Unvarnished history emerging in news clips of old WAVA meets
In September 1983, Puerto Rico hosted the fifth WAVA world meet. Official WMA histories mention the brutal heat, and how some athletes were hospitalized. But it wasn’t until I read news accounts of PR worlds in the San Juan Star that I learned of more chilling dangers — a rape attempt and several muggings. This month I added a huge PDF of clippings about the 1983 meet to mastershistory.org. The clips also note complaints about “late starting times, the lack of a proper numbering system and faulty means of keeping times and lap counts.” Also long waits for buses between tracks. Some things never change. The Puerto Rico trove is from the Al Sheahen Collection. (I also uploaded clips about the better-run 1987 Melbourne meet.) But we don’t have news reports of other world meets. If you happen to have such materials, lemme know. We could use ’em! Also needed are masters club records. Or meet records for masters events you organize. We have a good set of such records, but could use more links.
San Juan Star reports attacks at 1983 WAVA world meet. Click to read.
4 Responses
Masters Meet Records and / or Masters Club Records. … looking for more links.
Please post here or please email me at
jad-calif@cox.net
What we have so far is on the link above.
Cool idea. The website link above is to our club records page.
http://greaterphiladelphiatc.com/ClubRecords.html
More
http://larryhmillerutahsummergames.org/track-and-field/
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