It was a long walk f0r a boy from Anaheim, who used to dive off the garage rafters on to an old couch, to carrying the flag in the ’68 Olympics as co-captain of the Men’s Gymnastics Team in Mexico City.

But Class of 1963’s Sid Sowder Freudenstein’s transition to a world champion, from that 6th grader whose grandfather found him alone doing dangerous diving stunts, started when he was enrolled him in Sammy Lee’s swim & dive club.

It was in junior high where he discovered some bars and rings outside in a sandpit and he taught himself kips and giant swings (with straps). “I didn’t know the names of the skills then; I just saw other kids doing them,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Freudenstein started formal gymnastics as a sophomore in 1960 under Ron Amster at Anaheim High. He credits his coach as being responsible for his initial success. He won many competitions, mostly on tumbling, floor and vault. In his senior year, he was the High Point Man (closest to All-Around) at the Southern California State Championships.

He wasn’t able to attend his first choice, UC Berkeley (Cal), because his grades weren’t quite good enough. He was awarded a scholarship to USC and was excited to attend there since many of his friends were also at USC. Unfortunately, when went to matriculate, he was told his scholarship went to someone else.

He was devastated, but kept up his studies at Santa Ana Junior College and continued to train at Anaheim High. He finally made it to Cal in 1964 and graduated in 1968 with a degree in physics. As a UC Berkeley student, Freudenstein won many invitationals, PAC 8, regional titles, and national and international awards.

In the summer of 1966, he was chosen to attend an Olympic training camp at Penn State, and most importantly, as a U.S. Gymnastics Federation alternate to the World Championships in Dortmund Germany.

In the summer of 1967, he was chosen to compete in the World University Games in Tokyo. He placed second in floor exercise against some of the best in the world.

In his senior year in 1968, at the NCAA Championships he tied for first on floor exercise, and his team won the title in a thrilling ending.

He was on the way to the Olympics after placing 19th out of 20 selected in first trials. While he did well in the 1968 games, he was sick for several training days and the compulsory floor finals were held first thing in the morning when scoring was generally low.

Freudenstein continued to stay involved in his sport, even after returning to school at the University of Colorado (CU), earning a Ph.D. in physics in 1976-77. He occasionally judged high school gymnastics meets, announced CU’s home meets, and took the job of head gymnastics couch a year before he started to teach physics at Metropolitan State College of Denver in the spring of 1977.

He taught and coached until CU dropped seven sports, including gymnastics in 1980. During his coaching tenure at CU, he brought the team from shambles to a top-10 preseason ranking.

In 1980 and 1982, he was chosen by the State of Colorado to be the exchange coach of a sister-state program in Brazil. In 1982, he started and directed a not-for-profit private club called Colorado Academy of Artistic Gymnastics (CAAG). It grew to its maximum of 417 students right after the ’84 Olympics.

Freudenstein has published and given talks on the biomechanics of gymnastics and authored a teaching manual for major textbook in physics. He has also published several papers in plasma physics and teacher education. He has chaired Denver’s Metropolitan State University Physics Department since 1995. In 2005, he was inducted into the University of California Athletic Hall of Fame.

For a more complete look at his Olympic career, visit:

http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/fr/sid-freudenstein-1.html

As a skinny sixth grader in 1957, his photo appeared in the Anaheim Bulletin’s sports section competing in a long forgotten jumping competition. The caption suggested that “maybe someday little Ricky Sloan” will make it to the Olympics.”

The prediction came true but in such a roundabout way that some might call it miraculous.

Miracle or not, Sloan’s hard work and perseverance certainly played a role in his athletic career that led him to the 1968 Olympics and a coaching position for more than 40 years with Washington State University.

Apparently, there was something about running, leaping and jumping over poles that attracted this Anaheim youngster’s attention enough that he kept at it until he began setting records. Ultimately, he placed 7^th in the 1968 Olympics decathlon, setting a world record decathlon high jump record in try outs of 6-11 ¾. He also became the fourth American in the sport to exceed 8,000 points.

Upon reading the Anaheim Bulletin article, Sloan had to ask his parents what the Olympics were. Once it was explained to him, Sloan said in another newspaper article about himself, this one in 1995, that he thought, “yeah, that’s something I would like.”

What followed was his mechanic father welding uprights and Sloan using old mattresses and sticks of bamboo as his first pole vault apparatus.

Despite having Osgood-Schlatter disease in both legs as a teen, Sloan would straddle-style into saw dust pits to high jump 6-foot-7-inches at Anaheim High to win the CIF title. (The California record at the time was 6-9.)

Universities with the reputations as major track powers wanted him, but his grades held him back. Instead, he worked and enrolled at Fullerton College, eventually improving his mark to 6-10 in the high jump.

He made it to UCLA, where he became the first Bruin to exceed 7-feet in the high jump; he vaulted 7-1 when the world record was 7-7.

Near the start of his senior season in 1968, Sloan broke a bone in his ankle and required surgery. He could not recover soon enough to make the Olympics team in the high jump or vault, and was talked into training for the decathlon.

To quote a May 16, 1995 article about him in the Spokesman-Review by Dave Boling: “At age 21, truly a baby in the decathlon, he went on to win 7^th place in Mexico City. After the two-day ordeal had completed, Sloan walked through the empty stadium with his poles. On the P.A. system, someone had piped in Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Sloan said he looked up at the Olympic flame against the blacken sky and cried from the realization of his amazing accomplishment.”

Sloan continued competing after the Olympics and was runner-up in the 1969 AAU Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) decathlon. He also competed with the Southern Cal Striders track and field club, which in its day, laid claim to being “largest and strongest multiracial track-and-field club in the history of the sport, with a collection “America’s finest Olympic Track and Field Stars.”

Unfortunately for Sloan, he couldn’t sustain his athlete career and support a family. With a new baby on the way with his wife, Sandy, Sloan gave up competing at age 22 and sold paint in a hardware store for two years while earning his teaching degree.

He told the reporter that he wished the system had allowed him to continue his athletic career. “I honestly believe I could have won gold in Munich in ’72, or at least bring home a medal.”

By 1973, Sloan was coaching track and field part time for Washington State. He spent 41 years at the university, retiring in 2014 at age 67. During his four-decades-long coaching career at WSU, about half spent as an assistant, then transitioning to head coach in 1994. He finished as the men’s and women’s track and field head coach and the dean of Cougar coaches.

During his tenure as the Cougar track program’s mentor, Sloan has seen the men set 22 school records and the women set 84 school records. He has directed 42 WSU athletes to NCAA outdoor all-American status 76 times and directed 33 athletes to NCAA indoor all-American status 47 times.

Sloan is well known internationally in the multi-events circuits because of his 14 years as coach for four-time world decathlon champion, Olympic champion and former world record-holder Dan O’Brien and because of his mentoring of Olympic heptathlete Diana Pickler. He’s also coached the late Gabriel Tiacoh, the quarter-miler from Ivory Coast who won an Olympic silver medal in 1984.

For more statistics on his appearance in the 1968 Olympics, visit:

http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/sl/rick-sloan-1.html