Letting go of this weekend’s Penn Relays, canceled by COVID-19 for the first time in their 125-year history, will sting harshly.
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00:00 For the first time in 125 years, the Penn Relays were canceled.
00:08 To cover that, I'm joined by Alex Pruitt, who covered it for today's Daily Cover.
00:12 Alex, a lot of history involved in those Penn Relays.
00:15 Yeah, dating back to 1895.
00:18 It's been running continuously even through World War I and World War II.
00:22 In World War I, they were able to, you know, still a little bit of reduced participation,
00:27 but they held events for servicemen ranging from, I think there was a bayonet charge and
00:32 a bugle contest.
00:33 World War II is where, really, you can pinpoint the start of how the Penn Relays were shaped
00:39 into what it is today, which is an extremely multicultural international event.
00:44 This year would have marked the 100th anniversary of the first participation of an HBCU program.
00:49 In the '40s and shortly thereafter, it was really marked by dominance of HBCUs from the
00:53 South at the Penn Relays, starting in 1942 when Xavier from New Orleans, six years after
01:01 Jesse Owen stars in Berlin, they have become the first HBCU to win a Relays at the Penn
01:06 Relays, and a prestigious event that one of its surviving members, Herb Douglas, the oldest
01:11 African-American Olympic medalist in the world, he walked me through as well.
01:18 You know, it's interesting because it must be really hard for the running community because
01:22 running has been a sort of solace for a lot of people in the midst of the coronavirus
01:27 pandemic.
01:28 Yeah, that's a really good point.
01:29 I spoke with a woman, June Griffith Collison, a Guyanese Olympian and the mother of NBA
01:35 point guard Darren Collison, as it happens.
01:38 She starred in the 1979 Penn Relays.
01:40 It was the first year that they had a full day dedicated to women events, and now she's
01:45 the president of San Bernardino Hospital all the way out in California, where they're obviously,
01:49 like everyone else in the country, dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
01:53 She really put it in perspective.
01:55 The sporting events across the country and all public gatherings had to be canceled.
02:00 There was no doubt about that from a public health perspective, but she also shared she
02:05 had only been back one time since running there in '79, and she remembered just how
02:10 surprised she was that so many people returned there, how many competitors she had seen from
02:14 her own days at the Penn Relays that were showing up and kind of reminiscing about their
02:18 time.
02:19 It really has that kind of close-knit family atmosphere.
02:21 They call it the Penn Relay Carnival because of all the tents that set up in the infield
02:25 of the stadium and also kind of the spectacle around it, vendors in the streets and fans
02:30 in the stands and flags waving.
02:32 There's an annual step dance that one of the fraternities puts on every Saturday night
02:36 at Penn.
02:37 It really does transcend just kind of what happens there out there on the track and field.
02:41 Alex, appreciate your time, as always.
02:43 Yeah, thank you much.
02:44 Bye.
02:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]