The Cal 100 -- No. 65: Guinn Smith
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 65: Guinn Smith
Cal Sports Connection: Smith won the NCAA pole vault championship in 1941 before graduating with a degree in history.
Claim to Fame: He flew cargo planes over the Himalayas during World War II then returned to track and field and won a gold medal at the 1948 London Olympics in a rain storm.
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Bob Richards knew something about being a champion. Richards won Olympics gold medals in the pole vault in 1952 and ’56 — still the only man to win the event twice at the Games — and subsequently was the face that appeared for years on the Wheaties box.
So Richards had a special appreciation for Guinn Smith, the Cal graduate who beat him and all others for the gold at the ’48 London Olympics.
Guinn Smith at Cal's Edwards Stadium.
Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics
Smith was 28 years old by then, seven years removed from winning the NCAA pole vault title for the Bears in 1941. Richards, then 22, knew that Smith had spent part of World War II flying cargo planes with supplies over the Himalayas to Chinese and Allied troops, who had been cut off by the Japanese.
He knew Smith had suffered a knee injury during the war when his plane crashed. And he may have known that Smith still was fighting that balky knee and only pursued the Olympics after substantial encouragement from family and coaches.
I wrote about Guinn Smith for the Oakland Tribune prior to the 2012 Olympics. Smith had died eight years earlier so I reached out by phone to Richards, who was a terrific interview.
He recalled the conditions that day in London, how it had rained for nine straight hours at Wembley Stadium, leaving an inch of standing water on the pole vault runway during the competition and turning the sand pit into a rock-hard landing spot.
“It was the most miserable, God-awfullest conditions ever for pole vaulting,” said Richards, who died in February of this year at the age of 97. “He was heroic, jumping 14 feet in that weather. He deserved that gold medal.”
Using a pole sent to him by Japanese vaulter Shuhei Nishida, a silver medalist from the 1936 Games, Smith retreated to the dressing room between attempts to get out of the rain and retape the end of his pole, with the sticky side facing out for a better grip.
Smith scaled 14 feet, 1 1/4 inches to become just the second Cal athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal in track and field. Relay team members aside, there hasn't been one since.
Richards saw the face of a champion — and even more — when he looked at his rival in 1948.
“He was the epitome of the Western cowboy,” Richards said. “You could see those hard eyes. I think the reason we won the war was because of guys like Guinn Smith.”
Smith wasn’t convinced he would win that day. In a 1985 interview with the Oakland Tribune, he admitted the weather worried him. “When I saw the rain, I got discouraged,” he said. “I’d never competed in the rain. I really did not expect to do well.”
But Smith, who won the 1947 U.S. national championship, had a toughness built him during the war.
A native of Texas who had grown up in Pasadena, Smith graduated from Cal with a degree in history and joined the Army in March of 1942, three months after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Smith was assigned as a pilot in the Army Air Corps, eventually rising to the rank of captain. He flew cargo planes over what was called “The Hump” of the Himalayas into China after the Japanese cut off the Burma Road, a crucial supply route.
The daily airlift delivered more than 650,000 tons of medical supplies, fuel, ammunition and food to troops. Flying planes that weren’t pressurized or outfitted with navigation equipment, Smith took off from makeshift runways in India, usually at night, and made the dangerous 530-mile trek that cost the Allies nearly 600 planes and more than 1,000 airmen over 3 1/2 years.
Guinn Smith's son, Mark Smith, told me at the time that his father rarely talked about his experiences in the war. “He never tried to be a hero.”
Even though he was one.
Cover photo of 1948 Olympic pole vault champion Guinn Smith courtesy of Cal Athletics
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo