Lou Banach on Olympic podium holding flowers and raising his hand triumphantly

1984 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics

  • NUMBER OF PENN STATERS COMPETING: 12
  • NUMBER OF PENN STATERS IN ALL ROLES: 15
  • NUMBER OF OLYMPIC ALTERNATES: 0

 

A dozen athletes affiliated at one time or another with Penn State competed at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Most suited up for the United States, though Penn State’s international contingent was also well represented.

Francis DoDoo made the first of his four Olympics for Ghana in the triple jump. Knut Hjeltnes threw the discus in the second of his three Olympics appearances for Norway. Rommel Raffin was also competing in his second Olympics as a member of the Canadian men’s basketball team. Penn State gymnast Terry Bartlett contested the vault and the floor exercise for Great Britain.

 

Profile: Lou Banach

Lou Banach on podium at 1984 Olympics
Lou Banach on podium at 1984 Olympics (Don Sutherland/Wikimedia Commons)

The biggest story of the Los Angeles games, as it pertains to Penn State’s involvement in the 1984 Olympics, was a wrestler who arrived in Happy Valley a few years after achieving Olympic glory.

Ludwig “Lou” Banach’s path to the Olympics began during a tough childhood in Port Jervis, New Jersey. Growing up alongside his twin brother Ed in an adopted family, Lou only made the varsity high school wrestling team as a junior. Legendary wrestler Dan Gable recruited the twins to compete at the University of Iowa. In Iowa City, Lou Banach flourished under Gable’s guidance and won NCAA championships in 1981 and 1983 and completing his college career with a 92-14-3 record.

After graduating from Iowa, Banach went into the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant working at West Point. Lou was then selected alongside his brother Ed to compete for the United States in Los Angeles in freestyle wrestling in 1984, and the brothers lived out an Olympic fairy tale in their respective runs.

Ed, competing at the 90-kilogram weight class, swept through his five rounds of Olympic competition to win gold. Lou contended that he didn’t feel any pressure to replicate his twin brother’s success, telling Des Moines Register reporter Marc Hansen, “Eddie takes care of his problems and I take care of mine. I don’t worry about what he does because I felt he’d win the gold. I didn’t feel I had to duplicate what he’d done.”

Lou nevertheless duplicated his brother’s feat, sweeping through the 100-kilogram weight class without a defeat. Two years after his Olympic journey in Los Angeles, Banach came to Penn State and worked as a graduate assistant on the wrestling team while completing his MBA. Inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in  currently works as a commercial banking executive for Associated Bank in Wisconsin.

 

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