Two greatest pals sunk into one another’s arms, weeping within the locker room moments earlier than the largest battle of their lives. Although the youngsters had every crushed 4 grown males in 5 days to achieve the Olympic closing, each understood their subsequent opponent within the match could be the hardest but. However their tears weren’t from nerves or concern. As an alternative it was remorse and the instinctive understanding that nothing would ever be the identical between them. With the gold medal at stake, the 2 boys had been minutes away from preventing one another.
Immediately the minimal age for a boxer to qualify for an Olympic competitors is nineteen and every nation is allowed to enter just one boxer in every weight class. However 100 years in the past there was no age minimal and two fighters per nation may compete in the identical weight class. And so it was that two adolescent American friends, 16-year-old Jackie Fields and 18-year-old Joe Salas, got here to face one another within the featherweight closing on this present day a century in the past on the 1924 Paris Olympics.
The boys had met in 1921 on the famend Los Angeles Athletic Membership, a haven for Jewish and Mexican People who had been barred from dwelling in sure neighborhoods in Los Angeles on the time. However in a merciless irony, the LAAC excluded black folks from changing into members.
The membership’s head coach was George Blake, an ex-boxer who had educated aspiring fighters for over fifteen years. Thought to be an trustworthy man and a very good trainer, Blake was a boxing teacher at Camp Kearney throughout World Battle I and a well-respected referee within the professional sport. He taught the science of the game, specializing in correct approach, and each Fields and Salas, who grew to become quick pals, thrived beneath Blake’s tutelage.
Fields was a tiny flyweight when he started to study from Blake on the age of 13. When he grew to become adequate to characterize the membership in newbie tournaments, the slick boxer fought as a bantamweight. In the meantime, the power-punching Salas was the membership’s premier featherweight. Rising as one of the best boxing membership in America, the LAAC despatched seven boxers to the 1924 nationwide championships in Boston, which additionally served because the U.S. Olympic Trials. 4 of them would make the journey to Paris. Three would medal.
By the point of the Might trials, younger Fields may not make the bantamweight restrict, so he entered as a featherweight on the alternative facet of the bracket of his buddy. Whereas Salas gained the nationwide championship, Fields was bounced within the semifinals due to a mixture of a damaged hand and Harry Wallach’s southpaw stance. “I by no means fought a southpaw earlier than,” Fields recalled. With the loss, Fields’s hopes of Olympic glory seemed to be dashed.
However there have been highly effective males watching in Boston. American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage, president of the Newbie Athletic Union W.C. Proust, and Spike Webb, head coach of the U.S. Olympic Boxing crew, each took a good view of Fields and gave him the possibility to make the crew as an alternate.
In June, the USS America carried the U.S. Olympic crew throughout the Atlantic Ocean to Paris with 4 featherweights aboard. Coach Webb may solely enter two of them and title one alternate. So Fields sparred Patsy Ruffalo on the boat. “Unbeknown to one another, they allow us to work out to see who would eradicate the opposite alternate,” Fields remembered. “So, I should have eradicated him.”
Due to inside accidents, Ruffalo could be rushed off the boat to the hospital when it docked in Cherbourg, France. A middleweight alternate from the LAAC named Advert Allegrini forfeited his probability to take part within the Olympics when he heroically donated blood to the wounded Ruffalo.
As soon as in Paris, Fields realized that he would face Wallach once more, this time in a box-off for the proper to characterize the U.S. within the Olympics. When the New Yorker had put up his guard in a southpaw stance within the trials, Fields was so confused he instructed Wallach, “Hey, flip round. You’re preventing incorrect.” In Paris, the marginally extra skilled Salas got down to train his buddy how you can battle a lefty. Fields later stated, “I should have regarded higher than Wallach, so that they picked Joe Salas and me.”
The 1924 Olympic boxing competitors was a weird whirlwind. The glass ceiling of the Vélodrome d’Hiver acted because the solar’s magnifying glass, creating sweltering situations for the boxers inside. Referees stood helplessly outdoors the ring. Salas defined, “You probably did what you possibly can to guard your self as a result of the referees weren’t proper there to assist out.” The ensuing controversies brought on chaos, which led to the occasional riot within the stands. However the two American featherweights boxed their well beyond 4 older opponents in 5 days.
When the time got here for the 2 pals to face off for the gold medal on this present day, July twentieth, 1924, neither was anxious to face their pal. “We might have performed something to not battle one another,” Salas later declared.
With two People within the closing, there was the query of which nook head coach Spike Webb could be in, and which one assistant coach Al Lacey would work. Fields believed Webb favored Salas to win. He claimed Webb stated, “I’ll must toss a coin. Heads I’ll go in Salas’s nook, tails Lacey, you go in Fields’s nook.” The perceived slight snapped Fields out of his misery over preventing his buddy. “C’mon, Al,” he instructed Coach Lacey.” We’ll beat ’em. You include me.”
Through the three-round bout, each males boxed superbly. Coach Webb later described the battle as “a exceptional exhibition of scientific boxing and clear, arduous hitting.” That included the additional minute inexplicably added to the ultimate spherical. “The choice of the judges went to Fields,” continued Webb, “and it met with the approval of the gang, as Fields boxed like a grasp, whereas Salas additionally gave a beautiful account of himself.”
After the battle, Fields was allegedly so distraught at beating his buddy he went again to the dressing room and cried. However he had gained the gold medal. The 16-year-old grew to become the youngest boxer ever to win an Olympic gold medal, a file that not solely nonetheless stands, however one that can by no means be damaged. “They handed me the gold medal, after which performed the Nationwide Anthem,” Fields later remembered. “And I began to cry.”
No American featherweight would win an Olympic gold medal once more till Meldrick Taylor did so sixty years later. Taylor is the one American 126-pounder to win gold since Fields.
By successful silver, Salas grew to become the primary Latino American to win an Olympic medal in any sport, a pioneering achievement that’s sadly missed right this moment. Whereas he felt he deserved gold, Salas claimed, “There have been no arduous emotions.” Historical past would show in any other case.
Salas returned to Los Angeles a pair weeks forward of Fields, who took a detour to go to his pals in Chicago, the place he had grown up. When he lastly arrived in Los Angeles, Fields heard that Salas had accused him of head-butting within the closing. Dangerous blood started to floor, and a rematch was set for September 18th. The rematch was so shut {that a} fourth spherical was spontaneously ordered. Finally, Fields was given the decision. Salas felt he had been robbed once more. Because of this, their relationship additional deteriorated.
Fields and Salas then fought as professionals on Might 8, 1925 in a bitter grudge match. George Blake had chosen to handle Salas’s profession, believing Fields too younger to show professional, which solely added to the bitterness between the 2 boys. The defending Olympic champion held knowledgeable file of 2-0 whereas the defending nationwide champion was 3-0. Within the battle, Fields outboxed Salas over ten rounds to win the choice. They by no means spoke to 1 one other ever once more.
Sixty-two years later, Olympic gold medalist Jackie Fields died. Simply eight days later, his former greatest buddy Joe Salas adopted. –David Harazduk
