Everyone was broke. It was the middle of the Great Depression, a global disaster.
Thirty-seven nations struggled to send athletes to the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Some of the poorest countries sent their competitors with goods to trade instead of money.
Sixty Brazilians arrived with bags of coffee beans. By the time they sold enough to make it to L.A., they almost missed the opening ceremony.
The Cubans docked in Galveston with sacks of sugar, but found prices too low to pay their travel expenses, turned around and went home.
Every day, gymnast George Roth snuck food from the Olympic Village to his wife and newborn daughter in East Hollywood. He was unemployed and nearly starving. After winning his gold medal before 60,000 spectators, he quietly hitchhiked home.
Unlike many of the 1,332 competitors, Joseph Ignatius Lang (1911-1990), 21, didn’t have to cross the ocean. He came from Lovelock, Nevada.
At 14, Lang enrolled in a correspondence course, “How I Became a Champion and Why.” Soon, he was winning amateur boxing tournaments in Reno. He quarterbacked for the Lovelock High School football team, leading it to a state championship, played four years of basketball and competed in rodeo.
After graduation, Lang studied at Saint Mary’s College in Reno, where he became captain of the boxing team — the fighting Gaels.
The newspapers tracked the hometown hero’s progress. The Nevada State Journal noted when Joseph and his brother came home from college for weekend visits.
The NSJ also spread the word when Lang grabbed the runner-up spot in the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) tournament, qualifying for the Olympics.
“Young Lang got his muscle pounding tin in his father’s sheet metal and plumbing shop,” said a front-page story.
In the Olympic Auditorium, 85 boxers from 18 nations competed in eight weight classes- from flyweight to heavyweight. At 118 pounds, Lang was one of 10 bantamweights, the second lightest classification.
Lang won his first round by decision against Sabino Tirado, of Mexico. Carlos Pereya, an Argentinian, defaulted in the second round, due to cuts over both eyes, boosting Lang to the semifinals.
Hans Ziglarski, a Polish-German boxer, beat Lang by decision in the semifinal match.
Lang’s injuries kept him out of the third-place contest for the bronze medal. He defaulted to Jose Villanueva of the Philippines and came home in fourth place.
Ziglarski fell to Horace “Lefty” Gwynne, from Canada, the bantamweight gold medal winner. The United States had better luck in the welterweight and middleweight divisions. Edward Flynn and Carmen Barth each won gold medals.
A quote flashed across the mechanical scoreboard in the peristyle of the 1932 Summer Olympics. It’s attributed to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern games. “The important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning, but taking part. The essential thing is not conquering, but fighting well,” he said.
Joseph Ignatius Lang fought well.
