baptist Bowler Wheeler Nicholas Dema Stephen Resden Carter Jackson Moore Thomas. He usually signed himself as E.C.D.B. Thomas. We also had another Minister, Parson Jones, who thought it very sinful not to be on speaking terms, which was the case with several of the members of his Church. He made this remark one day in the pulpit: “Won’t speak to each other! Why I’d speak to the Devil; I’d say ‘Good Morning, Devil,’ and walk on.”
I’ve seen that reference to Thomas in two other places, that ridiculous and sublime 13-word name is legitimate. I’ve yet to figure out why he transposed the D and the B in his initials.
The town’s founder? He was dry. Reaching back to the middle of the 19th century, Frazer remembers:
Judge Harper said there should never be a saloon in two miles of the incorporate limits, — but please don’t understand me to say there was no whiskey sold in this town; yes, I am sorry to confess, that whenever it was desired it flowed in plenty.
Earlier this summer the city council voted to make downtown an entertainment district for special events. Open containers. Judge Harper would be less than pleased.
There were 23 doctors practicing in town between 1836 and 1860. Frazer listed eight examples. One of them is a familiar name to local history buffs, John Hodges Drake III. He went off to war as a drummer boy. He came back and practiced medicine here for more than 50 years. No wonder they named a field after him. (The old medical clinic was named after him, too. I spent a term during undergrad photographing renovations there. Not too long after they finished that project they tore the building down.)
Of course there is anecdote about the founding of the university. Frazer talks about how the town was decided by the city leaders and others to be a good spot for a Methodist college. A board was formed. Land was leveled. And then an organizer came through town and decided this spot was too far away from downtown.
If her description is accurate — “The land opposite Mrs. Lipscomb’s residence was the first site selected … This place is now owned by Misses Kate and Mildred McElhaney.” — and if they’d followed through with those original plans, the town’s layout would look a bit different. Google the McElhaney house, built in 1844, and you’ll learn it stood on at least two lots, six-tenths of a mile apart. The university was established between the two locales. But that first lot, at the corner of Gay and Miller, was too far from downtown. Half-a-mile was a long distance in 1856. (The McElhaney house, meanwhile, looked like this. Here are more pictures.)
Frazer describes the big day:
In the summer of 1857 the great day came for the laying of the cornerstone. Everybody, negroes and children were there. Tables for the great dinner were built from the corner of the North entrance gate to the corner of the South entrance gate; small tables under the trees on the left, — in fact tables were galore. (Ed. – By current gate standards, this is a full block long spread of food-covered tables.)
[…]
I was there with my mother and father; of course I was quite a small child, still I remember that I never saw so much to eat in all my life. Visitors from all parts of the country were there; also many celebrities. Bishop Pierce was one of the speakers, and W. L. Yancey of political fame. Reverend E. J. Hamill was the financial agent for the college.
Bishop George F. Pierce was a key member in the Presbyterian church split of 1844. He was a Georgian slave owner and found himself arguing on both sides of the slavery argument and secession. His father, Rev. Lovick Pierce, was considered the most famous itinerant preacher in the South for decades after his death.
Rev. Hamill stuck around with the college for a decade or so. You can turn up references to some of his theological essays and a mention of a run for office. He was a conservative and against secession. The star of the show, though, must have been William Lowndes Yancey. Journalist. Politician. Orator. Fire-Eater. Radical secessionist. He could keep audiences in his grip for hours. He famously won a day-long debate in Auburn after missing almost every other speech. He was ill at his home 50-plus miles away in Montgomery. Someone sent a special train to pick him up. Yancey spoke extemporaneously for more than an hour, winning the day for his side of the debate. He did it that day in 1859 having been ill pretty much all year and the preceding one as well. He was on the wrong side of history and his views repugnant, but the man could hold a crowd.
Frazer, on the laying of the cornerstone: “That was the greatest day that Auburn ever experienced up to that time. I do not recall any day like it since.”
Tailgating hadn’t yet evolved to high art in Frazer’s later days. I wonder what she would think of Saturdays in the fall.
