The iron curtain will not have resisted their love at first sight.Olga La Czech and Harold the American met in the antipodes, in the village of Olympic athletes of theMelbourne Games in 1956.She launches the record, he hammer.They jostled themselves by taking their equipment, they exchanged a smile, a look, and excuses as best they can, spanning a first barrier, that of the language.Olga Fikotová and "Hal" Connolly crossed, then recruited on the training grounds, still separated by a fence ... Both left with gold on the neck and the tender heart, but their greatest feat remained to accomplish: an East-West Wedding very media in the middle of the Cold War.
PublicitéLuckily, the couple has their guardian angels.The great Emil Zátopek, national hero with five Olympic medals, and his wife Dana, both close to President Antonín Zápotocký.In full destruction, the head of state ends up giving in to his friends, and authorizes the union of comrade Olga with the capitalist national Hal.The marriage was celebrated in Prague on March 27, 1957, under the gaze of special match envoys ...
La suite après cette publicitéHere is the report devoted to the wedding of Olga FikoTova and Harold Connolly, as published in Paris Match in 1957.
La suite après cette publicitéDécouvrez Rétro Match, l'actualité à travers les archives de Match...
Paris Match n°417, 6 avril 1957
Prague in the street for Olympic bride and groom
By Olivier Merlin (report of our special envoys Vick Vance, Charles Courrière, Franz Goess)
La suite après cette publicitéLa suite après cette publicitéEpilogue of the love novel born on the stadiums ofMelbourne.The iron curtain opens and allows Harold the American to marry Olga the Czech.
It's not just the crowned heads to illustrate love novels.The gods of the stadium, who are the violent heroes of our civilization on the move, can more than others win sentimental victories where, after dramatic adventures, everything ends with the happy outcome of the cinema.It is a fairy tale in the form of a match, well of our time, at the end of which sport will have managed to make politics smile, that the newlyweds of the iron curtain have just lived: Harold Connolly, the American colossus, Olympic hammer champion, and Olga FikoTova, Czech beauty, Olympic disc champion.
To be sure of having earned the greatest test of his life, Connolly married her young woman three times the same day, on the morning of Wednesday March 27, in Prague itself: at the town hall, in church andin the temple.
However, marriage had almost not done.A week earlier, he seemed to be given sine die.While Connolly trampled with impatience in Germany, in the small episcopal town of Fulda, at his friend and German coach Karl Storch, Olga, his fiancée, was fighting in Prague to obtain the marriage license that popular democracies do not giveTell their nationals never wishing to marry a free citizen of the Western world.It is ultimately the President of the Czechoslovak Republic, M.Antonin Zapotocky, whose champion had not hesitated to personally solicit protection, which was the 11 ° 1 craftsman of the most romantic marriage of the Olympic Games, the spontaneously warm atmosphere including the crowd of Prague, in the presence of aOverwhelmed police, surrounded the triple matrimonial ceremony on March 27, even exceeded the feeling of sporting admiration to transform into a manifestation of independence.
Harold Connolly and Olga Fikotova had known each other inMelbourne.At the beginning of November, they were installed in their delegations, in the Olympic village of Heidelberg, dazzled by this zoo of athletes from all countries, Scandinavian walls of wall, Jamaicans with profile of Lamas, Hindu Chonnes and Bavolets de Soubrette.Harold, world record in a hammer throwing, affected the blazed sporting genre.Olga, barely out of his native Czechoslovakia, overshadowed by cleaning Zatopek, went completely unnoticed.
But fate, which knows how to be the most malicious of the directors on the occasion, would make them meet in this tower of Babel by giving them, as on a well -mounted scenario, sports glory and love.
Ten days before the opening of the games, Olga discreetly celebrates its twenty-four years old.The very next day, his life takes a new direction.
This November 13, 1956, several athletes flowering lighting are sewing in a kiosk in the village where daily training equipment is stored.Harold, with two American supermen, loudly plays the elephants in the porcelain store.He comes to strike from back a very large and very beautiful young girl in red tracksuits marked C.S.R., Czechoslovakia badge.He apologizes.She turns around: honey -colored eyes, short cut hair short, bright smile of Amazon - the Slavic charm 1956 that underlines a slightly hoarse voice pronouncing a few words of approximate English.Harold Connolly, from Boston (Massachusetts), remains left.They exchange a look, tighten the email vigorously in athletes and leave, each on his side.
