John A. Lucas

1960 Rome Olympics

  • NUMBER OF PENN STATERS COMPETING: 4
  • NUMBER OF PENN STATERS IN ALL ROLES: 7
  • NUMBER OF OLYMPIC ALTERNATES: 2

 

The Rome Olympics in 1960 marked a turning point both for Penn State and for the Olympics more broadly. Swedish gymnast Jean Cronstedt became the first non-U.S. competitor from Penn State at the Olympics since Katsutoshi Naito represented Japan 36 years earlier in Paris. Cronstedt’s teammate on the Nittany Lions gymnastics team, Garland D. O’Quinn, competed for the U.S. in the all-around competition. Dick Dyer competed in the saber competition for the U.S. fencing team; his Penn State coach, Maxwell Garret, was right alongside Dyer in Rome as the coach of the U.S. squad. Ron Coder played in goal for the U.S. soccer team, while Joseph R. Scalzo, Jr. worked as a wrestling official at the Olympic competitions.

 

Profile: John A. Lucas

John A. Lucas
John A. Lucas (Photographic vertical files, Portraits, 1855-present)

1960 also marked the year when John A. Lucas commenced a five-decade involvement with the Olympics that preceded his half-century of service to Penn State as both a coach and a professor. Born in 1927 in Boston, Lucas served two years as a corporal in the U.S. Army from 1945 through 1947 before beginning his undergraduate studies at Boston University, where he ran cross country and graduated in 1951 with a B.A. in Physical Education. A specialist at long distances, Lucas finished seventh in the 10,000-meter race at the U.S. Olympic qualifiers for the 1952 Olympics and narrowly missed the chance to compete for the United States in Helsinki.

Lucas continued his education at the University of Southern California, where he served as an assistant track and field coach while completing an M.A. in Physical Education and served in the same capacity at the University of Maryland while studying for a Ph.D. While at Maryland, Lucas traveled to the 1960 Rome Olympics and provided specialist track and field coaching for a Turkish Olympic team that entered several field events for the first time. With Lucas assisting the team, middle-distance runner Ekrem Koçak qualified out of the preliminary heats and reached the quarterfinals in the 800-meter run.

After graduating from Maryland in 1962, Lucas came to State College to serve as Penn State’s track and field coach and cross country coach and take a position as a professor in the Department of Kinesiology. Stepping down from coaching following the 1968 track and field season, Lucas remained a professor at Penn State until his retirement in 2008. As one of the foremost scholars of the Olympics, Lucas was named the official historian of the International Olympic Committee at the Mexico City Olympics. IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch designated Lucas as the Honored IOC Lecturer in 1991, a capacity in which Lucas served through the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. Traveling to every Olympics from 1960 through 2008, Lucas paid tribute with a 10,000-meter run at every Olympic track except Moscow and Beijing. In the first case Lucas was forced to run outside the stadium due to the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics. At Beijing, injury prevented Lucas from executing his tradition at his final Olympics.

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In his various roles with Penn State and the IOC, Lucas amassed 162 cubit feet of Olympic resources that are now housed at the university. Read more about the John A. Lucas papers at the Special Collections Library.

 

SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL READING