I overdid it today. I am careful not to do things my body won’t let me, mind you, but the repetition did me in today. There were things to do, you see, things that needed to get done. Household work, if you must know, Copper. The Yankee was doing a great deal of it. I’m limited with my bum shoulder, that’s my alibi, Slim. I don’t like not being able to do things, though. And I like less watching someone else do it, even with an injury that limits me. Do you know what I mean?
At one point she told me “You’re done.” But I wasn’t, you see. I had, in my mind, already drawn the stopping point, and it was about 20 minutes beyond that moment. And so I did it, the extra 20 minutes. Now I’ve come to ache because of it. Maybe I was done when she said so. Perhaps earlier. It doesn’t really matter.
I hurt.
So, tomorrow, I’m taking it easy.
But we got almost everything done. None of it more exciting than household work. But at least the things were ticked off of the day’s list. I have the satisfaction of that and a large ice pack on my collarbone.
I’ll leave you with this:
That’s from the 1903 Glomerata (the Auburn University yearbook). It arrived today. I picked it up on e-bay for $20. A steal, for a sixth volume, despite a few missing pages. This book is 109 years old. Everyone in it is dust. Some of the buildings are still with us. There are tantalizing things in this book, which we’ll dive into one day. But, just read that ad again.
Don’t drink. But if you will …
The temperance movement was in full swing, or headed there, in the South in those days. In 1908 four counties were wet. People in the movement could easily count how many counties, otherwise, had between one and four bars. And so this guy wanted you to avoid the sauce. But, should you need to know, he had the sauciest stuff around.
I love that phone number, too: 59. We note the old ads all the time and think: Surely there were more than 59 phones in town by then. But in 1900 Opelika only had 4,245 people. The first phones apparently came to the state 20 years before, but wouldn’t this technology still be elusive in poor, rural areas? In 1919 there were all of 650 cars in the entire county. Sure the phone number 59, in 1903 was part of an exchange much larger than one small town.
But wouldn’t you like to have that number today? Every now and then someone that knows too much about cell phone prefix systems is amazed at my old number, but it has seven digits. Fifty-nine? I’d just make that the business card.
G.P Butler would be named a judge a few years later — before Prohibition. No word on if his store stayed open. Around that time Lee County built a brand new and modern jail, in 1914, according to a statewide prison report. Butler served two meals a day. You woke up and ate, had dinner in the mid-day. Then you waited from 1 p.m. until the next morning for more food.
Back then prison food was probably even worse than today.
He also fed the residents of the local pauper home, at least once, for Christmas in 1922. If you will eat …
That story was published last year in one of the local weeklies. It is a collection of details about the Poor Farm. Times were tough. “The people who lived there worked on the farm if they were able to work. They planted, tilled and harvested the crops, then cooks prepared the meals.” I wonder how that’d go over today. (Not very.)
Anyway. Butler served as probate until he died in 1933, but that genealogy page doesn’t give the date. Did he outlive Prohibition? It was killed the same year.
And what was his phone number when he died thirty years later? Sixty?
This isn’t a national favoritism, but a concession to bias against theatricality: Aside from admiring a bit of stagecraft Olympic opening ceremonies are pointless. Their just flippant pieces of performance art, and let’s leave it at that, OK? The guys tongiht in the ultra neon Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band uniforms, interspersed with the men in top hats doing the British running man are lost on me.
That’s alright, right? There’s no merit in the contradiction of a world now smitten with ecological motifs pumping in carcinogens to remind audience members of the Industrial Revolution. Yes the fumes they pumped in for authenticity are a drop in the bucket (Or, as organizers said: Here’s what you missed when you sat out Beijing!) but it sends the wrong vaporous message. Kind of like monsters in hospitals and in your beds. Good night kids!
Or maybe I’m concentrating on the wrong things. J.K. Rowling was there and she, as we learned from the NBC narration — how on earth would we know what to make of all of this without Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira vapidly explaining things — “made it cool” for kids to read again. If I may be an Olympic buzzkill: parent’s fault.
Rowan Atkinson was Rowan Atkinson and that makes you think of all the other prominent Brits you hoped you’d see: McKellen! Bowie! Jagger! Waters! Idol! Idle! You got Daniel Craig as James Bond and you could be cynical about that, but it was a cute bit with the queen.
