Michael Ceraolo- A Poem

Modern Olympian Ode #4 (1900,1904,1906,1908):  The Human Frog

Said nickname was given him by the French

at the first of those games listed above,

no doubt meant to be a high compliment

no matter how it sounds to us today

And Ray Ewry truly merited

any and all such compliments

He would be the first of many

who would overcome childhood illness,

in his case polio,

to become a champion athlete

The physical therapy he went through

just so he could walk unaided again

went well beyond that in its results,

courtesy of an unknown she,

and would still be state of the art today

The record:

ten individual events entered,

ten gold medals won

(the International Olympic Committee,

never one to pass up an opportunity

for baffling bureaucratic bullshit,

today pretends the 1906 Games didn't happen,

or were 'unofficial',

or whatever the current obfuscation is,

despite the fact that the return to Greece

went a long way toward restoring Olympism

after the fiascoes of 1900 and 1904)

His nickname came about because of his prowess

in the three standing jumps:  long, high, and triple

(long jump and high jump conducted

in all four Olympics listed above,

triple jump only in the first two)

Said jumps were discontinued as Olympic events

after 1912,

but Ewry's once-crippled legs,

remade into amazing springs,

produced distances that today's

pro football and basketball players,

usually hyped as the greatest athletes,

have yet to equal a century later