It happened every Saturday.
Louie went to the track, limbered up, lay in the infield visualizing his coming race, then walked to the line, awaited the pop of the gun, and sprang away.
Pete dashed around the infield, yelling instructions. When Pete gave the signal, Louie stretched out his legs and opponents scattered behind him. Louie glided over the line, Pete tackled him, and the kids in the bleachers cheered and stomped. Louie won so many wristwatches, the traditional prize of track, that he handed them out all over town.
BETTMANN/CORBIS
Louie’s supreme
high school moment came in the 1934 Southern California Track and Field Championship. Running in the best field of high school milers ever assembled, he routed them all and smoked the mile in 4:21.3, shattering the national high school record. His main pursuer so exhausted himself that he had to be carried from the track. A reporter predicted that Louie’s record would stand for twenty years. It stood for nineteen.
Once his hometown’s archvillain, Louie was now a superstar, and Torrance forgave him everything. The
Los Angeles Times was striped with stories on the “Torrance Tornado.” Rumor had it that the
Torrance Herald insured Louie’s legs for $50,000. Torrancers carpooled to his races and
crammed the grandstands. Embarrassed,
Louie asked his parents not to come. Louise snuck to the track fence anyway but got so nervous she covered her eyes.
Not long ago, Louie’s aspirations had been satisfied by robbing kitchens. Now, he latched on to a wildly ambitious goal:
qualifying for the 1936
Olympics in Berlin. The Games had no mile race, so milers ran 1,500 meters, a little short of a mile. It was a seasoned man’s game; most milers peaked in their mid to late twenties. The 1,500-meter favorite was
Glenn Cunningham, who set the mile world record, 4:06.7, just after Louie set the high school record. At the ’36 Games, Cunningham would be almost twenty-seven, and wouldn’t peak until he was twenty-eight. In 1936, Louie would be only nineteen.
But
Louie was improving so quickly, he’d lopped a staggering forty-two seconds off his mile time in two years. Track experts thought he might be the exception to the rule, and after he went undefeated in his senior season, their confidence was strengthened. Louie and
Pete believed he could make the team. Louie wanted to run in Berlin more than he’d ever wanted anything.
In December 1935, Louie graduated from high
school, and days later rang in 1936 with his thoughts full of Berlin, seven months away. He was buried in
college scholarship offers. Pete, now at the
University of Southern California, urged Louie to choose USC but delay entry until fall so he could train. Louie moved into Pete’s frat house and, with Pete coaching him, trained obsessively for Berlin.
By spring, he realized he wasn’t going to make it. Though he was getting faster every day, he couldn’t force his body to improve quickly enough to catch his 1,500 meter rivals by summer. He was simply too young. He was heartbroken.
In May,
Louie was leafing through a newspaper when he saw a story on the Compton Open, a prestigious track meet to be held on May 22. The headliner in the 5,000 meters was twenty-six-year-old
Norman Bright, America’s second-fastest 5,000-meter man, behind
Don Lash, a twenty-three-year-old record-smashing machine. America would send three 5,000-meter men to Berlin, and Lash and Bright were considered locks.
Pete urged Louie to enter Bright’s race. “If you stay with Norman Bright,” he said, “you make the Olympic team.”
The idea was a stretch. The mile was four laps; the 5,000 was more than twelve—three miles and 188 yards. Louie had only twice raced beyond a mile, and the 5,000, like the mile, was dominated by much older men. He had only two weeks to train, and with the Olympic trials in July, two months to become America’s youngest elite 5,000 man. But he had nothing to lose. He trained so hard his foot bled.
The race was a barnburner. Louie and Bright flew off, leaving the field far behind. Lap after lap, they dueled, trading the lead and sending roars through the crowd. They turned into the final homestretch together, and with the crowd screaming, finished almost dead even. In the fastest 5,000 run in America in 1936, Bright had won by a glimmer.
In June, after Louie performed brilliantly in two more 5,000s, an invitation to the Olympic trials arrived. His Berlin dream was on again.
On July 3, 1936, residents of Torrance gathered to see Louie off to the Olympic trials in New York. They gave him a wallet and traveling money, a train ticket, and a suitcase emblazoned with the words TORRANCE TORNADO. Fearing the suitcase made him look brash, Louie discreetly stuck adhesive tape over the nickname, then set off. He spent the journey introducing himself to every pretty girl on the train.
