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04/30/2009 Entry: "5/1/2009: Letter from Charles A. Smith to Joe Roark May 5, 1988, Part 1"

Letter from Charles A. Smith to Joe Roark May 5, 1988

Dear Joe,

Thanks for yours of the 2nd which reached me yesterday, the 4th.

Thanks for the address of SKI . I have often wondered where the old sod was living. The Reverend has his address, but somehow could never lay his hands on it when I asked for it. Just telling, not criticizing. I shall indeed drop the gritty old sod a line or three. I also hope he replies.

SKI was one of the two men Hoffie NEVER MESSED WITH- the other being John Davis. Both a little too good with their hands for Hoffie's taste. Hoffie preferred them shorter and lighter than he, as in Mark Berry and Orville Grabeel, although in the latter he caught a Tartar. I am told they trounced one another up one side of the street and down the other for over an hour, until some merciful bloke busted it up.

Re the lifting of the Apollon wheels. These as you know, were not really TRAIN wheels but wheels and a thick axle off some type of trolley, weighing so tis said, 364 pounds.

Now. There are several 'stories' about the lifting of these wheels and they may interest you. We are told that Louis Uni, as was Apollon's proper cognomen, LIFTED them. But we are told NOWHERE HOW HE LIFTED THEM. WE are not told if this was done clean and jerk style or continental and jerk style.

Although I have been through Desbonnet's book, 'Les Rois de la Force' I can't find anywhere HOW Uni lifted them. Not of course this means naught since my knowledge of French has dimmed somewhat with the passing of the years.

A lift overhead of 364 pounds was so extraordinary, even for those days that I feel sure we would have had some description of how it was done. Remember the worlds clean and jerk record didn't reach 364-3/4 until the early 1930's and by El Said Nossier, the Egyptian heavyweight. True, Swaboda (sic) and Grafl CONTINENTALLED way over 364 in the late 1890's and early 1900's but this is as I say was off a bit and EVERYONE HEARD OF IT. But no where are we told how Uni did it, or should I say nowhere can I, personally, find out how he did it.

Then we come to the next bloke alleged to have lifted the wheels, Rigoulot. He had to train for eight months before he is said to have accomplished the feat. Rigoulot, as you may have heard, was the first to clean and jerk 400 and that's ALL you are told. You are NOT told he used a special bar with a very long bar and loads of whip to it.

Comes Davis. John did clean and jerk the wheels. But he had such small hands that he had to grab hold of the bar in the usual way with one hand, then reverse or supinate the palm of the other hand and hook his wrist under the bar, pulling it in, thus swivelling the left hand as it racked in at the shoulders. He then jerked the bar overhead, was given the signal to lower it, blacked out at that moment, dropping the bar and BENDING THE AXLE.

Ski comes along in October of 1954, at Lille, France, cleans the bar with the shaft STILL BENT, and jerks it three times. DOug Hepburn said he would clean and PRESS the bar and said so in an article I wrote for him in one of Weider's pot boilers- I think it MAY have been Mr. America Olympic Lifter Mag, but who can recall with accuracy after more than 35 years. I am sure you can look up the article with your great filing system.

The Reverend did mention something to me about Kaz and getting the Apollon wheels out of mothballs---(didn't know moths had balls)---or ball bearings or whatever they are stored in, but little else or else it has slipped my memory. My memory is fading fast and I guess the next disaster to fall will be my girl friend will start complaining.

Yes, Ski was a gritty character, but I liked him, for what that is worth. I can recall once when I was the ref and redded him for a knee touch. I knew SKI went low in his snatches and I look for the white pressure patch on his knee and sure enough there it was, so I redded him. Ski looked at me and ,with a smile on his clock to make it legitimate, suggested I was full of the substance food turns into when ingested, digested and di