Our Olympians dazzled audiences in years past

NORTH CANAAN — The 2010 Olympic winter games in Vancouver could prove to be a banner year for the United States. As medals were handed out after competition earlier this week, the U.S. marked a commanding lead in the medals count.

If that lead can be maintained through the last of the events this Sunday, it will be the first time that feat was accomplished since 1932. The winter games were held in Lake Placid, N.Y., that year — and they are also memorable to Northwest Corner residents, because there were so many area athletes who took part in the games.

Olle Zetterstrom of North Canaan and Richard Parsons of Salisbury both competed in cross-country skiing that year. They didn’t bring home any medals, but they did get a chance to make it into the Olympic history books, according to Zetterstrom’s son, Tom, who still lives in the family home here.

Olle Zetterstrom was born in Sweden in 1901.

“He grew up and competed in Ostersund, in northern Sweden, an area known for its cross-country and biathlon skiing,� his son recalled. “As a child, Olle skied across a lake to get to school throughout the winter. Skiing was transportation.�

Zetterstrom died in 1968.

Parsons was born in Salisbury in 1910 and died there in 1999. He also competed in the 1936 winter games in Bavaria, Germany. In addition to individual races, Parsons competed in the four-man cross-country relay. The team placed 11th.

“He was the fastest guy on the U.S. team,� Tom Zetterstrom said. “They both competed in the 18k race and the 50k race, in 1932. In the 18k, Olle was the fastest American and beat Parsons. In the 50k, Parsons was the fastest American and beat Olle.�

Though the Northwest Corner is modest in size, it has made a large contribution to the Olympic and Junior Olympic games. There have been many athletes through the years who have competed in all different kinds of skiing (including, of course, ski jumping), as well as in sports such as white water paddling (Jamie McEwan, a Salisbury resident, won the first U.S. Olympic Whitewater medal in 1972) and the biathlon.

Olle Zetterstrom was modest about his Olympic experience, his son said. The story he told most often was about how he sharpened blades for figure skating icon Sonja Henie. The Norwegian skater, who later became a Hollywood film star, won her first gold medal in 1928 at the age of 15. She took home gold again in 1932 and 1936.

Back then, Tom Zetterstrom said, people did things by hand, and they pitched in with whatever skills they had, even at the Olympics. His father, as it turned out, was (almost) as good at honing skate blades as he was at racing through the snow.

The 1932 games brought together 231 men and 21 women from 17 nations. Not among them were some of America’s biggest rivals in the modern games: Russia, the Koreas and China.

In terms of events, those 1932 winter games were not much different than they are today. There were 14 events including Nordic skiing, speed skating, figure skating, bobsleigh (as it was called) and ice hockey. Demonstration sports that year were sled dog racing, women’s speed skating and curling.

Curling, an official sport at the 1924 games, recently made an Olympic comeback. (For more on curling, see Page A11.)

Sled dog racing, on the other hand, never made it as an Olympic sport.

Zetterstrom noted that the biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing with target shooting, was developed after World War II. Many of the first participants had fought during the war.

d 10th Mountain Division.  There is at least one veteran of the 10th Mountain Division who lives in the Northwest Corner — and Salisbury’s John Harney Jr. competed in the biathlon at the Junior Olympics when he was a teen.