大学英语精读听力第四册 unit4

[00:00.00]Unit Four  Text
[00:24.14]Jim Thorpe, an American Indian,
[00:26.93]is generally accepted as the greatest all-round athlete of the first half of the 20th century
[00:33.04]Yet the man, who brought glory to his nation had a heartbreaking life.
[00:38.58]What caused his sadness and poverty?
[00:41.87]JIM THORPE    Steve Gelman
[00:45.35]The railroad station was jammed.
[00:47.91]Students from Lafayette College were crowding onto the train platform
[00:52.58]eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Carlisle Indian School's track and field squad.
[00:58.12]No one would have believed it a few months earlier.
[01:01.18]A school that nobody had heard of was suddenly beating big,famous colleges in track meets
[01:07.53]Surely these Carlisle athletes would come charging off the train,
[01:11.78]one after another, like a Marine battalion.
[01:14.81]The train finally arrived and two young men
[01:18.26]--one big and broad, the other small and slight--stepped onto the platform.
[01:23.64]"Where's the track team?" a Lafayette student asked.
[01:27.48]"This is the team," replied the big fellow.
[01:30.54]"Just the two of you?"
[01:32.26]"Nope, just me," said the big fellow.
[01:34.80]"This little guy is the manager."
[01:37.07]The Lafayette students shook their heads in wonder.
[01:40.83]Somebody must be playing a joke on them.
[01:43.18]If this big fellow was the whole Carlisle track team,
[01:46.55]he would be competing against an entire Lafayette squad.
[01:49.76]He did.
[01:49.83]He ran sprints, he ran hurdles, he ran distance races.
[01:53.77]He high-jumped, he broad-jumped.
[01:55.89]He threw the javelin and the shot.
[01:58.21]Finishing first in eight events, the big fellow beat the whole Lafayette team.
[02:04.17]The big fellow was Jim Thorpe,
[02:06.91]the greatest American athlete of modern times.
[02:10.10]He was born on May 28,1888, in a two room farmhouse near Prague, Oklahoma.
[02:16.47]His parents were members of the Sac and Fox Indian tribe
[02:18.13]and he was a direct descendant of the famous warrior chief, Black Hawk.
[02:17.13]As a Sac and Fox, Jim had the colorful Indian name Wa-Tho-Huck,
[02:24.40]which, translated, means Bright Path.
[02:27.54]But being born an Indian, his path was not so bright.
[02:31.98]Although he had the opportunity to hunt and fish with great Indian outdoorsmen,
[02:37.05]he was denied opportunity in other ways.
[02:39.61]The United States government controlled the lives of American Indians and,
[02:43.63]unlike other people, Indians did not automatically become citizens.
[02:48.23]It was almost impossible for an Indian to gain even a fair education
[02:52.98]and extremely difficult, as a result for an Indian to rise high in life.
[02:58.26]Young Bright Path seemed destined to spend his life in the Oklahoma farmland.
[03:03.12]But when he was in his teens,
[03:04.97]the government gave him the chance to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
[03:09.80]Soon Carlisle was racing along its own bright path to athletic prominence.
[03:14.51]In whatever sport Jim Thorpe played, he excelled.
[03:17.64]He was a star in baseball,track and field,
[03:17.75]wrestling, lacrosse, basketball and football.
[03:21.22]He was so good in football,in fact,
[03:23.49]that most other small schools refused to play Carlisle.
[03:27.07]The Indian school's football schedule soon listed such major powers of the early 20th century as
[03:33.13]Pittsburgh, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Penn State and Army.
[03:37.50]Thorpe was a halfback.
[03:39.38]He was six feet one inch tall, weighed 185 pounds and had incredible speed and power.
[03:45.41]He built upon these natural gifts daily.
[03:48.26]He would watch a coach or player demonstrate a difficult maneuver,
[03:51.97]then he would try it himself.
[03:54.01]Inevitably, he would master the maneuver within minutes.
[03:57.32]During every game, opponents piled on Thorpe,trampled him,
[04:01.79]kicked him and punched him, trying to put him out of action.
[04:05.24]They were never successful.
