Guns and guards in Colombia
‘I WAS THERE’: AL MORROW, CALI, 1971
They had armed guards at the door of their residence which, for rowers, was a resort on a lake far from the rest of the Games.
But the guards in Cali, Colombia in 1971 were not there to prevent attacks from terrorists or members of the notorious drug cartels. Those threats were still in the future.
“They weren’t concerned about terrorism, but about banditos coming from higher in the mountains, people who would just come down to steal,” says Hamilton native Al Morrow, who was a 21-year political science student at Western, and rowing for Canada at the Pan Am Games. “Basically crime; probably worse than anywhere else in the world at the time.”
It was the start of more than four decades in international games for Morrow as an oarsman — he was fourth in Cali in the men’s fours without coxswain, won a bronze in the ’75 Pan Ams and rowed for Canada at the ’76 Olympics — and as a coach.
He is in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame for helping turn Canada’s rowing program around i n the 1980s and ’90s, and has coached Canadian rowers to eight Olympic medals, including the national record of four won by his women’s team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He will be at the Pan Ams this year on the Henley Course in St. Catharines, handling the lightweight men.
“It was a kinder, gentler time,” he recalls. “Things like security in Cali were really loose. You’d go through a checkpoint, yes, and they probably had a little photo on your ID, but it certainly wasn’t electronic-driven and someone would just wave you through without checking your bag or anything. So it would have been really easy to sneak into the village if anyone wanted to, but I don’t think anyone cared.
“Nowadays access to Olympic and Pan Am villages and venues is like airport security, with instrumentation. You get frisked, basically.”
The rowing venue was a four-hour ride on an old school bus into the mountains and the athletes stayed there until their competition was over, then returned to the main athletes village in Cali where they spent the final week of the Games “basically as tourists.”
Today, athletes at the Pan Ams and Olympics are expected to follow the five-and-two rule: you arrive five days before official competition and depart two days after. And the villages today, with the maximum of two to a room, are very different than 44 years ago.
“We had communal showers, that doesn’t happen now,” Morrow laughs. “And we were eight in a room, in bunk beds, almost like an army barracks. But it was just a reference point, we didn’t know any better. It’s what you did when you went to Games.
“What surprised us coming from Canada was that we found out that the police, and the military, were one and the same. There’d be heavily-armed guys on every corner.
“It all seemed very dated. It was like walking back in time: The shacks you’d see, the clothing, the lifestyle of the people.
“As a poli-sci student, that gave me another perspective. I do recall coming back to school for third and fourth year, and becoming very interested in Latin American politics. I took three or four courses. I didn’t really think of it at the time, but I’m sure Cali was the seed. And in the politics of Latin America at the time, there was a lot going on: military governments, coups.”
The Pan Am Games were probably a more important congregation then, Morrow acknowledges. And they certainly felt big to a 21-year-old university student.
“The festival side of it is very unique,” he said. “I remember being on the bus with the Jamaican national team; they were beating spoons together, one guy had some little drums, and they were singing. I remember thinking, ‘This wouldn’t happen at the Olympics.’
“You’d walk through the village and the Brazilians would be hanging out in the court yard, dancing. Cali was fun, because it was so unique.”