With the Summer Games in Rio less than a month away, let’s take a look back at the XV Olympics that began in Helsinki, Finland on Jul. 19, 1952 and featured gold-medal performances from six different Texans.
In the high jump held on opening day, Walter “Buddy” Davis of Texas A&M was the favorite despite his inexperience. The Nederland product had gone to College Station on a basketball scholarship and lived up to high expectations by blossoming into a star. A childhood victim of polio, who had not been able to walk for three years, Davis went out for track in 1951 “to escape spring basketball practice because we had a coach who was a demon for workouts.” To everyone’s surprise, including his own, he proved that some high jumpers are born not made.
Within two years, Davis was threatening the world record of six feet 11 inches set in 1941. He actually bettered the mark by half an inch at the Southwest Conference track meet in the spring of 1951 but had the incredible effort erased on a technicality.
