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Slovenian skiier Vinko Bogataj in the classic Wide World of Sports intro.
Some people may not know that the Slovenian skiier Vinko Bogataj was something of a cult symbol in the United States for a long time. In the introduction to the immensely popular show ABC’s Wide World of Sports, they always showed a clip of him crashing during a competition in 1970. His crash was synchronized with the words "… the agony of defeat!" If you’d like to see it, there’s a video of the show’s famous intro here. [2.2 MB]
There’s also some interesting background on his story over at Ask Yahoo, where someone recently asked: "Who’s the ‘agony of defeat’ guy from ‘The Wide World of Sports’"?
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ful kul! I did not know this guy was from Slovenija!
Neither did I, this way definitely before my time. What a spectacular crash, the man is history. Is he still alive?
Oh, he’s still alive alright. He apparently only got a "minor concussion" from that crash. According to the wiki article, he lives in Lesce and occasionally makes celebrity appearances in the U.S. (At a Wide World of Sports anniversary, Muhammed Ali even asked him for an autograph.) He also made a guest appearance on the popular NBC show Scrubs.It’s an amazing story.
Cute :)
i think i just posted something to the extent yesterday, but, man, michael, where do you find this stuff??!!the
condescending tone of "this guy lived behind the iron curtain, so he
knew zilch of the world around him" in the yahoo article hurts a
little, though. i mean, this guy was an athelete, for chrissake! his
fall happened in then West Germany, and i’m sure he saw much of the
rest of the world as well, and met people from all over the globe. if
he knew nothing of his infamy in the states, it wasn’t because he was a
brainwashed communist loaf, it was just because this was too much of a
local phaenomenon, is my guess. plus, yugoslavia wasn’t all that closed
up anyway. my parents tell me, with a nostalgic glint in their eyes,
how the red yugoslav passport was something of a coveted treasure back
in the days, because it was one of the rare passwords in the world you
could use to get to america or russia without having to get a visa -
meaning travel the world freely and without hustle, i suppose. i
wouldn’t know, i wasn’t around back in the days.
plus, yugoslavia wasn’t all that closed up anyway. Cornelius, shhh! Or else you are going to suffer angry responses from people who are going to tell you how oppressed we were under the previous bloodthirsty and cruel socialist/communist (pick one) regime.
Yugoslavia wasn’t behind the Iron Curtain, goddamn you Mr. Lazy Journalist….
Hehehe, good one, Michael! History, however is replete with spectacular crashes of Slovene skiers. Just remember when Bojan Križaj "kissed" a pine tree just a forthnight before his slalom race at the Calgary olympics. It was a national disaster, because everybody expected at least a gold medal. Instead we had to make do with silver and bronze by ski jumpers.
Great post (needless to say). Iron Curtain or not, it’s still funny that Bogataj was unaware of the legend he has become in the States.
estavisti: that’s debatable. if by “behind the iron curtain” you mean “communist countries”, as the meaning of the phrase was percieved by the majority of the west, then Yugoslavia was behind it. if you mean “under soviet influence”, as is probably the more accurate meaning and the meaning the yugoslav people clinged to, then no, we weren’t. i have no beef with that expression per se, though. what bothered me was the tone of the expression, making it sound like mr. bogataj was some poor unfortunate friday-like creature that had to be taught the ways of the civilised world. i’m sure most of us ex-yugoslavs here share at least one experience: being asked, when abroad, as to how it was like to live under a communist regime, by a person sporting that look full of pity, otherwise reserved for the occasion of talking to somebody who’s just been diagnosed with a terminal illness.
I agree that it’s slightly silly to say that Yugoslavia was behind the iron curtain. However, it’s technically correct if you consider the origin of this phrase, namely Churchill’s 1946 speech in Fulton, USA: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
A few years back, well, a lot of few years back, I remember a short spiel on ABC about Mr. Bogataj and his "agony of da feat". Even though, as estavisti correectly pointed out, Yugoslavia was not behind the Iron Curtain, there were still quite a few folks that wanted to leave the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia for greener pastures. In the piece that ABC did, a bizarre interview with Mr. Bogataj was concocted. I’m not sure if it was due to a bad translator or simply a trumped up script, but the interview wended its way from the visual affect of the crash to the main reason for it.