Running in Borrowed Shoes - by Catherine Baker Nicholson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Running in Borrowed Shoes journeys with the United States Track and Field Team from the tryouts in Los Angeles to the 1952 Olympics and afterwards, as the Olympians traveled and competed in local competitions throughout a Europe still recovering from World War II. Running in Borrowed Shoes focuses on pivotal days in the life of Thane Baker, who won silver in 1952 and gold in the 1956 games. Running in Borrowed Shoes relates his first triumph, when the young Kansan overcame physical, educational, and financial obstacles to compete in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. When an accident at work left the fourteen-year-old with a piece of metal lodged under a kneecap, Thane's doctors told him he would never run again. But when a legendary coach at Kansas University admitted Thane to the team, Thane understood that his tenacity and hard work in the intervening years had paid off. Thane Baker's daughter Catherine Nicholson worked with her father to record his story. Seen through twenty-year-old Thane Baker's eyes, Running in Borrowed Shoes plunges the reader into the world of the young American athletes who competed in the first Olympics to reach a wide US audience through television. Primitive by today's standards, Helsinki's 1952 Olympic Village is brought into sharp focus, as are the characters who represented a USA fearful of Communism and still under the grip of Jim Crow. The Olympic competitions themselves, and Thane's sometimes risky travels throughout war-torn Europe, are rendered in acute detail by a young athlete relating his most unforgettable experience"--

Book Synopsis

Thane Baker grew up in the Kansas Dust Bowl. An Olympic medal winner from his small town gave seven-year-old Thane hopes for his own Olympic glory. Yet a work injury at age fourteen shoved steel behind his kneecap and ended his dreams. When new on his college campus, a coach allowed Thane to walk onto the track team. Three years later, Thane earned an unexpected berth on the 1952 United States Olympic Track and Field Team and traveled to New York City, Helsinki, Finland, and other European cities for competitions. Friendships grew between the American athletes in their six weeks together. Together, they faced hurdles of financial insecurity, racial inequality, chilly winds, and inadequate diets as they confronted the Soviet Union for the first time. Despite the obstacles, Thane, wearing borrowed socks and borrowed shoes, returned to his small town with an Olympic medal, forever changed by his experiences.

Review Quotes

Running in Borrowed Shoes gives an interesting account of the experiences of American Olympic athletes while representing their country abroad in the 1950's. I found the text vividly written as well as thoroughly researched and richly documented. This is perhaps the most comprehensive account we have seen about the Helsinki Olympic Games seen through the eyes of a foreign athlete.

Vesa Tikander, Special Researcher, Sports Museum of Finland, Helsinki

Running in Borrowed Shoes is finely textured with the sense of what it was like to grow up during those trying years of Depression and war, and how friendships and community nevertheless provided hope and inspiration. Lovingly recreated by Catherine Baker Nicholson and carefully vetted by Thane Baker himself, this book provides rich detail from an archive of memorabilia, contemporaneous news accounts, interviews with surviving Olympians from the 1952 team and with descendants of Olympians now deceased.

Beautifully written and carefully documented . . . I found much here to admire and to enjoy.

Teresa Sullivan, President Emerita and Professor, University of Virginia