And while I was disappointed that the kids in the musical portion of the show hadn’t bothered to learn the words to Bohemian Rhapsody I found it more off-putting that Munich and World War II were ignored altogether. Those were decisions made by the British Olympic Association. NBC’s decisions were equally unfortunate. Saudi Arabia has female Olympians for the first time ever, not that you knew that from watching Lauer and Bob Costas pun away the evening. Here’s their entrance. Worse, perhaps, was the empty mention Costas gave the organizers for not including a tribute to Munich. He’d promised to call out the IOC, but his little spiel was so tepid it felt like someone got to him. And NBC left out a tribute to victims of the 7/7 terrorist attacks. That editorial decision was made so you could see Ryan Seacrest could make sure cameras saw him next to interview Michael Phelps.
But that’s just the opening ceremonies for you. The local guy gets up to express his pride. Everyone has had a colorful party and everything came off just as they intended for the evening. And then he introduces the head of the IOC and you think whatever you think of vague international organizations without oversight.
I just show up for the torch. We discussed this tonight. Our home’s foremost expert and researcher of all things Olympics and I rated the torch experiences of our lifetimes identically.
The world was different. Los Angeles was different. The torch was different in 1984. Gina Hemphill ran through the dark tunnel and into the evening light, carrying a torch and the opening of the Los Angeles Games and the genes of her grandfather — Alabama-native, Olympic great and Hitler beater-extraordinaire Jesse Owens (perhaps you’ve heard of him?) — into the coliseum. She ran a lap around the track and even the athletes were exuberant. They rushed to greet and encourage her, and they almost blocked her path, twice. “Everybody can say they had an Olympic moment,” she said years later, and it felt like we had. Maybe it was because the Soviets stayed home.
She handed the torch off to Rafer Johnson, a decathlete from the 1960 games, who looked in 1984 like he was still ready to go for the gold. (Today he might merely compete, but to be fair, the man is 77. Looks great, too.) He sprinted up that long, long line of steps and stood above the world, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. He held the torch over his head and the flame caught, going through the Olympic rings and up to the cauldron above. It would have been even more dramatic at night. Olympic producers would get wise to television’s needs soon enough.
There was a different kind of oversight in Seoul, where they loosed hundreds of white doves into the stadium and jets drew Olympic rings in they sky with their contrails. Sohn Kee-chung brought the flame into the stadium, he was running knees high, waving to his countrymen. He was the first Korean to medal at the Olympics, at the Berlin Games in 1936, in the marathon. He passed the torch to another person, who ran it under the cauldron, who shared the flame with three others. Those three took the world’s slowest elevator ride to the to top, while the rest of the world said “OK, now what?” in 126 languages. When they got there, several of the doves were … well … if you watch this you’ll realize no one thought this through:
We’ll come to a day when we think of everything from the 1980s as washed out and blocky, a Baby Boomer response to cubism, I’m convinced of it. Archived video online will be the reason. There’s a period where everything from the advent of color television to about, oh, 2003, just doesn’t YouTube very well.
Someone else was also concerned about that when it comes to the 1992 Barcelona Games, and so they uploaded a Spanish-language high-definition version of the torch ceremony. Herminio Menendez, a sprint canoer who won silver in 1976 and a bronze and silver in 1980 ran in the flame, which looked brilliant in the night sky. He ran a lap around the stadium under a lone spotlight before passing the flame to Juan Antonio San Epifanio, who won a silver on the men’s basketball team in 1984. Now Epi is one of the greatest basketball players Europe has ever known, so it was fitting that he ran around and then through the Olympians to find Antonio Rebollo, the now famous, anonymous, archer who competed in the Paralympic Games for Spain:
In reality, he had not actually landed the arrow in the middle of the cauldron – he had fired it way outside the stadium as instructed.
Organisers dared not risk his aim failling short and landing into the grandstand and instead told him to fire it directly over the target area… some pyrotechnics-helpful camera angles would take care of the visual effect.
By then though, the opening ceremony had become an Olympic event in itself – longer than the marathon and much less gripping on a spectator level.
Ruins it for you, doesn’t it?
