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7344912
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Remarks of the President to the United States Olympic Team on the Track Field [Ford Speech or Statement]
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1
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id
7344912
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Remarks of the President to the United States Olympic Team on the Track Field [Ford Speech or Statement]
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collections
White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
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7344912
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10
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1976-07-10
month
7
year
1976
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nara-archive
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1
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document
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9c3ea0cf675aad84
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Digitized from Box 28 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 10, 1976
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
(Plattsburg, New York)
THE WHITE HOUSE
REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT
TO THE
UNITED STATES OLYMPIC TEAM
ON THE TRACK FIELD
NEW YORK STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
3:05 P.M. EDT
Thank you very, very much. I wish I could say
I earned it.
All of you, because of the competition you have
gone through, the challenges that you have met, the training
that you have carried on for a good many years, you have
earned it, and we are proud of you, and I wish that I could
join you up in Montreal, but let me assure you I will be
watching. We might even suspend some of the business in
the White House.
I have always had a great interest in athletics.
It goes back a good many years. I was looking at a book
on the way up here -- a friend of mine gave it to me -- "The
History of the Olympics" -- and I was thumbing through the
various Olympics that were held for a good many years, and
the ones that I remember go back to, well, about 1924, 1928.
I always had a great ambition that was never fulfilled
because I was not good enough.
I remember the names of Eddie Tolan, Jessie Owens,
and a good many of the others who set great records in those
days. But the competition gets tougher every four years,
which is the way the world is, and all of you have great
opportunities to do better than those who have come before
you, and I know you will because you have the right desire
and you worked hard. Let me say you have the 100 percent
support of the American people.
I might take just a minute -- if you look back
four years or eight years ago, we in this country, for a
variety of reasons, were not unified. We had difficulties
within our country. But if you watched any of the activities
on the Fourth of July of our Bicentennial year, you could
almost feel -- not only in Philadelphia, in Valley Forge and
in New York, but the news media reported all over the country --
a real new rebirth of American unity and spirit and determina-
tion.
That is a great way for us to enter our third century.
That is a century all of you are really going to live in and
work in and help to make a better America, and the job that
you are going to do up there in Montreal, where you are going
to run faster, jump higher, shoot better, swim better, do all
the things that you have been training for for a long time, you
will have the full and wholehearted support of 215 million
Americans, including your President, who will be darn proud
of you. The very best to you.
END
(AT 3:08 P.M. EDT)