1952 Summer Olympics

Thank you, David.

Similar to baseball, Pesopalo, which I'm sure I pronounced that incorrectly, is the national sport of what country where, fittingly, it was a demonstration sport at the 1952 Summer Olympics?

I don't think that's going to work.

Let's just go Australia.

Can you reread it?

Mm-hmm.

Similar to baseball, Pesopalo is the national sport of what country where, fittingly, it was a demonstration sport at the 1952 Summer Olympics?

Any chance you could spell the sport?

Played 103 games for the Saints, kicked 258 goals.

He, um, he represented Australia at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki-

Yep

... and the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, and he was inducted into the Water Polo Australia Hall of Fame just after he passed away in 2012.

John Disley was.

John Disley had won this bronze medal in the 1952 Olympics.

And, you know, my dad had only qualified as the third Briton on the final.

But on that day, he ran a PB by seven seconds.

Kat says, hey there, bet you've never heard this bit of trivia before.

True or false? Tennis player Andre Agassi's father represented Iran or Iran at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics.

Is that true? Is that false? Well, Kat, I happen to know that's true.

He represented Iran in boxing.

He was known as the Czech locomotive.

He was the only guy to ever win three Olympic gold medals in one single Olympics for long distance running.

He won it in the 5,000 meters, the 10,000 meters, and then he went on to compete in the full marathon to which he won gold as well.

This guy was insane.

Before the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, he won in the 1948 London Olympics as well.

But what makes this story interesting is how he used to train and how he actually went on to win those four Olympic golds, because this was crazy the way that he used to actually perform and perform at that level consistently.

Can you have a guess about what he used to do at all? Well, it was long before it was understood in the scientific realm of why this works, but he used to use breath holding as his way to perform at a level that was unheard of, unseen, and still remains like legendary.

At the same...

So it's Helsinki 1952.

He

was on the gear.

Then the Cold War, I don't know, like lit a fuse or something.

Soviet weightlifters dominated the 1952 Olympics.

An American doctor named John Ziegler helped build a synthetic version, and it hit the US market in 1958.

This was called Dianabol, the first anabolic steroid you could buy.