When the train doors opened in New York, Louie felt he was walking into an inferno. It was the hottest summer on record in America, and New York was especially hard hit. In 1936, air-conditioning was a rarity, found only in a few theaters and department stores, so escape was nearly impossible. That week, the heat would kill three thousand Americans, forty of them in New York, where it hit 106 degrees.
In spite of the heat, Louie had to train. Sweating profusely day and night, training in the sun, unable to sleep in the heat, virtually every athlete lost a huge amount of weight. By one estimate, no athlete lost less than ten pounds. One virtually moved into an air-conditioned theater, buying tickets to movies
and sleeping through every showing.
Louie was as miserable as everyone else. His weight fell precipitously.
The prerace newspaper coverage riled him.
Don Lash was considered unbeatable.
Bright was pegged for second. Louie wasn’t mentioned. He was daunted by Lash, but the first three runners would go to Berlin, and he believed he could be among them. “If I have any strength left from the heat,” he wrote to
Pete, “I’ll beat Bright and give Lash the scare of his life.”
The trials were held at a stadium on New York’s Randall’s Island. It was just short of ninety in the city, but the stadium was much hotter, probably far over a hundred degrees. Everywhere, athletes were keeling over and being carted to hospitals. Louie waited for his race under a scalding sun that, he later said, “made a wreck of me.”
At last, the men were told to line up. The gun cracked, and the race was on. Lash bounded to the lead with Bright in pursuit. Louie dropped back.
In the Zamperini house, a throng crouched around the radio. They were in agony. Louie’s start time had passed, but the announcer was lingering on the swimming trials. Pete was so frustrated he considered putting his foot through the radio. At last, the announcer listed the positions of the 5,000-meter runners. He didn’t mention Louie. Overwhelmed, Louise fled to the kitchen.
Lash and Bright led the runners through laps seven, eight, nine. Louie hovered midpack, waiting to make his move. The heat was suffocating. One runner collapsed, and the others hurdled him. Another dropped, and they jumped him, too. Louie could feel his feet cooking as the spikes on his shoes conducted heat up from the track. Bright’s feet were burning particularly badly. In terrible pain, he took a staggering step off the track and twisted his ankle, then lurched back on. Louie passed him, and he had no resistance to offer.
As the runners entered the final lap, Louie accelerated, closing in on Lash. Looking at the bobbing head of the mighty Don Lash, Louie felt intimidated. For several strides, he hesitated. Then he saw the last curve ahead. He opened up as fast as he could go.
Banking around the turn,
Louie drew alongside
Lash, and the two ran side by side down the homestretch. Neither man had any more speed to give, and neither could get past the other. Exhausted, straining, with heads thrown back and legs moving in sync, they hit the line together.
The announcer’s voice echoed across the living room in Torrance. Zamperini, he said, had won.
In the kitchen, Louise heard the crowd in the next room suddenly shout. Outside, car horns honked; the front door swung open and neighbors gushed in. As a crush of hysterical Torrancers celebrated around her, Louise wept happy tears. Anthony poured wine and sang out toasts. Louie’s voice came over the airwaves, calling a greeting to Torrance.
The announcer was mistaken. The judges ruled Lash the winner. The announcer corrected himself, but it hardly dimmed the revelry in Torrance.
A few minutes later, Louie stood under a cold shower. His feet were burned, the marks following the patterns of his spikes. After drying off, he weighed himself. He’d sweated off three pounds.
Norman Bright was slumped on a bench, staring at his foot. It, like the other one, was burned so badly that the skin had peeled off. He’d finished fifth.
By day’s end, Louie had received some 125 telegrams. Torrance Has Gone Nuts, read one. Village Has Gone Screwy, read another. There was even one from the Torrance police, who must have been relieved that someone else was chasing Louie.
Louie pored over photos of his race in the evening papers. In some, he appeared tied with Lash; in others, he appeared to be in front. On the track, he’d felt sure he’d won. The top three finishers would go to Berlin, but Louie felt cheated nonetheless.
As Louie studied the papers, the judges were reviewing photos and a film of the 5,000. Later, Louie telegrammed the news home: Judges called it a tie.… Will run harder in Berlin.
The Zamperinis’ house was packed with well-wishers and newsmen. Anthony drank toasts until four in the morning.
Pete walked around to back
slaps. “Am I ever happy,” he wrote to Louie. “I have to go around with my shirt open so that I have enough room for my chest.”
Louie Zamperini was going to compete in the Olympics in an event he’d run only four times. He was the youngest distance runner to ever make the team.
