Games are not all that's golden

Pittsburg State associate professor Al Ortolani has been outspoken during the Summer Olympics about the state of the Olympic games.

He would know.

Ortolani, as the head trainer for the U.S. National Swimming team, came away with a gold medal during the 1980 Hawaii International Meet.

All just because of the American boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Ortolani, whose name graces the PSU baseball field, he maintains his stance about the Olympics not being about winning or losing.

“I still feel that way,” Ortolani said. “When I started out with U.S. swimming back in 1976 it was still amateur athletics, and we didn’t have a Kobe Bryant on the team or anything like that.”

“I believe it should still be that way, but we would not win anything,” Ortolani said. “You knew that the Russians would have men on their basketball team that were in a basketball school since they were 8 on up to 44 and you can’t beat those guys, so that is why we had to go to professionals.”

Nonetheless, Ortolani says he still sits at home, watching the XXIX Summer Olympics in Beijing, China and roots for everyone.

“I do it but I don’t like it,” Ortolani said.

Looking at Ortolani’s resume one might never know how he got started.

He has been the trainer for the 1973 World University Games, 1976 U.S. Olympics, as well as the 1977 and 1978 Girl’s Cup.

All that came from one moment inside the Weede Natatorium at Pitt State.

“When Joe Murphy was our line coach, and we had one of the nicest pools around, we had an NAIA meet here,” Ortolani said. “The guy that was the head official approached me and asked if I would be interested in working with the 1976 Olympic team.”

At that moment, Ortolani was not sure what his assignment would be. Whether it would be for basketball, track and field or even swimming.

“All of the big-name trainers picked what they wanted and that left swimming,” Ortolani said. “I just said that I’ll do it.”

Ortolani quickly learned that being the trainer for a swimming team was not going to be easy.

“If I had 90 people on the team, I would rub some of them down at 6 a.m. and then all of them down before we went to the pool at noon,” Ortolani said. “I would rub them down again before they went to bed and my hands would be so shaky that I could not even get a fork and knife in my mouth.”

Through all of that, Ortolani garnered the nickname “Magic Fingers.”

“It was from rubbing them all down like crazy,” Ortolani said. “They thought that all of those rub-downs help them win.”

He even still holds bitter feelings about the boycott that kept the U.S. Olympic team out of the Moscow Games.

“President (Jimmy) Carter, in his infinite wisdom, thought that we should not go because Russia was trying to occupy Afghanistan,” Ortolani said. “Carter said that we were not going to send our team, and we also put out a wheat embargo, and I could not stand that either.”

It was Carter that presented Ortolani with his gold medal after the team came back from Hawaii.

Ortolani had no problem letting Carter know personally his feelings about the boycott.

“I would not let his hand go,” Ortolani said about shaking Carter’s hand upon getting his medal. “I was polite but I wanted to put in my two cents.

“I was feeling for the kids that I was training with because it was the last time in their life they could do something like participating in the Olympics,” Ortolani said.

That may be the one thing, over the course of his years in athletics, that Ortolani regrets.

“I would not stand on a grandstand and say I want amateur athletics back because it would not do me a bit of good,” Ortolani said.

After the 1980 Olympics, Ortolani continued as a trainer through the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame in 1985.

He said he has one person to thank for his opportunities.

“I could not have done any of this without my wife (Virgina) taking care of our five kids,” Ortolani said. “She is a knockout and they should have her on a throne for what she has done.”

Being a trainer took Ortolani from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Montreal, Canada, and from Romania to Germany.

He has also met prominent athletes like Dara Torres, who he trained for the 1984 Games.
Throughout the years, Ortolani has been a close watcher of swimming, especially during the Olympics.

“The reason why they have swimming for the first eight days of the Olympics is so that the U.S. can get their medals and get the other teams down in the dumps,” Ortolani said. “It is really a psychological effect on the other teams.”

Even the training has evolved over the years. Ortolani said the reason for so many world records at the Beijing Olympics can be traced back to athletic training.

“It has gone from swimming two laps and see you tomorrow to swimming 102 laps and being on a certain type of food and living,” Ortolani said. “It dictates your life and you have to be U.S. swimming and I guess I am opposed to that too.”

Aside from swimming, Ortolani has been the head baseball coach for the Gorilla baseball team and is now still teaching and a trainer for the team he coached at Pitt State for so many years.

“I have to keep going,” Ortolani said. “I just can’t be sitting around doing nothing.”

Matthew Clark can be reached at matthew.clark@morningsun.net or at 620-231-2600, Ext. 140.