The Americans brought out four-time discus gold medalist Al Oerter to bring the flame into the Atlanta Games in 1996. Oerter handed off the flame to bronze medal boxer Evander Holyfield, who invited Voula Patoulidou, the first Greek female medalist, to join him. Together they ran to four-time gold medal swimmer Janet Evans who took the torch up the long, long ramp. There the music stopped, and over the stadium you heard people calling his name: Muhammad Ali.
Pretty dramatic stuff. Especially when you wondered if that remote line rig was going to work.
For some reason my memories of the Sydney Games are a bit dimmer, but it is visually arresting still. Herb Elliot, an Australian gold winner in track and field brought the flame in. These Olympics celebrated the 100th anniversary of female competition, and so a host of Australia’s female medalists carried the flame around: Betty Cuthbert, Raelene Boyle, Dawn Fraser, Shirley Strickland, Shane Gould and Debbie Flintoff-King. Finally it came to a young woman, Australian aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman, who wore a white body suit and ran up flights of white stairs, through an orchestra and then walked on water. She lit the water at her feet, which burned in a circle and then rose above her. Now we’re just letting the engineers show off:
And that makes it less interesting, really. By the time that Greece rolled around in 2004 there was a wire walker flying through the air, and then two more, floating above the Olympians. They pantomimed a long running stride, which allowed NBC to take a commercial break. (You just come to loathe NBC after a while, don’t you? I’m sure every other network in every other country took that break, too. The Games had long since become a television program.)
Nikos Galis, a prominent Greek basketball player started the final stage of the torch run. We learned that Pele, Nelson Mandela and even Tom Cruise (OMG!) has carried this torch. Do you think these guys use a good anti-bacterial soap after the honor of carrying the torch? So many people handle the torch — and even Tom Cruise! — that’s just an invitation for a cold.
The Greek torch was a handsome one though. Not overdone, just right.
Galis dished to Mimis Domazos, a famous Greek soccer player from the 1960s. Then came hurdles champion Voula Patoulidou. (Surely making her one of the few people who’ve carried the flame in more than one Olympics.) She passed the torch to weightlifting medalist Kakhi Kakhiashvili and he delivered it to Ioannis Melissanidis, the 1996 floor exercise champion in men’s gymnastics. Finally the flame found Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, a gold medalist in sailing.
He … well, let’s let the dispassionate voice of Wikipedia tell the tale:
The torch was finally passed to the 1996 Olympic sailing champion Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, who lit a giant cigar-shaped tapered column resembling a torch — not, as usual, a cauldron — to burn during the duration of the 2004 Summer Olympics. As Kaklamanakis ascended the steps to light the cauldron, the cauldron seemed to bow down to him, symbolizing that despite advance of technology, technology is still a creation and tool of humanity and that it was meant to serve humanity’s needs. The ceremony concluded with a breathtaking fireworks display.
Seemed … symbolizing … breathtaking … That’s good editorial tone. Also the writer of that passage seems to think that tech still works for us. How quaint.
More wires at the Beijing Games. And there was a children’s chorus singing things that may or may not have been words. Seven of China’s most respected Olympic medalists ran the torch around the outside of the stadium and ultimately the final honor fell to Li Ning, the country’s biggest winner at their first Olympics, in 1984.
And at the end, it just looked like that occasional firework with the impossibly fast fuse: a terrifyingly good idea that could have gone either way:
Li Ning probably had the worst view for the footage of those previous torch relays, which was perhaps the nicest touch of the show. Maybe it was that feedback or perhaps it was some other reason, but the air walking trend has at least been halted.
Let the people run, we say.
We also agreed that the Barcelona lighting was the best. But now that I recall there were shenanigans I might have to return to the 1984 and 1996 Games for my favorite piece of Olympic theater. That’s probably just an American bias, though.
Update: This appeared on The War Eagle Reader, with extra pictures and a different title.
Aubie bragged about the university’s medals after the 2008 Olympics. Why not? People who bleed orange and blue won more bling than many of the countries nations that showed up in Beijing, tying Spain and Canada at 14th among nations with 18 trips to the podium.
And though Aubie’s petition to have the fight song played during the awards ceremonies was turned down by the IOC, he’ll likely be counting medals again this year. Auburn sent 27 athletes and four coaches to the United Kingdom. That’s a larger contingent than 126 countries.
