The 1968 US men's Olympic track and field team won 12 gold medals and
set six world records at the Mexico City Games, one of the most dominant
performances in Olympic history. The team featured such legends as
Tommie Smith, Bob Beamon, Al Oerter, and Dick Fosbury. Fifty years
later, the team is mostly remembered for embodying the tumultuous social
and racial climate of 1968. The Black Power protest of Tommie Smith and
John Carlos on the victory stand in Mexico City remains one of the most
enduring images of the 1960s. Less known is the role that a 400-meter
track carved out of the Eldorado National Forest above Lake Tahoe played
in molding that juggernaut. To acclimate US athletes for the 7,300-foot
elevation of Mexico City, the US Olympic Committee held a two-month
training camp and final Olympic selection meet for the ages at Echo
Summit near the California-Nevada border. Never has a sporting event of
such consequence been held in such an ethereal setting. On a track in
which hundreds of trees were left standing on the infield to minimize
the environmental impact, four world records fell--more than have been
set at any US meet since (including the 1984 and 1996 Olympics). But the
road to Echo Summit was tortuous--the Vietnam War was raging, Martin
Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and a group of
athletes based out of San Jose State had been threatening to boycott the
Mexico City Games to protest racial injustice. Informed by dozens of
interviews by longtime sports journalist and track enthusiast Bob Burns,
this is the story of how in one of the most divisive years in American
history, a California mountaintop provided an incomparable group of
Americans shelter from the storm.
