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Inside Olympic Sports
Posted: Tuesday November 16, 1999 01:05 PM Leon Stukelj, 1898-1999 Peter Westbrook is turning inner-city kids into America's top fencers By Brian Cazeneuve
Apologies and weapons extended, Westbrook won the bout 15-11. "Old man still doing good," Westbrook said. Then he pulled Smart aside and the real work began, a counseling session between the venerable Westbrook and his protégé. "See, Keeth, you get mad like this and like this and like that and you lose three, four, five points in a row, uh-huh," said Westbrook. "Stay mad and it won't get any better." By instilling that spirit of self-discipline, Westbrook has been working wonders with inner-city swashbucklers since 1991, when he and Olympic teammate Mika'il Sankofa (known then as Michael Lofton) recruited six black children to come to Westbrook's first fencing class. Enrollment in what became the Peter Westbrook Foundation is now roughly 100. "No question, fencing gave me my life," says Westbrook, who grew up in Newark. "If not for fencing, I would have been another city kid on drugs, taking my hurt out on somebody else." Westbrook's foundation has become one of the most successful inner-city sports programs in the country. Four of the top five sabre fencers in the U.S. have come through it, including Smart, Akhi Spencer-El and Herby Reynaud, members of the four-man U.S. team that won a bronze medal at the Pan Am Games in August. Last year Spencer-El became the first American to be ranked as the world's No. 1 junior in sabre. Keeth's 19-year-old sister, Erinn, who also trains under Westbrook, is the No. 3 American in women's foil. The foundation emphasizes education as well as fencing and has helped several participants get scholarships at colleges and New York City private schools. Westbrook has a simple rule: Do well in school or don't fence. He hires tutors and holds bimonthly essay-writing contests, awarding $50 prizes to the top three entrants. He charges kids for private lessons so they'll feel obligated to get the most from their investment. The fee is a rock-bottom $20 a year, and he often reduces even that by asking, "So what can you pay?" Westbrook began fencing when he was five. He used a knife to carve a Z for Zorro in his mother's coffee table, and she insisted he take a fencing lesson, hoping it would help him mend his ways. Westbrook went on to win 13 national titles before retiring after the 1996 Atlanta Games. His bronze in '84, at Los Angeles, was the first Olympic medal by a U.S. fencer since 1960. Last year Westbrook raised enough money to stake the foundation to a $97,000 budget, enough to pay for tutors, equipment, coaching help and travel to World Cup events. Even so, Westbrook, whose wife, Susann, is an accountant, has at times had to dip into his savings to keep the operation going. "At first Peter had a nice dream: keep kids from drugs, give weekly structure -- it was fantasy, really," says Aladar Kogler, who has coached seven Czech or U.S. Olympic teams. "Then came the results and the grades and the champions." When Westbrook introduced Harvey Miller to the sport a year ago, the high school junior had nothing but D's and F's on his report card. Last week in Pittsburgh he placed 28th in his first national tournament, then hurried home to New York for the night classes and SAT courses that Westbrook is paying for. "Tell people what we do here and they think it's an exaggeration," says Miller, whose worst grade last semester was an A-minus. "I just think fencing does something to your brain. Or maybe it's Pete." Old man still doing good. Uh-huh.
Bela Karolyi Returns Even though he retired three years ago as the most celebrated gymnastics coach ever, Bela Karolyi hasn't stopped collecting trophies. He has caught wild boar in his native Romania and collared moose, caribou and grizzlies in Alaska. This summer in Hungary he bagged his first elk. "The head was about 10 kilos and a half, but that was only good for a silver medal," says Karolyi, who would have preferred a bigger kill. "First place is the best place." It sure beats sixth, which was the spot the U.S. women's team sank to at the world championships in Tianjin, China, two months ago. What's more, the defending Olympic champions also failed to take any individual medals. When Bob Colarossi, the no-nonsense president of USA Gymnastics, returned from China, he called Karolyi and asked him to assume the newly created position of national team coordinator. Karolyi enthusiastically accepted. "I gave a lot of years seeing this country become a gymnastics power," says Karolyi. "I'm not happy when I see 18 years of coaching here going down the drain." Karolyi, 57, guided Romania's Nadia Comaneci to the all-around title at the 1976 Olympics, and after emigrating to the U.S. in 1981, he coached Mary Lou Retton to the same crown in '84. He was a member of the U.S. coaching staff at the last four Summer Olympics. In his new role he will organize mandatory monthly training camps for Sydney hopefuls, help select the team's head coach after the Olympic trials in Boston next August and travel to any elite gym that requests his counsel. The decision to bring back such a headstrong personality as Karolyi so late in the Olympic quadrennium is risky. Getting the current U.S. coaches to mesh with him and buy into his philosophies will be a challenge. In practice, Karolyi preached repetition and stamina over aesthetics, infusing youngsters with the optimism that they could do in competition what they'd successfully done countless times in the gym. Other gymnasts may have pointed their toes better, but Karolyi's charges nailed their dismounts when it counted. His emotion on the sidelines also pushed judges into forking over extra tenths when scoring his athletes, something he won't be able to accomplish as an administrator. Karolyi believes that the U.S. team should get a medal in Sydney, and he singles out Vanessa Atler, Kristin Maloney, Elise Ray and Jennie Thompson as capable of winning individual medals. "Holy moley, do we have a talent pool in this country," he says, "but we must have the fight in us. Mary Lou, she knew she was a winner. On this team, I believe we have some tigers like that."
Leon Stukelj, 1898-1999 When Leon Stukelj was introduced at the New York Athletic Club last year as the oldest living Olympic champion, the 99-year-old former gymnast was using the furniture as an apparatus. "You welcome me," he said as he lifted himself on a chair's arms and pulled his legs up until they were perpendicular to his chest, "and I perform for you." Stukelj (pronounced SHTOO-kel) died on Nov. 8, four days before his 101st birthday. The self-trained Slovenian represented Yugoslavia at the first world championships, in 1922, when gymnastic competitions included the rope climb, high jump, shot put and 50-meter swim. By the time he ended his Olympic career at the 1936 Berlin Games, Stukelj had won six medals, including three golds. After a brief imprisonment for opposing the Communist regime that assumed power in Yugoslavia following World War II, Stukelj became a lawyer and judge in the Slovenian city of Maribor. When Slovenia gained independence in 1991, his image appeared on phone cards, coins and the nation's first postage stamp. "The Olympics must be in good health," Stukelj said last year. "They have survived as long as me."
Issue date: November 22, 1999
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