Medals for true mettle
QUESTION Have any disabled athletes participated in able-bodied professional sports? Canadian weightlifter doug Hepburn (1926-2000) won gold at the 1953 World Weightlifting Championships in Stockholm and the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.
His career is all the more remarkable because he had a club foot that had only been partially corrected by operations in childhood. He was also cross-eyed.
after he retired from weightlifting, he toured with a strongman act, setting many world records: he was the first man to bench press 500lb.
Standing at only 5ft 8½ in, he weighed close to 22 st. He was reported to have shouted after one of his victories: ‘i won, and me a bloody cripple.’
The U.S. athlete Harold Connolly (19312010) won the gold medal in the hammer at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and competed in the three subsequent Olympics. He broke the world record six times with a best of 71.26 m.
Yet an accident at birth and 13 fractures in childhood left him with a withered left arm that was 4½ in shorter than the right. His left hand was only two-thirds the size of his right.
Digby Stevenson, Pevensey, E. Sussex. SEVEral disabled athletes have competed in the Olympic games. The most famous — now most notorious — of recent times is Oscar Pistorius, who is serving a six-year sentence for the murder of his girlfriend reeva Steenkamp.
On august 4, 2012, Pistorius became the first double amputee to compete at an Olympic Games. He was second in the first heat of the 400m in 45.44 seconds, but did not qualify for the final.
He also ran the final leg of the 4 x 400m relay final, where South africa came eighth in a field of nine.
at the 1904 St louis Games, U.S. gymnast George Eyser, who had a wooden leg after being run over by a train, won three gold medals, two silvers and a bronze. Oliver Halassy was in three Hungarian Olympic water polo teams, in 1928 (antwerp), 1932 (los angeles) and 1936 (Berlin), winning three medals (two golds and a silver) even though his left foot had been amputated.
lis Hartel, who was one of the first women allowed to compete against men in the equestrian dressage, was paralysed below the knees after suffering polio when she was 23. She was chosen to represent denmark in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and won silver.
Kim Bowles, Coventry.
QUESTION Is ‘craic’ a fake Irish word?
THE word ‘craic’ appears to have entered the irish language during the Seventies, probably from the English word ‘crack’, meaning to have a laugh and a gossip.
The origin of crack goes back to Middle English, with the word crak, meaning loud conversation or bragging talk. This sense was carried forward into the question ‘what’s the crack?’ i.e. ‘what’s the news?’ or ‘what’s the gossip?’, which was widely used in northern England and Scotland.
in Scotland, it came to be associated with having a good time and from there probably migrated to northern ireland, where many Scots from the Clyde shipyards went on holiday during the Fifties and Sixties.
at the start of The dubliners song Mcalpine’s Fusiliers, singer ronnie drew introduces it with the spoken lines: ‘The crack was good in Cricklewood, / And they wouldn’t leave the town. / There were glasses flying and biddies crying, / Sure Paddy was going to town. / Oh Mother dear, I’m over here, / I
never will come back, / What keeps me here is a rake of beer,
/ The ladies and the crack.’ The song was written by irish writer dominic Behan, who is thought to have composed it with The dubliners in mind. He was very involved in the development of The dubliners’ performances during their early years.
The song was first performed in the Sixties, which may have widened the popularity of the word ‘ crack’ in ireland and prompted its irish spelling.
Borrowing of words between languages is common. The French acquired le weekend, and Welsh is littered with English words given a Celtic flavour, for example, ffrind (friend), nerfus (nervous) and nyrs (nurse). Many words accepted as being English were introduced into Britain by soldiers and civil servants returning from abroad. ‘Bungalow’ and ‘pyjamas’ are Hindi words, and there are hundreds more brought back during the days of Empire.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION Tom Cruise broke his ankle, but have any actors been seriously injured or killed on a film set?
FUrTHEr to earlier answers, The Bell From Hell (1973) was a rather odd Spanish/French horror film, where a young man took revenge on his aunt and cousins who had him declared insane in order to steal his inheritance.
On the final day of shooting, the film’s director Claudio Guerrin Hill fell to his death from the specially designed bell tower after which he’d named his film.
Jon Colley, Royal Leamington Spa, Warks. in THE 1941 film They died With Their Boots On, three extras died during the cavalry charge.
One of them, Jack Budlong, was riding alongside Errol Flynn when his horse tripped. as he fell forward, he threw his sword ahead of him. Unfortunately, it landed handle down and stuck in place. Budlong was impaled.
Brad Pitt had to take a three-month break from filming Troy (2004) after rupturing his achilles tendon. The irony was that he was playing achilles.
James Weston, Oswestry, Shropshire.
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