Alison Carlson ‘77, who rowed undergraduate women’s crew at Princeton, participated in the torch relay for the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Here, she runs triumphantly through Fitzrandolph Gate.
Thirteen Princeton students and alumni are set to compete at the 2008 games in Beijing, opening Friday August 8. They will join the ranks of 86 Princetonians who have participated in the summer and winter Olympics since 1896. According to the Ivy League Beijing Olympics blog, Princeton has more athletes competing this year than any other school in the Ivy League.
Read more on the Princeton.edu website »
Photo courtesy of Princeton University Archives
what is that thing she's carrying? it sure doesn't look like a torch -- more like a fat frisbee. can someone clue me in?
Well since the 1980 Lake Placid Games were Winter Games, this photo obviously isn't from the torch relay.
More likely, she came back to Princeton the summer after...
though I'm not sure what she's carrying.
November 21, 1896
The great foot-ball game between Yale and Princeton came off this afternoon at Manhattan Field, New-York, and resulted happily in Princeton's favor. As a good Princetonian I expected to go, but unhappily the air was chill and a drizzling rain came down. So I stayed at home and was unique. There is sometimes a pleasure in not doing what all the world does. I am not cold; I really have some red blood. At the game I should have caught the enthusiasm and been carried out of myself, and that is well at times, even though it means temporarily being beside oneself and induces a suspicion of buffoonery. The game seems tobe still in the ascendant for interest and popularity; yet looking apart at forty or fifty thousand people, swarmed on banks, gazing intently upon trained athletes struggling fiercely within the lives bring strongly to mind suggestions of a reversion to the brutal combats of the Circus Maximus or Colosseum. Is there not a savagery in this gathering to the fight tobe in at the death? Is foot-ball a distinctive advance or retrogression in civilization? Is it not high time we got over war and the kicking habit? We should do better than that; we should shorten our feet and lengthen our heads. The virtues of the playing-field have been, I fancy, over praised. Let our universities ripen scholars. What is constantly wanted, what is becoming more and more a political necessity to safeguard the nation is trained intellect.
Edwin Manners....Class of 1877 from his diary