Aug. 20, 2010

WASHINGTON - The Georgetown University Athletics Department mourns the passing of former volunteer track & field coach Harold Connolly. A former Olympic champion in the hammer throw at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, Connolly died on Wednesday in Catonsville, Md. He was 79-years-old.

Connolly had an outstanding career in track & field and won the gold medal at the Olympics despite a withered left arm, injured during his birth and fractured 13 times as a child. His left arm grew to be four and a half inches shorter than his right and his left hand two-thirds the size of his right.

Connolly competed in four Olympics, finishing eighth in 1960 ("Too much pressure," he said) and sixth in 1964 and not qualifying for the final in 1968. In 1972, he finished fifth in the United States trials and failed to make the team.

In an event in which Americans seldom do well, he broke the world record six times, starting with 218 feet 10 inches in 1956 and ending with 233 feet 9 inches in 1965. Now, with improved training, coaching and technique, the record is more than 284 feet.

Connolly won nine United States titles in the hammer throw and three in the indoor 35-pound weight throw. In 1984, he was elected to the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. In the 1956 Olympics, wearing ballet shoes for better footing, he won with a throw of 207-3. Years later, he said: "I was emotionally removed from the scene. I knew my life would never be the same. So I was standing there when the other medalists turned toward the flags for the national anthems. They started playing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and I was stupidly still facing the stands, not the flags. I didn't even hear the anthem."

Mikhail Krivonosov of the Soviet Union, the world record holder and silver medalist, put his hand on Connolly's hip, turned him and saved the day.

Following his competitive career, Connolly moved to Washington, D.C., directing United States programs for Special Olympics International and coaching at Georgetown from 1990-96, serving as a volunteer coach.

Among the many student-athletes he worked with on the Hilltop included Kevin McMahon, a six-time All-American between 1992 and 1995. MaMahon finished second at the 1992 NCAA Championships in the hammer, eighth in the indoor 35-pound weight throw at the 1992 NCAA Championships, fourth in the same event at the 1993 NCAAs, seventh in the 1994 outdoor hammer at NCAAs, third in the 1995 outdoor hammer at the NCAAs and fourth in the indoor 35-pound weight throw at the 1995 NCAA Championships. McMahon went on to advance to the Quarterfinals of the hammer throw at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Besides his wife, Connolly is survived by four children from his first marriage: two sons, Mark, of Las Vegas, and Jim, of Marina del Rey, Calif., and two daughters, Merja Connolly Freund of Corona del Mar, Calif., and Nina Southard of Costa Mesa, Calif.; two children from his second marriage: a son, Adam, of Silver Spring, Md., and a daughter, Shannon Podduturi, of Manhattan; a stepson, Bradley Winslow, of San Jose, Calif.; and five grandchildren.

Harold Vincent Connolly was born Aug. 1, 1931, in Somerville, Mass., and raised in Brighton, Mass. He paid his own way to Boston College, where he was a mediocre shot-putter.

He graduated in 1953 and later spent 30 years as a high school teacher and vice principal in Santa Monica, Calif., and 11 years as a Special Olympics executive. After retiring in 1999, he became a traveling coach and salesman for the hammer throw and ran the promotional Web site hammerthrow.org.

Excerpts taken from the Associated Press