[04:07.12]Years later someone asked him if he had ever been hurt on the field.
[04:11.77]"Hurt?" Thorpe said. "How could anyone get hurt playing football?"
[04:16.50]But Jim never played his best when he felt he would have no fun playing.
[04:21.77]"What's the fun of playing in the rain?" he once said.
[04:25.12]And his Carlisle coach, Pop Warner, once said,
[04:28.28]"There's no doubt that Jim had more talent than anybody who ever played football,
[04:33.32]but you could never tell when he felt like giving his best."
[04:37.08]Football, though,did not provide Thorpe with his finest hour.
[04:41.60]He was selected for the United States Olympic track teamin 1912,
[04:46.56]and went to Sweden with the team for the Games.
[04:49.65]On the ship, while the other athletes limbered up, Thorpe slept in his bunk.
[04:54.69]In Sweden, while other athletes trained,Thorpe relaxed in a hammock.
[04:59.57]He never strained when he didn't feel it necessary.
[05:02.53]Thorpe came out of his hammock when the Games began,
[05:01.53]to take part in the two most demanding Olympic events.
[05:05.05]He entered the pentathlon competition,
[05:08.03]a test of skill in five events:
[05:10.64]200-meter run,1500-meter run, broad jump, discus and javelin;
[05:16.23]and the decathlon competition,a series of ten events:
[05:20.67]100-meter run, 400-meter run,1500-meterrun,
[05:25.53]high hurdles, broad jump, high jump, pole vault, discus, javelin and shot put.
[05:31.77]Though most athletes were utterly exhausted by the decathlon alone,
[05:37.03]Thorpe breezed through both events,
[05:39.38]his dark hair flopping,his smile flashing,his muscled body gliding along the track.
[05:45.52]He finished first in both the pentathlon and decathlon,
[05:49.67]one of the great feats in Olympic history.
[05:52.52]"You sir," King Gustav V of Sweden told Thorpe as he presented him with two gold medals,
[05:58.97]"are the greatest athlete in the world."
[06:01.63]And William Howard Taft, the President of the United States, said,
[06:05.55]"Jim Thorpe is the highest type of citizen"
[06:08.40]King Gustav V was correct, but President Taft was not.
[06:10.31]Though Jim Thorpe had brought great glory to his nation,
[06:13.70]though thousands of people cheered him upon his return to the United States
[06:18.54]and attended banquets and a New York parade in his honor,
[06:22.01]he was not a citizen.
[06:23.89]He did not become one until 1916.
[06:25.74]Even then, it took a special government ruling because he was an Indian.
[06:30.42]Jim Thorpe was a hero after the Olympics and a sad,bewildered man not too much later.
[06:30.50]Someone discovered that two years
[06:32.75]before the Olympics he had been paid a few dollars to play semiprofessional baseball.
[06:38.15]Though many amateur athletes had played for pay under false names,
[06:42.62]Thorpe had used his own name.
[06:44.71]As a result,he was not technically an amateur when he competed at Stockholm
[06:49.78]as all Olympic athletes must be
[06:49.89]His Olympic medale and trophies were taken away from him and given to the runners-up.
[06:55.14]After this heartbreaking experience,
[06:57.80]Thorpe turned to professional sports.
[07:00.39]He played major league baseball for six years and did fairly well.
[07:04.49]Then he played professional football for six years with spectacular success.
[07:09.32]His last professional football season was in 1926.
[07:13.60]After that, his youthful indifference to studies
[07:16.82]and his unwillingness to think of a nonsports career caught up with him.
[07:21.28]He had trouble finding a job,and his friends desertedhim.
[07:25.23]He periodically asked for, but never was given back, his Olympic prizes.
[07:30.27]From 1926 until his death in 1953, he lived a poor,lonely, unhappy life.
[07:37.25]But in 1950 the Associated Press held a poll
[07:40.67]to determine the outstanding athlete of the half-century.
[07:44.01]Despite his loss of the Ohympic gold medals
[07:46.65]and a sad decline in fortune during his later years,
[07:50.05]Thorpe was almost unanimously chosen the greatest athlete of modern times.