As most of you likely know, ABC’s Wide World of Sports host Jim McKay passed away on June 7.
Wide World of Sports featured the very fisrt Ironman Triathlon netwrok television coverage. Here are my questions for use in an up coming editorial on our own website:
Did you know who Jim McKay was?
Did the Wide World of Sports telecast of Ironman inspire you to become involved in the sport?
When you were young, did you watch Wide World of Sports?
If you did, what did the program mean to you and how did it affect your outlook on sports and life?
Watched Wide World of Sports almost every Saturday for years. Always remember the ski jumper crashing every Saturday during the “agony of defeat” line.
Wasn’t he 86 or so when he passed away? He had a good life.
I watched the ESPN tribute to Jim McKay last night and it was fantastic. They accurately summed up what I remember about Jim McKay. A couple points:
Most incredible three words every uttered by a sports commentator: “They’re all gone.” That is what Jim McKay said when the Iraeli athletes were killed during the failed raid at the XX Olympics. The sound of his voice. The look on his face. ONLY Jim McKay could have reported this news. We needed Jim McKay to report that news. Unreal.
Jim McKay reported the Olympics during the cold war, when everyone behind the Iron Curtain was mean, scarey, and evil. However, it was Jim McKay and McKay only who made the athletes human. He made us cheer for those we were supposed to fear. He made us briefly set aside our bias and see the human aspect of sports.
No one could report a back story like Jim McKay. He depth of knowledge of the athletes was staggering. It was common to hear about the Hungarian weightlifter who used to raise oxen with his father in a small town and carried bails of hay on his shoulder at 10 years old. The stories were amazing. McKay would go to the home towns, talk to the parents, and make use get to know the athletes.
ABC Wide World of Sports is still one of the best sports shows ever and Jim McKay was the greatest host.
Way back in the olden days of the 1970’s and early 1980’s before cable and ESPN there weren’t many sports programs at all and watching the show on Saturday afternoons was a ritual in our house.
I remember seeing the Julie Moss coverage and while I didn’t get into triathlon until three years ago, I did start running and doing road races and marathons.
“The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”. Classic. The picture of the skier crashing still goes through my head.
Jim McKay and the Wide World of Sports made me fascinated with the stuff beyond the purely stick and ball sports that I was accustomed to in my hometown, or on TV. I became interested in watching everything from Track and Field to NASCAR, thanks to the Wide World of Sports. Eventually, I tried a couple of those unusual sports that I normally would not have even seen.
As mentioned earlier, Jim McKay humanized those athletes in far away place that we percieved as Ivan Drago type machines. I even found myself cheering for and admiring some of those Iron Curtain athletes. As the Olympics became televised to the whole world in more detail, Jim McKay really set the standard of how it is supposed to be reported.
Back in the late 70’s, he/Wide World of Sports was the only source of information for most sports. I remember my brothers and I waiting on Sunday afternoons for the latest NASCAR news on Buddy Baker, Richard Petty, David Pearson etc. You’d get maybe 20 laps of the race and that’d be it… The great thing was that he exposed us to many sports and had a pretty good knowledge of most of them. He was THE SPORTS VOICE OF MY GENERATION. In today’s information age and with all the individual sport specialists, a sports commentator like Jim McKay will never be duplicated.
After watching the tribute on ESPN it was amazing how many events he shaped my perception of. From lumberjack competitions to Olympics to cliff diving Jim McKay’s voice is what I hear when I think of those events. I don’t know how i would have spent those afternoons without wideworld of sports. He was a class act and will never be duplicated, his sincerity alone set him apart.
Yes, I knew he was. For me, in addition to WWoS, he was (and, frankly, still is in my mind) THE voice of the Olympics.
WWoS is definitely where I first saw triathlon (IM, in particular). While I can’t say it’s THE reason I took up the sport a few years ago, it certainly helped plant the seed to do something that seemed almost unthinkable at the time (complete an iron).
I watched WWoS all the time. There was no ESPN. You wanted to see any other sports aside from football, baseball, etc. then you watched WWoS. Also Evel Knievel, The Harlem Globetrotters, lots more… I guess maybe you could say the show opened my young eyes to all the opportunities to challenge oneself in life through sport.
Jim McKay means family gatherings around the 19in color TV watching WWoS, Olympics, and other sporting events. Lots of great family and sports commentary memories! I think WWoS played a part in opening my eyes to the world beyond the cornfields of central Illinois. At one point I was certain I was going to move to Innsbruck, Austria!
I’m too young to remember the Munich Games- I was a newborn in 1972. But I do remember his other Olympic telecasts and, except for too much boxing, loved WWoS.
There was something about McKay that reminds me of Mr. Rogers- a guy with an outwardly calm demeanor who is inviting me to come explore a place or thing or see a sport in a way no one else would have showed it to me.
As for Ironman, I loved watching it every year on WWoS, but never felt the urge to do one because I utterly hated running growing up, and could never see doing even a standalone marathon. But I’m glad those telecasts served to encourage people to develop other, shorter triathlons.
I loved Wide World of Sports and watched it religiously every Saturday afternoon. As someone else mentioned, this was pre-ESPN/Internet etc. so other than watching your favorite sports team, this was your only real expsoure to anything else. I used to love it when Evel Knievel was on and my brothers and I would then set up a ramp at the end of our driveway and try jumping Tonka trucks on our bikes.
The Julie Moss telecast was on when I was a junior in high school and that was the first time I had seen or heard of triathlon. I was a solely a runner back then but decided after seeing that broadcast that I wanted to do triathlons and IM someday. “Someday” didn’t actually come until 2000, but that was my original inspiration to get involved.