Shaul Ladany

Ladany began his competitive career as a marathon runner in Israel, when he was 18 years old.[18] He later said "in the 1950s, when I started running, people also thought I was a nut. Jews didn't run. They would laugh."[3] He also said that "People thought of it only as punishment for soldiers."[16] In his mid-twenties in the early 1960s, he switched to race walking.[5][6][13] Ladany walked his first race in 1962.[3] Commenting on the sport, he said "You need a certain type of mental attitude: a willingness to take punishment, to have a lack of comfort, and pain, to continue and continue. I'm not a psychologist, but was I stubborn, so I entered race walking? Or did I enter race walking, and become stubborn? It's the same in all long-distance events. Quitters don't win, and winners don't quit."[12]

In 1963, he won the first of his 28 Israeli national titles.[5] In 1966, he broke the oldest U.S. track record, which had stood since 1878, in the 50-mile-walk.[18] In April 1968, he again broke the U.S. record in the 50-mile-walk, with a time of 8:05:18 in New Jersey.[19] In 1968, at the age of 32, Ladany competed in his first Olympics – the 1968 Olympics – in the 50-kilometer walk (31 miles, 121 yards) in Mexico City.[5][20] He finished in 24th place, with a time of 5 hours, 1 minute, and 6 seconds.[5][13] He trained and competed without a coach.[20]

At the 8th Maccabiah Games in July 1969, he won a gold medal in the 3-km walk (13.35.4). Then at the 1973 Maccabiah Games, he won the 10-km walk and the 50-km walk.[21][22] In early 1972, Ladany set a world record in the 50-mile walk in a time of 7:44:47, shattering the world mark that had stood since 1935.[6] In April 1972, he lowered his world record to 7:23:50, in New Jersey; a world record time that still stands today.[2][3][5][12][20][23][24] He also holds the Israeli national record in the 50-kilometer walk, at 4:17:07, which he also set in 1972.[2][3][13][23]

In September 1972, he returned as the sole male member of the Israeli track and field team, to compete in the 50-kilometer walk in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany.[5][13] He said he wanted to show the Germans that a Jew had survived, and he wore a Star of David on his warm-up jersey.[15][25] When he was congratulated by locals on his fluent German, he responded: "I learned it well when I spent a year at Bergen Belsen".[25][26] Asked about competing in Germany, the Holocaust survivor said: "I don't say I have to hate Germans. Of course not the younger generation, but I have no special sympathy for the older generation who have been accused of what happened in the Nazi period."[14]

Ladany finished his race in 19th place, with a time of 4 hours, 24 minutes, and 38 seconds.[5][13] Asked how he felt, he replied: "Arrogant because of what the Germans did to me; proud because I am a Jew".[14] He then returned to the athletes' Olympic Village and went to sleep.[5][25]

In the early hours of September 5, 1972, the Munich Massacre began. Eight rifle-carrying Palestinian terrorists, who were members of the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, broke into the Israeli quarters in the Olympic Village to take the Israeli Olympic delegation athletes and coaches hostage.[13][27][28][29] The terrorists captured wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg. They shot and killed Weinberg, and threw his body out a window onto the sidewalk.[27][30]

Early in the morning somebody wakens me, I open my eyes and that's when my roommate from the Mexico Olympic Games says, 'Get up, Monie was killed by Arab terrorists'. I knew him as a joker but that sounded too serious, so without thinking much, in my pyjamas, I went to the entrance door of the apartment, opened it and looked around. I have seen guards from the village and they were speaking to somebody that was standing in the entrance to apartment number one. I have noticed his dark skin and the hat and I listened, still without being afraid or thinking that something is very dangerous for me, and the guards are asking the permission to let the Red Cross enter apartment one and provide some aid to a wounded person and the man, he refuse. They said, 'Why should you be inhumane?', and the man replied something like either, the Jews or the Israelis 'are not humane either.' At that point I understood that something is going on and I closed the door.[31]

Another team member took Ladany to the window and pointed to the blood stains outside the apartment. They decided to leave the apartment via the rear of their apartment that backed onto a lawn, despite knowing that they would be visible to the terrorists.[32]

The terrorists from the second floor, from apartment number one, had a clear view from the window and we moved out, walked along the lawn without running or zigzagging but in strong and confident legs. Maybe it was stupid? But we had done so....we left the apartment through the lawn.[31]

