whatwhatwhat --
I am confident that the name you are looking for is Ken Craft. I have
not been able to definitively place him at the 1972 Summer Olympics,
but the circumstantial evidence that he is your man is overwhelming.
1. Craft was president of USA Wrestling from 1972-1976. "USA
Wrestling is the National Governing Body for the sport of amateur
wrestling in the United States and, as such, is its representative to
the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and to the International
Wrestling Federation (FILA)." Here is a link to the Web page that
lists Craft as the president of the organization in 1972:
Olympic-USA: Wrestling
http://www.olympic-usa.org/sports2/wr/az_over.html
2. Craft was retained by ABC Sports for color coverage of televised
NCAA wrestling events both before and after 1972, and he worked with
Frank Gifford.
Here is a "Q. and A." posted on the Web site of Wrestling
International Newsmagazine on August 12, 2002:
"ABC’s 'Wide World of Sports' aired the 1977 NCAA wrestling
championship finals with Ken Kraft handling the “color” and which
current sports broadcaster at the microphone? Frank Gifford.":
Wrestling International Newsmagazine: Trivia Archives (Q and As in
reverse chronological order)
http://www.win-magazine.com/active/archives/Trivia%20Archives.html
Here is a reference to a tape "of the 1970 Owings-Gable match," which
is archived at the Wrestling Hall of Fame:
"Ken Kraft, Northwestern senior athletic director and former wrestling
coach, was on the sideline, working as a broadcaster for ABC. He saw a
classic."
Wrestling Classics (about halfway down the page)
http://www.wrestlingclassics.com/wawli/Nos.524-535.htm
Finally, here is an excerpt from a report on the 1968 NCAA wrestling
championships at Penn State:
"ABC-TV taped the highlights of the 1968 tournament. Keith Jackson,
who later became the network's No. 1 college football broadcaster, was
the main commentator in '68 with Northwestern head coach Ken Kraft
serving as his color man."
Penn State Department of Statistics (about halfway down the page)
http://www.stat.psu.edu/~harrison/317cdt.html
Additional Information:
Ken Craft was an extraordinarily successful wrestling coach at
Northwestern University for at least 30 years. He was admitted to the
National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1997:
Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum: Ken Craft
http://www.wrestlinghalloffame.org/champions/?names&coach=143
Craft was named "Man of the Year" by USA Wrestling in 1976:
TheMat.com: USA Wrestling
http://www.themat.com/newusaw/pressdetail.asp?aid=8050
Search Strategy:
This was a particularly tough one. I first tried several Google
searches using various combinations of the terms "ken", "olympics",
"1972", "NCAA", "wrestling", and many others. The results were too
numerous to be helpful in zeroing in your answer.
The Google search that hit pay dirt used the following terms:
ken -chertow olympic OR olympics wrestling 1972
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=ken+-chertow+olympic+OR+olympics+wrestling++1972&btnG=Google+Search
(I directed the search to exclude the term "Chertow" because "Ken
Chertow" is a prominent college wrestling figure whom I had found in
earlier searches to be the wrong guy.)
The first site returned as a search result zeroed me on Ken Craft. I
then conducted the following simple Google searches to get information
about Mr. Craft:
"ken craft" wrestling
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22ken+kraft%22+wrestling
"ken craft" wrestling abc
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22ken+kraft%22+wrestling+abc
I am very confident that Ken Craft is your man, and I am happy to have
been able to come up with your answer in plenty of time. If any of
the information is unclear, please ask for clarification before rating
the answer.
markj-ga |