Historically the Tigers have brought home plenty of hardware, 46 medals going into the London Games. A family among nations, Auburn is the 44th most prolific winner of all time on the international stage.
But who started it?
Famed Tiger Euil “Snitz” Snider was the first Auburn Olympian. Legendary track coach Wilbur Hutsell took him to Amsterdam in 1928. Snider’s Alabama Sports Hall of Fame bio says he qualified by setting a national record of 48 seconds flat in the 400 meter race. He was beaten out in the second round of heat races, but if Snider had pulled that run of his life again … he would have medaled …
Snider would go on to become a high school coaching icon in Bessemer, Ala. for three decades, where a football stadium is today named in his honor. He died in 1975 and was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame in 1977 and the AHSAA Hall of Fame in 1991.
Four years later Auburn returned to the Olympics on the legs of Pearcy Beard, a Kentucky native who became a world-class hurdler during his tenure at Auburn.
Beard carried high hopes into the 1932 games in Los Angeles, where he ran preliminary times of 14.7 and 14.6 in the 110 meter hurdles. He raced to the silver, finishing one-tenth of a second behind George Saling, another American, who happened to set the world record that day.
We like to think he was telling Saling, an Iowa boy, got by him only because Beard was telling him about the loveliest village.
Beard ultimately set records in hurdles races for almost a decade before becoming a coach for 27 years at the University of Florida, where the track and field facility still bears his name.
Auburn’s first medalist died in 1990, at the age of 82, living long enough to be inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame and the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame. He was posthumously inducted into the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1995 and added to the Auburn Tiger Trail in 1996.
And now the medal count begins once again again. Print out this list, put War Eagle on your MP3 player, and get ready for Olympic vict’ry.
AUBURN’S 2012 OLYMPIANS
George Bovell
Trinidad & Tobago
Swimming
50m Free / 100m Free
Adam Brown
Great Britain
Swimming
50m Free / 400m Free Relay
Marc Burns
Trinidad & Tobago
Track & Field
400m Relay
Mark Carroll
Ireland
Track & Field
Assistant Coach
Marcelo Chierighini
Brazil
Swimming
400m Free Relay
Cesar Cielo
Brazil
Swimming
50m Free/ 100m Free/ 400FreeRelay
Kirsty Coventry
Zimbabwe
Swimming
100m Back/200m Back/200m IM
James Disney-May
Great Britain
Swimming
400m Free Relay
Glenn Eller
United States
Shooting
Double Trap
Sheniqua Ferguson
Bahamas
Track & Field
100m / 200m / 400m Relay
Megan Fonteno
American Samoa
Swimming
100m Free
Brett Hawke
Bahamas
Swimming
Head Coach
Stephanie Horner
Canada
Swimming
400m IM
Micah Lawrence
United States
Swimming
200m Breast
Gideon Louw
South Africa
Swimming
50m Free/100m Free/400FreeRelay
Josanne Lucas
Trinidad & Tobago
Track & Field
100m Hurdles
David Marsh
United States
Swimming
Assistant Coach
Tyler McGill
United States
Swimming
100m Fly / 400m Free Relay
Avard Moncur
Bahamas
Track & Field
400m Relay
V’alonee Robinson
Bahamas
Track & Field
400m Relay
Henry Rolle
Bahamas
Track & Field
Assistant Coach
Stephen Saenz
Mexico
Track & Field
Shot Put
Leevan Sands
Bahamas
Track & Field
Triple Jump
Shamar Sands
Bahamas
Track & Field
110m Hurdles
Kai Selvon
Trinidad & Tobago
Track & Field
100m / 200m / 400m Relay
Eric Shanteau
United States
Swimming
100m Breast / 400m Medley Relay
Maurice Smith
Jamaica
Track & Field
Decathlon
Kerron Stewart
Jamaica
Track & Field
100m / 400m Relay
Matt Targett
Australia
Swimming
400m Free Relay
Donald Thomas
Bahamas
Track & Field
High Jump
Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace
Bahamas
Swimming
50m Free / 100m Free
2012 Paralympic Games Dave Denniston
United States
Swimming
Assistant coach
