Would-be Olympian gets 'A' in citizenship

Bruce Kennedy wishes Becky Hammon would have heard his story before deciding to play for the Russian Olympic basketball team.

He says he holds no ill will toward her, nor toward the Clippers' Chris Kaman, who will play for the German Olympic team.

"On some level, I understand Kaman. He has a connection with a grandparent being German," Kennedy says. "But, with the young woman, who has no such connection, I just don't understand.

"She's a U.S. citizen. You can't have one foot in the boat and one on the dock."

With the question of Olympic eligibility having a high profile going into this week's Beijing Games, because of the prominence of U.S. basketball players, Kennedy's story is worth resurrecting.

He was born in Rhodesia 57 years ago. His father was a track and field coach. His country, later to become today's Zimbabwe, was landlocked above South Africa and was separatist in its racial policies.

"We were never like South Africa's apartheid," Kennedy says, "but there were policies, wrong ones, where you had to own land to vote. Things like that."

Kennedy was a javelin thrower, the best his country had, which wouldn't get you a lot -- certainly not a medal -- in the framework of international competition. For the 1972 Summer Olympics, Kennedy was Rhodesia's javelin thrower and had already been in Munich, working out with his team for the two weeks, when the International Olympic Committee asked Rhodesia to leave, fearing that a boycott by African countries would disrupt the Games.

"Even back then, as young as I was," Kennedy says, "part of me understood that the IOC had to act. And why."

By the 1976 Games in Montreal, Kennedy had come to the United States, been a member of Cal's track and field team, graduated and married his now wife of 34 years, Barbara. She was from Los Gatos and they met at Cal.

Kennedy was still a Rhodesian citizen and still their best javelin thrower, so, once again, he was on Rhodesia's Olympic team. And, once again, the threat of boycott by African countries kept him and his country out of the Games.

"This time, we didn't even go to Montreal," he says. "There was no chance we'd compete."

In 1977, Kennedy became a citizen of the United States and also won a national title in the javelin.

"There was no greater thrill than putting on a U.S. uniform for the first time," he says.