SCOTT DAVIS WAS A WONDERFUL GUY, FULL OF PASSION FOR THE SPORT, ALWAYS WILLING TO HELP AND WOULD GO TO RIDICULOUS LENGTHS TO BE HOSPITABLE. RIP SCOTTY
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Thursday, 19 August 2010 Statistician and announcer Scott Davis passes away
Scott Davis (1943-2010) RIP (IAAF.org)
The IAAF is deeply saddened to receive the news that Association of Track and Field Statisticians (ATFS) Secretary General Scott Davis (1943-2010), one of international athletics’ most respected and popular figures, passed away on 18 August, aged 66, at his Cerritos home at 2:45pm Pacific time.
A cancer survivor for many years, Scott had overcome numerous health setbacks during the last decade, but had been very ill since returning from his final announcing assignment at the IAAF World Junior Championships in Moncton. In and out of hospital for several weeks, he elected to spend his final days at home in the company of his wife, Cheryl, and family.
His passing is an immeasurable loss to his family, his legion of friends, the ATFS (which he served as Secretary General since 1994, as principal researcher of Volume V of the historical series, and as a vital supporter of countless statistical efforts), Federation of American Statisticians of Track (FAST) which he co-founded in 1983 and led throughout its existence, and to the world of athletics, where his many contributions will be long remembered.
Scott was, for many, the public address voice of track & field in the United States, especially at his alma mater - UCLA - where he was on the microphone for Bruin meets for the past 28 years. More locally, he was a member of our UCLA football stat crew for more than 20 years and his chair in Suite 302 at the Rose Bowl will remain open this coming season as a memorial.
One of the announcers at the senior 1999 World Championships in Seville, Scott became the voice of the World Juniors and Youth championships for the IAAF in the last decade. Had illness not led to the cancellation of his trip in the last few days, he would have been in Singapore at this week’s Youth Olympic Games relaying his passion and enthusiasm for our sport to the spectators.
With his death the world of athletics has been robbed of an inspirational figure, a generous and warm character, who possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of our sport.
IAAF offers its deepest and sincerest condolences to Scott’s friends, family and colleagues.
IAAF
By Philip Hersh
The sport of track and field – and the sports world in general – is far poorer today.
Two track and field legends passed away Wednesday.
One, Harold Connolly, was an Olympic champion whose Cold War love story captivated the world in the days long before there were magazines and TV shows with the sole purpose of celebrating celebrity.
The other, Scott Davis, did everything he could as a meet promoter, meet announcer, statistician and raconteur to celebrate his sport and its stars. To those of us in the media, Davis was a bottomless font of knowledge and good cheer.
Connolly, 79, a native of suburban Boston, competed in four Olympics, but 1956 in Melbourne, Australia was the most memorable. Not only did he become the last U.S. hammer thrower to win a gold medal but he also began an OIympic Village romance that led a year later to his marriage to Czech Olga Fikotova, the Olympic discus champion in 1956.
So compelling was their story that it created a break in the Iron Curtain so they could be married in Prague, where some 4,000 people attended the civil ceremony, according to David Wallechinsky’s ``The Complete Book of the Olympics.’’
The idyll ended in a 1973 divorce, after which Connolly married three-time U.S. Olympian Pat Winslow. He went on to become a schoolteacher, manager of Special Olympics International and publisher of a web site to promote his event, hammerthrow.com.
Jim Connolly, his son with Fikotova, was a top decathlete. Adam Connolly, one of his sons with Winslow, was a leading U.S. hammer thrower.
Davis, 67, died at his home in Cerritos, Calif., after a 13-year fight with cancer, a battle in which he prevailed well enough to continue working as promoter of the Mount Sac Relays, a meet announcer and one of the leading statisticians in a statistics-fixated sport. He and his wife, Cheryl, lived in Southern California and had a second home in (where else?), Eugene, Ore., known as ``Track Town USA.’’
``Track and field in the USA has lost its voice,’’ Olympic sprint medalist-turned-TV commentator Ato Boldon said on Facebook.
For years, Davis edited the annual fact book published by the Federation of American Statisticians of Track, an essential resource to anyone who covered track and field.
Even as he was trying to sell copies of the book , later combined into USA Track & Field’s media guide, Davis gave freely of his time, knowledge and good humor to anyone who sought his help – as well as to people who didn’t.
``No one ever left a Scott Davis conversation NOT feeling better than they did before it started,’’ Boldon said.
``It is impossible to truly articulate the loss our beloved sport has experienced,’’ two-time Olympic high jump medalist Dwight Stones, also a TV commentator, said in a Facebook posting.
``Scott cared more about T&F and the promotion / presentation thereof than anyone. Who is able / willing to step up and try to take his place? Who will tell the off-color jokes and then turn around and make the great race call?’’
It is a mark of what Davis meant to the sport over so many years that his passing was mourned on social networking sites by several Olympic generations, from Stones, age 56, to Allyson Felix, age 24.
I knew Scott Davis well. I met Hal Connolly a couple times. That they should be linked in death is both sad and poignantly fitting. Few people ever have given more of their lives to the sport.
And few ever have given it more life.