Sports

Merrick Native Still Rejects Olympic Medal

Kevin Joyce was captain of the U.S. basketball team that believes they were cheated out of gold medal in Munich in 1972.

Merrick Native and current Long Beach resident Kevin Joyce is featured in “Stolen Glory,” a newly published book about the U.S. basketball team that lost a controversial game to the Soviet Union at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Joyce and his teammates believe they were cheated out of gold medals and still refuse to accept their silver medals after Aleksandr Belov scored a basket on the last of three chances the Soviets were given in the final seconds of a game they won, 51-50. This, after Joyce, a guard and captain of the team, helped lead a comeback from a 10-point deficit, coming within a point with 38 seconds left on the clock.

Mike Brewster co-authored "Stolen Glory" with Donald Gallagher, who is lobbying to have the International Olympic Committee issue duplicate gold medals to Joyce and his teammates, according to Newsday. Joyce, 61, who works as a Wall Street trader, said about his boyhood dream:

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To be an Olympian was a goal of mine since I was in the fifth grade. At the time, I was an admirer of Jim Thorpe. I knew when I went to college, I fell into the right year. At the time, they were taking guys after their junior year.

“Stolen Glory” was released by gmbooks.com last month. A description of the book reads: 

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To this day, 40 years after that final buzzer sounded, 12 silver medals lay unclaimed in a storage room maintained for the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. History says those silver medals belong to the Americans. Doug Collins and his teammates say that "history" is mistaken.

What do you think about his decision to reject the medal? Tell us in the comments.


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