This is today’s Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook as heard on 97.9 WCHL. You can listen to previous Sports Notebooks here.

Say what you must about Caitlyn Jenner winning the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage Wednesday night on the ESPY’s. Heart-warming that this transgender has finally found her true inner self?  Freak show that cheapens those who have won the award for acts of courage toward others, like Dean Smith? Or just a big WHAT- EVER publicity stunt? Jesse Helms would have loved this girl-guy!

I prefer thinking about BRUCE Jenner, one of the most popular athletes in the country after winning the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, where by the way, Smith led the U.S. men’s basketball team to its own gold medal. So, for the moment, let’s talk about her in the male gender.

Bruce Jenner was born in 1949, in Mount Kisco, New York. He had dyslexia and struggled in school at a young age, but excelled at sports such as water skiing, football, basketball and track. He accepted a football scholarship from Graceland College in Iowa, but after a knee injury took him out of that game, he concentrated on track and field. His college track coach, L.D. Weldon, convinced Jenner to train for the Olympic decathlon. Little did either know that Jenner would go on to become one of the most beloved athletes of the 1970s.

Jenner mastered the 10-sport decathlon, a grueling combination of track and field events where on Day One athletes compete in the 100 meters, long jump, shot put, high jump and 400 meters; on Day Two comes 110 meter hurdles, Discus throw, pole vault, javelin toss and the dramatic 1500 meters.

Weldon encouraged him to train for the 1972 Summer Games, and Jenner placed third in the Olympic trials to qualify and tenth in Munich, where by the way the U.S. men’s basketball team got screwed out of the gold medal. At Montreal four years later, Jenner scored 8,634 points to win the gold and set a new world record and become one of the famous athletes on the planet.

In subsequent years, Jenner appeared with his family on the reality show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and this year revealed in a Diane Sawyer interview that he is a transgender and identifies as a female. In June, Jenner announced on Twitter that she is a woman known as Caitlyn. The circus of publicity followed.

This may be her biggest battle, but I will always remember HIS golden moment.

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