Then and now: Tahoe’s Olympic track
The track at Echo Summit in 1968. Photo/Les Wright
The track at STMS today. Photo/Google Earth
The 1968 Summer Olympics (the XIX Olympiad) were in October in Mexico City, 7,350 feet above sea level.
To prepare our athletes for that high altitude, a training track was built at Echo Summit because that elevation is similar to Mexico City.
According to Wikipedia, “… this was the first Olympics to use a synthetic all-weather surface for track and field events; the ‘Tartan’ surface was originally developed by 3M for horse racing, but didn’t catch on. The tracks at previous Olympics were conventional cinder.”
The Tartan track was moved from Echo Summit to South Tahoe Middle School a year later. The original surface eventually wore out and has been replaced.
— Bill Kingman
The first track was removed by the City of So Lake Tahoe Public Works Dept. and numbered each piece and stored. then was was re-instaled the following year at the middle school.
Must have lasted around 40 years. Seems somebody wanted/will want to analyze what about 40 years of weather did to that rubberized stuff.
The Tartan track had a rubbery feel to it when you walked on it, kinda cool. When it was torn up a good sized pile was saved at South Tahoe Refuse because some guy wanted to hand out pieces to the people that trained on it. Don’t know if that ever happened as one day it was just gone from STR. I don’t know if the guy came and got it or if ended up in the landfill. OLS
1968 was a tumultuous year in the U.S. – Martin Luther King was assassinated, as was Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the Summer Olympics were noted for the ‘black pride’ armbands shown on the top of the podium as the U.S. triumphed in the track events – so that surface must have helped. . .
The Olympians who trained at Echo Summit were joined by other athletes, such as the UC Berkeley basketball team, with at least one 7-footer, as they all worked out together at the outdoor court at the Campground (across from El Dorado Beach) in the long days of summer, as more & different muscles were toned. . .
Later that year, skiing’s World Cup was held at Heavenly, which was won by ‘Spider’ Sabich, a Twin Bridges Olympian – and celebrated at Harrah’s South Shore Room (see column in tribute of our three current Olympic medal-winning young ladies last Thursday, the 13th). . . 1968 was three years after South Lake Tahoe was incorporated as a city, with its theme “America’s All-Year Playground”. . .
At the end-of-that-year (1968), there was a 599″ snow pack (in town), causing the collapse of the American Legion building, Meeks Lumber across the street, and Sierra Ski Ranch’s 1st chair lift so it was indeed a very incredible & eventful year here. . .
Garry great info!
as a track coach at STHS we used that surface up through 2008 I believe. It was a great training surface for the distance kids because as old long skis writes it was rubbery.
The base underneath the track began to come apart in the early 2000’s which led to several un safe rises or indentations on the track.
I saved some of it, because it’s a piece of our history and was used to form perhaps the single greatest US Olympic track team in our history in 1968.