“The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well,” — The Olympic Creed.
HELENA — In 1980, four women from Montana qualified for the Summer Olympics in track and field events.
The women: Julie Brown, Billings, class of 1973 Billings Senior; Lorna Griffin, Corvallis, class of 1974 Corvallis High; Pamela Spencer, Great Falls, class of 1975 Great Falls High; and Mary Osborne (Andrews), class of 1979, Billings West.
Montana’s four Olympians in 1980 at the White House.
In the field events, Griffin, Spencer and Osborne seized four out of 18 possible places, which accounted for 22% of the total places for the U.S. team. Montana’s population was 1/339th of the entire United States.
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Griffin threw the discus 197 feet, 6 inches for a first-place finish, an American Trials record for women. She also competed in the shot put and earned third place at 52-1½ inches.
Spencer earned third place in the high jump with a leap of 6 feet.
Osborne was third in the javelin, on her final attempt, with a throw of 181 feet, 3 inches.
On the track, Brown took second in the 800 and 1,500 meters.
After the 1980 Summer Trials, the qualifiers went to the White House on July 30, 1980, and were given Congressional Gold Medals. The were treated to five days of events in the nation’s capital. The medals were to compensate for the United States boycotting the Summer Olympics in Moscow.
Why was there a boycott? The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. President Jimmy Carter gave an ultimatum to the Soviets: pull out of Afghanistan or we pull out of the Olympics. Carter set Feb. 20, 1980, as the date for the Soviets to leave Afghanistan. The Soviet Union did not comply.
“The American people are convinced that we should not go,” Carter said. “The Congress has voted overwhelmingly, almost unanimously, which is a very rare thing, that we will not go.”
The U.S. Olympic Committee voted in April 1980 not to participate. And thus, it came to be: the USA boycotted the Games.
These four Montana women were denied the opportunity for something they had worked hard to obtain, yet they remain Olympians. The motto from 1980: Faster. Higher. Stronger.
Brown, Spencer and Griffin would compete in multiple Summer Olympics. Their athletic talents went beyond the Olympics: all four earned state, national, and/or international awards/records.
A closer look at the four:
Billings Senior graduate Julie Brown was 36th at the Olympic marathon in 1984 in Los Angeles. Seen here, she served as the first torchbearer for the Big Sky State Games’ inaugural opening ceremonies on July 18, 1986.
Brown also qualified for the 800 and 1,500 at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but was unable to participate due to the U.S. boycott.
She raced distances ranging from 800 meters to the marathon and won 10 U.S. championships between 1977-82 on the track, indoors, cross country and in the marathon. She was a four-time U.S. champion in cross country and won the race internationally in 1975. She has three silver medals from the 1979 Pan-American Games. Brown set the women’s 10K record in 1975 and the American women’s marathon record in 1978.
She ran collegiately for Cal State-Northridge and UCLA and then professionally for the Reebok Racing Club.
Julie A. Brown, Billings: She was the first woman to earn an athletic scholarship at UCLA for track and field. She won a gold medal at the 1975 World Cross-Country Championship, becoming the youngest Montanan to win a world championship in a true world sport.
Brown qualified for the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics and was an alternate for the 1976 games. She set the American record for an all-women marathon at 2:26:24 in 1983.
When Brown retired from running in 1985, she
