Britton Chance, an emeritus professor of biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania , brought home the gold 44 years ago. Nowadays, he uses his expertise as a biophysicist to help other athletes in their quest for the Olympics' top medal.

Chance's latest contribution, the Runman, is an apparatus that measures the oxygenation of the blood inside critical muscles of a racing athlete. In appearance, the Runman looks like a Walkman--hence the name. It hooks on to any belt. Lamps and detectors on the device are attached to the skin with tape. A computer chip inside the Runman is programmed to record chemical changes that occur inside an athlete's muscle during a race.

Ice skaters in Lake Placid and Texas have already used the Runman, and one of the Chinese Olympic sprinters participating in Atlanta is presently testing the device. "We hope trainers will eventually use the Runman to maximize the performance of their athletes," Chance said. "Maybe four or five years from now more elite athletes will be using it for clues on how to change their mechanics to improve performance. These days shaving fractions of a second here and there can be the difference between gold and silver medals."

Chance knows that from experience. "I had been a champion of sailboats in New Jersey," he said. "My dream, as that of any other athlete in competitive sports, was to win gold in the Olympics. Then Bill Carr, my classmate and fraternity brother from Penn, won gold in the 400 meters in the 1932 Olympics. He became a great inspiration for me."

The outbreak of World War II prevented Chance from following Carr's lead. Because of the war, the Olympics were suspended after 1936.

Although Chance couldn't prove his athletic prowess, he did demonstrate his scientific ability during World War II. Soon after the battles began, he was recruited for his expertise in physics to do radar research for the military. He worked on the radar project until 1946, a year after the fighting ended. The first postwar Olympics were held two years later in London.

Chance couldn't make the 1948 Olympics. But not all was lost. In 1947, he got a Guggenheim fellowship to do scientific research in Sweden --not far from Helsinki, Finland, the site of the 1952 games.

"This was my last chance to be an Olympian," Chance said. "The place was right for me, but I still needed a boat, a crew, and training to qualify to represent my country."

The Olympic Committee announced in 1951 that 5.5-meter keel sailboats would be raced in Helsinki. The United States had never competed in the 5.5-meter category .

Chance ordered a 5.5-meter boat and registered it to race in the Genoa Winter Regatta in Italy . He hoped that doing well in Genoa would qualify him and his boat to represent the United States in Helsinki.

Chance and his borrowed Swedish-Italian-American crew not only qualified, they won the regatta. It was a hard-earned victory. Chance's sailboat came barely one week before the competition. During the race, it snowed, and there were heavy winds. And Chance hardly knew his shipmates. "I arrived in Genoa to race with a strange crew, in strange waters," he said.

After the Genoa Winter Regatta, the winning vessel was sent to Sweden, where Chance finished training for the Olympics. A week before the opening of the games, Chance and his now all-American crew set sail towards the dangerous northeast waters that lead to Helsinki.

The trip put the sailors within 10 miles of a Soviet base for nuclear missiles. The Soviets were very secretive about that installation and would arrest the crew of any boat coming close to it. The Soviets had to be sure nobody was spying on them, so they would detain any captured crew for a minimum of two weeks.

Chance and his crew were flying the American flag and trying to stay as far as possible from the Russian rocket base. But sailboats are largely at the mercy of wind and currents.

"As we were passing the Soviet base, the wind dropped and the current kept pushing us towards the stakes the Soviets had placed to mark their jurisdiction," Chance recalled. "As we were hopelessly approaching the Soviet territory and a Soviet chase gunboat was approaching to arrest us, a Finn gunboat appeared out of the blue and beat the Russians to catch us. They threw us a line and towed us out to safety."

The rescued Americans made it to Helsinki, where the favorites to win the 5.5-meter event were the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes and the Italians. The competition consisted of seven races, with the worst performance being eliminated from the final score of each boat.

In the first race, the Americans finished fourth. They won the second race. Then, in the third race, disaster struck.

"We were fourth in that race when a strong wind broke the tip of our mast," Chance remembered. "We struggled to finish the race and finished 10th that day. By the time we returned to the pier, it was 5 p.m. We had to find a welder and fix the mast that same day because we were supposed to be at the gathering point for the next race at 8 a.m. the next day. We managed to get a welder, and he worked until midnight to get the mast fixed. That night we went to bed totally exhausted."

The next day, the Americans made it to the gathering point on time, but they were weary and worn from the previous day's catastrophe. They placed 11th in the race--due to a lack of sleep. Their quest for a medal had grown a little more distant, although not completely out of reach.

In the fifth race, the Americans placed third. Even more important, the leading Norwegians placed 10th. The Americans' dreams for gold were still alive--albeit barely.

In the sixth race, Chance and his crew finished 26 seconds ahead of the Norwegians. This set the stage for the nerve-wracking final race. To win gold, the Americans would not only have to finish first, but the Norwegians would have to place fourth or worse.

It was a seven-mile-long race, and the Americans crossed the finish line one minute and 34 seconds ahead of everybody else. Second place was hotly contested by a bunch of boats that included the Norwegians. The boats in that group crossed the finish line within seconds of each other. The Finns were slightly ahead, followed by the Britons. The Norwegians placed fourth. The Americans had won the gold. At age 39, Chance had achieved his Olympic goal.

"It was very emotional to be able to come through for the U.S.A.," he said. "But it was also a harrowing experience, and I was drained."

Chance enjoyed the Olympics so much, he decided to stay connected to them--but not as a competitor. For the next Olympic games, he trained the U.S.A. 5.5-meter sailboat crew, and they won gold. Another Olympic team he trained eight years later won bronze.

Many ex-athletes talk about how the discipline they acquired in sports helped them succeed in other professions. Britton Chance, on the contrary, thanks science for many of his achievements in sports. That's why he treasures his U.S. National Medal of Science as much as his Olympic gold medal.

"I've dedicated my life to making very precise measurements and experiments," he said. "That's the same thing I've done to maximize the speed of my boats under different weather conditions. I like to think of it as scientific sailing."

Return to Compass Features for July 16, 1996