For ten days, until the opening of the games, they realize from afar in the village under the desperately rainy Australian sky.But they will have time to think of each other.
Olga Fikotova was born in Prague to modest parents.Little girl, she played in the street in football with the boys.At eighteen, it is a slender gymnast at Sokol's measurements (1 m 78, 73 kilos).She passed her bachot, hesitates to become a hostess of the air, finally opted for medicine.It was only two years ago that she assimilated with disconcerting ease the technique of launching the disc.Last summer, shortly after having passed her second year medicine exams, she broke the record for Czechoslovakia: 51 m 80.It is automatically selected for.Melbourne.
Harold Connolly is the ideal American prototype.Its proportions (it measures 1 m 83 per 100 kilos) are not those of the Apollo du Belvedere but, morphologically, soup in Taurus, Soul Soul of beef and its faire wrestling thighs make it a formidable machine to launch thehammer.
Paradox of nature, Connolly was born almost informed of the left arm, which he will endeavor throughout his youth to rehabilitate.Born in Sommerville (Massachusetts), of modest parents, like Olga Fikotova, he is now a history teacher in a public school in Boston.
He practiced basketball, baseball, even football, finally and above all weightlifting to strengthen his left arm.In 1953, Connolly began to launch the hammer.During the summer of 1954, he came to train in Europe under the direction of Karl Storch, in whom he will still find hospitality this year and who already received him in his family in Fulda.In October 1956, he broke the world record: 66 in 71.His great rival Russian Mikhail Krivonosov immediately takes it back.But Connolly, who trains five hours a day for the Olympic Games, does better yet: 68 m 54, current record.
Le 22 novembre, un soleil tropical a fait son apparition àMelbourne pour l'ouverture solennelle des Jeux.Antipodes competitions begin in the happy atmosphere of another planet.Olga and Harold, who will compete in the first two days, will be crowned immediately.And immediately, in the euphoria of success, they will be free.Free to love each other, free to savor their young glory of the gods of the stadium.Their love novel is born from this double exaltation.
Olga FikoTova wins its Olympic title on November 23.A whole part of the afternoon under the eyes of 100,000 people, Olga, whose beauty caused a sensation in the center of the lawn, will vigorously defend its luck in the face of Russian begliakova and Ponomarova jugns, more famous under the name of "NinaThe small hats ”, the old disc champion in Helsinki (female disc: 1 kilo, 18 centimeter in diameter; male disc: 2 kilos, 21 centimeters in diameter).Finally Olga FikoTova brought the world record Olympic record to 53 m 69: 57 m 04 by the Russian Dumbadze) and to his own surprise remove the title.The selected young Prague team has just given a victory - and its only gold medal - in Czechoslovakia.
A spectator in Leica, Harold Connolly, followed with more interest than the others the performance of the tall girl.The next day, it is in turn to enter the cage of hammer launchers and Olga, now, will follow the epic struggle that, centimeter by centimeter, the American Herculean will deliver to his rival and friend, the blond colossusKrivonosov.We know that the hammer consists of a ball of 7 kg 257, like that of the weight launchers, connected to a double handful by a steel wire measuring 1 in 22.In addition to his dorsal musculature, which paints him to spin the hammer above his head with extraordinary power, Connolly owes his strength to the new technique that his German master, Karl Storch, instilled in him, thanks to which he executes nonot three, but four laps on himself.His final victory will nevertheless be acquired only by...16 centimeters: 63 m 19 against 63 m 03 in Krivonosov.But.Connolly Montera, radiant, on the podium, the gold medal tight on her heart.
From that day, Harold and Olga no longer leave each other.We will see them everywhere, hand in hand, openly, not seeking to hide their idyll. Ils musardent au village olympique, visitentMelbourne, ce petit New York de l'héinisplière austral, vont se baigner sur les plages de Port Philip Bay, le soir admirent le firmament surnaturel où brille la Croix du Sud.They are called Olga and Hal (the girl pronounces "Hol").After two weeks - the Olympic Games are over - they do not exchange any firm promise and do not consider a second to marry clandestinely.To experience their feelings, they decide on the contrary to regain their respective countries and to reflect before meeting again at the Youth Festival, in Moscow, in August 1957.