Surviving terrorist Jamal Al-Gashey revealed that Ladany was spotted racing away from the building leading the terrorists to believe that they were too late to take any hostages in Apartment number two, though several were still inside the apartment.[33] Ladany ran around to the building housing the U.S. team and banged on the ground-floor apartment belonging to the team coaches.[34] He awoke the American track coach Bill Bowerman, who alerted the German police. Bowerman called for the U.S. Marines to come and protect American Jewish Olympians swimmer Mark Spitz and javelin thrower Bill Schmidt.[35] Ladany was the first person to spread the alert as to the attack, and was one of only five Israeli team members to escape. Weinberg and 10 other Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches were kidnapped and killed by the terrorists.[5][3][6][13][28]

A number of television, radio, and newspaper reports listed Ladany as one of those killed.[10] One headline stated: "Ladany Could Not Escape his Fate in Germany for a Second Time".[10] Ladany recalled later:

The impact did not hit me at the time, when we were in Munich. It was when we arrived back in Israel. At the airport in Lod there was a huge crowd – maybe 20,000, people – and each one of us, the survivors, stood by one of the coffins on the runway. Some friends came up to me and tried to kiss me and hug me as if I was almost a ghost that came back alive. It was then that I really grasped what had happened and the emotion hit me.[10]

Three Black September members survived and were arrested at a Munich prison, but the West German authorities decided to release them the following month in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615[36][37] Two of the released Black September members were later killed, as were others who organized the Munich Massacre, by Israeli's Mossad during Operation Wrath of God.[12][36] In 1992, speaking of the massacre, Ladany said: "It's with me all the time, and I remember every detail".[38] He visits the graves of his murdered teammates in Tel Aviv every year, on September 6.[39]

In 2012, the International Olympic Committee decided to not hold a minute of silence before the start of the 2012 Olympic Games, to honor the 11 Israeli Olympians who were killed 40 years prior. Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, said it would be "inappropriate". Speaking of the decision, Ladany commented: "I do not understand. I do not understand, and I do not accept it."[12]

Ladany returned to competition two months later, against the wishes of the Israeli track and field authorities. The specialist in ultra long distance walking competed in the 1972 World Championships, in Lugano, Switzerland.[40] He won the gold medal in the 100-km walk, in a time of 9:31:00.[5][6][13][41]

At the 1973 Maccabiah Games, he won the 20-km and 50-km walks.[13][22] In 1976, Ladany set the U.S. record in the 75-kilometer walk for the second year in a row.[42] He became the first person ever to win both the American Open and American Masters (40 years and over) 75-kilometer walking championships.[13] He repeated the feat in 1977 and 1981 (by which time the event had become a 100-km race).[13]

He won the Israeli national walking championship 28 times from 1963 to 1988.[3] He won the U.S. national walking championship six times (from 1973 to 1981; including the 75-km championships in 1974–77, and the 100-km title in 1974), won the Belgian national walking championship twice (1971 and 1972), won the national walking championship in Switzerland (1972), and won the South Africa national walking championship (1975).[13] His personal best in the 50-kilometer walk is 4:17:06 (1972).[5] He has continued to compete with considerable success at the masters level into his seventies.[5] In 2006, he became the first 70-year-old to walk 100 miles in under 24 hours, setting a world record in Ohio of 21 hours, 45 minutes, 34 seconds.[29][43]

In 2012, at the age of 75, he was still competing in 35 events a year, and claimed to walk "[...] a minimum of 15 kilometers a day", and participates in "[...] a four-day, 300-kilometer walk from Paris to Tubize, near Brussels."[3][16][44]

On every birthday he walks his age in kilometers, so on his birthday in 2012 he went on a 76-km walk in Israel's southern Negev desert.[12] He estimates he has walked 6,000–7,000 miles a year, for a lifetime total of over half a million miles.[45] In his career, Ladany has never had a coach.[46] When asked what he enjoyed most about walking, he answered "Finishing".[47] Ladany completed 83 km on his birthday in 2019, but was unable to do 84 in 2020 to COVID-19 pandemic.[48]

• Maximization of Revenue from Sale of United Nations Postage-stamps for Philatelic Purposes, by Shaul P. Ladany, Columbia university, 1968
• Greeting Telegrams of the Jewish National Fund, by Shaul P. Ladany, Society of Israel Philatelists Educational Fund (1995)