You always remember your first time. USC won its first College World Series in 1948. It made its first Final Four in 1940. It won its first college football national championship in 1928. It won its first Rose Bowl on January 1, 1923, against Penn State.
It won its first Olympic gold medal in the summer of 1912.
Fred Kelly owns that eternal place in USC and Olympic history.
If it was remarkable (and it is) that an Australian teenager named Michelle Ford continued USC’s remarkable Olympic streak of consecutive gold medals — albeit in a roundabout way — at the 1980 Olympics despite the absence of an American team on hand to compete, we have to also give due respect and attention to the person who began that incredible streak.
USC has been an Olympic powerhouse for more than 100 years. The Trojans’ gold medal factory at every summer Olympiad since 1912 in Stockholm had to start somewhere. It had to have a trail-blazing figure. Fred Kelly became that man.
Kelly was a Southern California kid through and through. A native of Beaumont and a product of Orange High School, Kelly attended USC and pursued the Olympics at a point in time when the event was a mere 16 years old. The 1912 Stockholm Olympics were merely the fifth modern Summer Games ever held. The Winter Olympics were 12 years away from being born, and no one knew at the time that these 1912 Olympics would be the last until 1920 due to World War I, which was just around the corner.
One legend was formed at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics: Jim Thorpe, on par with Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and Michael Jordan as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, won both the pentathlon AND decathlon in their Olympic debuts. The enormity and resonance of Thorpe’s achievement remain intact 108 years after the fact… but don’t let that obscure or overshadow what Fred Kelly started for USC.
Kelly and American Olympic teammate James Wendell created a slight degree of separation late in the 110-meter hurdles final. It is often the case that in a sprint race, the runner who displays the combination of timing and instinct needed to lean forward at the very end — creating forward-moving body momentum without prematurely sacrificing speed — wins the race. Sprinters know they can’t think about leaning into the tape too early; if they do that, another runner will rush by them. The timing has to be exquisite.
Kelly mastered the final forward lean and nipped Wendell by one tenth of a second.
That was USC’s first Olympic gold medal, 108 years ago.
In 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1948, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1964 (in Tokyo, the site of the rescheduled 2021 games), 1968, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 — every Summer Olympics since then — a Summer Olympian who attended USC at some point in time (not always at the time the Olympics were held) has won a gold medal.
Fred Kelly had no idea what he had started, or what his achievement would inspire in future Trojans… and that lack of knowing is what makes the moment so sweetly poignant and richly treasured, over a century later.
One wonders how long USC will continue one of the most majestic streaks in all of sports.