Connolly left the first for the United States.December 4, despite the morning hour.Olga accompanied him to the airport.She was extremely pretty with her all pink cheeks, her dazzling teeth and her kid tied around her neck.
Olga embarked two days later, with the Czech team, aboard the liner Grusia.For weeks, the steam crowded with athletes and officials of the iron curtain, dragged himself endlessly by the Solomon Islands, the Carolines, Japan, to finally reach Vladivostok.Travel to Moscow by train.From there, the plane to Prague where, on January 10, the Olympic champion was welcomed as a triumphant.Radiant, she descends the first of the plane while Zatopek, a little sad, closes the walk.But elle ne souffle mot de son aventure sentimentale.
Olga returns home, in the furnished room she occupies with family friends, 8, Narodni Obrany, in Dejvice, the district of universities and military schools, with wide and quiet streets.As she has no news from Connolly, she writes to him to tell him that she has not forgotten her.The American champion responds to announce to Olga that he was going to participate in a demonstration tour in Europe.
On February 26, Connolly came from Belgrade plane.Olga, finally warned, is at the aerodrome, pale and tense, fearing that his memories, 15,000 kilometers away, would betray him.No disappointment: they throw themselves into each other's arms.In joy.of arrival, immediately we do projects.Presentation to parents who live in Libis, near Melnik, about thirty kilometers from Prague, where both father and mother are employed in a chemicals factory.Harold is immediately adopted.He talks about his mother, to whom he owes everything, and his sister, with whom he shares, in Boston, an apartment "comfortable, but not extravagant", of five rooms, where he has one day to live with Olga.
Alas!The American's residence permit comes to expire quickly.Connolly, determined to fight for her happiness, will settle in the position of expectation on the other side of the iron curtain, in Fulda, at his friend Storch.Steps at the Ministry of the Interior, audience of the President of the Republic: ultimately, the impossible occurs.On March 22, Olga Fikotova, radiant, was granted both his marriage authorization and his passport.
Five days later, in a miraculous outcome worthy of the century of speed, the triple matrimonial ceremony was to take place in the capital of Bohemia.
This Wednesday, March 27, on the occasion of a small wedding of athletes, La Prague des Habsbourg, built in its majestic situation with its fortified castle, its arrows and its domes on the two banks of the Mroupe, looked likecelebrate a day of independence.
Several thousand people, at 9 a.m., were waiting for the bride and groom under the old towers of the town hall.When the cars of the nuptial procession - three gray skoda and the black Cadillac of the Umbassador U.S., Alexis Johnston - came to line up in front of the forecourt, all the people of Prague had come down to the street.On the arm of her father, Olga appeared very large, very beautiful, barely shattered, in the white lace dress than confidence she had ordered her pretty head tilted under a large capeline, her feet of "ballerinas") in white varnish.Then came Harold, in navy blue costume, in the arms of his mother-in-law.Finally, Emil Zatopek and his wife Dana, both witnesses.The crowd, in his violent desire to ostensibly celebrating the victory of love over politics, rushed, in the midst of an indescribable melee, in the town hall.There, before the mayor, in the presence of a member of the American consulate, Harold Connolly pronounced his first "Yes, I do", Olga his first "ano" (yes), and the two newlyweds exchanged a long very cinema kiss,to the great joy of cameramen and photographers who crashed in these places.A little later, having shortened champagne with their guests, they broke their cut, according to tradition, on the sidewalk.But dehors, l'enthousiasme et la bousculade reprenaient de plus belle.
It was not until foot, sometimes even when running, that the wedding managed to make its way to the Catholic church of Tynski, through medieval worlds of the world: a scene for René Clair in exteriorsby Carol Reed.
After the Catholic ceremony, ended at 11:30 a.m., the wedding resumed its breath, its walking and its race, always pressed by the crowd pursued by overwhelmed and nasty mood police officers.She reached this crew at the Protestant Evangelical Church Salvator Kostel, the bride's parish.In the nudity of white walls and sad woodwork, there, the third marriage was then celebrated.
At the exit of the temple, under the bright sun, for the first time the nerves of Olga gave way and big tears flowed from his beautiful eyes: finally, and so quickly, however, they were married for good.
The "Broken Hearts" operation had only lasted three weeks, a record time for the iron curtain - the most beautiful Olympic victory.
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