Olga Fikotová Connolly Obituary

Olga Fikotová Connolly Obituary

by David Wallechinsky

(Photo: Elijah Wallechinsky)

Competing for Czechoslovakia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Olga Fikotová earned the gold medal in the discus throw only two years after taking up the event. She went on to compete in four more Olympics while representing the United States. She was a strong proponent of the Olympic Movement and became internationally famous as a result of her Cold War-era romance with an American Olympic champion, Harold Connolly. She died, age 91, 12 April 2024.

Born in Prague, 13 November 1932, Fikotová was a natural athlete who played goalkeeper on the national team handball squad and center on the national basketball team. At the same time, she was a medical student pursuing post-graduate studies. She wanted to try an individual event and became interested in either the javelin or discus. Someone recommended that she consult Dana and Emil Zátopek, who had both won gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Dana in the javelin throw. Fikotová went to where they trained and introduced herself. Dana felt her shoulders and declared that she had the wrong bone configuration for the javelin, but the discus would be fine. Emil said, “Throw the discus and we’ll all go to Melbourne to the Olympic Games.” Dana removed her green velour sweatshirt and gave it to Fikotová. She said, “I competed with this sweatshirt in the 1952 Olympic Games. But now you use it. You practice in it, and you’ll make the Olympic team for 1956.”

Fikotová began training with Otakar Jandera, who told her, “You have plenty of strength. All you need is to get rhythm.” So he played The Blue Danube over and over again while she practiced turning.

Her first international competition was at the World Festival of Youth and Sport in Warsaw in 1955. It was the first time she was able to use a new discus. But it was shiny and slippery, and it kept slipping out of her hand. Consequently, she failed to qualify for the final. That night she went back to the field and sat alone near the discus circle to try to analyze why she had done so poorly.  Out of the shadows appeared some women speaking Russian, including Nina Romashkova, the defending Olympic discus champion. She asked Fikotová, “What are you doing here?” Fikotová replied, “I’m feeling badly because I did so badly and I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong.” Romashkova told her, “You’re too skinny, but I think I can help you. Come in the morning at 10:00 and I’ll tell you something about training.” When Fikotová told her teammates that Romashkova offered to train her, they told her, “You can’t trust the Russians. She won’t even be there.” But Romashkova was there. She took Fikotová through her personal workout and taught her her own techniques. She even gave Fikotová a written-out training plan. And she said, “I think you can be good enough to meet me in Melbourne.”

Olga Fikotová did make it to the Melbourne Olympics (four days by turbo jet). She led the qualifying round with Romashkova second. The final was held a couple hours later. Fikotová won with a fifth round throw of an Olympic record of 53.69 metres. Romashkova placed third. After the medal ceremony, Fikotová approached Romashkova and thanked her. Romashkova told her, “I’m so proud of you.”

Meanwhile, Olga had met a hammer thrower from the United States, Harold Connolly, and the two fell in love. After she won her gold medal, she gave Harold a little bear she kept as a good luck companion. He said he didn’t need any good luck, but he would care for the bear until he came back with his own gold medal … which he did.

Harold wanted to marry Olga as soon as possible. Because this was the era of the Cold War, the couple had to fight through a lot of obstacles. But eventually they were given permission to conduct a wedding in Prague on the condition that there be no official announcements or press releases and that it be held mid-week, so as not to “stir the crowds.” But on the day of their wedding, the Old Town Square was so packed with people that they could not get near it by car. People had found out about the wedding by word-of-mouth, and 30,000 people were there to cheer for them as a symbol that love could conquer political differences. Dana and Emil Zátopek served as maid-of-honor and best man.

Olga and Harold moved to the United States, but Olga wanted to continue competing for Czechoslovakia. However, in 1959, she received a letter from the Czech Olympic Committee saying she could no longer compete for Czechoslovakia because she had stopped living there. So, she applied for U.S. citizenship and represented the United States in the discus at the next four Olympics.

Olga and Harold had four children and divorced in 1975.

In 1972, Olga had an Olympic experience that matched her 1956 Olympic victory. She was chosen by her teammates to carry the U.S. flag at the Opening Ceremony. She was the captain of the women’s athletics team. At a meeting of all the team captains, she was elected to be the flag-bearer. The leaders of the United States Olympic Committee were not pleased with the choice because Olga had been a vocal opponent of the U.S. war in Vietnam. They asked for a re-vote, and the team leaders voted again for Olga. As she explained, “When I carried the flag, it was like being in another dimension—it was kind of like that longest throw in the Melbourne Olympics. It was just me and the flag, and the flag of the American people walks along with the flags of all the people in the world.”

In 2015, I interviewed Olga Connolly for the International Olympic Committee’s Words of Olympians project. She was working as a fitness specialist and exercise therapist for the faculty and administration of the University of California, Irvine. She was 82 years old.

She told me, “Any athlete who wants to be really good has to study their own body. Our bodies are 11 systems working together like a magnificent orchestra of nature’s engineering. Every athlete should be taught and study that.”

She added that for her personally, “The Olympic experience in every respect opened the world for me, made me what I am today … a human being. At the Olympic Games you’re not the representative of a political regime. You are a representative of humanity, of what humans can do, to see what joy there can be in our human family.”

The last lines in Olga Connolly’s autobiography, Rings of Destiny, are, “We have matured to realize that it was neither the medals and the pageantry, nor the flags and the elevation of one nation above another, that made the Olympics so universally stirring. We see the splendor of the Olympic movement in its offer of hope, and if men will summon the courage to find one another despite the barriers between them, they will discover they can compete with honor and live in peace.”