Opinion: Kurt Thomas was 'the game changer' for all of us, Olympic great Bart Conner says

It was one of the highlights of the red, white and blue celebration known as the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics: the U.S. men’s gymnastics team, standing atop the medal podium at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, having just upset reigning world champion China to win the gold medal.  

As Bart Conner relived the joyous moment Monday during a phone interview, he wasn’t thinking of himself or his five American teammates. His thoughts went to a man in the television commentary booth that night, a gymnast who could have and probably should have been on top of the medal stand with him that day.

Kurt Thomas, who died Friday at 64 after suffering a stroke May 24, became the first U.S. male gymnast to win a world championship gold medal when he won the floor exercise at the 1978 worlds in Strasbourg, France. He would have been a favorite at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, except he never got the chance to go.

The United States led a 65-nation boycott of those Olympics after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, depriving 466 American athletes of the opportunity to compete that summer.

After the boycott, Thomas faced the severe financial burden of training for another four years as an amateur at a time when Olympians were not allowed to make any money. He already had been an Olympian in 1976, so he decided to turn professional.

“All of our focus pointed towards 1980,” Conner said, “and then when the boycott happened, Kurt decided to turn pro because that was during an era where you couldn’t make money doing your sport and he had to figure out a way to support himself.”

So one of the great gymnasts of all time left the competitive side of his sport at 24 and built a career of professional touring shows, exhibitions, TV commentary and even a movie, “Gymkata.”

And that’s how Thomas ended up in the announcing booth that night in Los Angeles, watching his old teammates win that gold medal.

“I know it was sort of tearing at him a little bit,” Conner said. “He’s sitting up there in the booth with a headset on, and he was the one to start the ball rolling which resulted in that moment for us, yet he wasn’t able to stand up there and put a gold medal around his neck like we did. So I’m sure it was a bittersweet moment for him. I’m sure he was happy for all of us but that probably was pretty devastating for him.”

Conner said even though Thomas was “a fierce rival who became a cherished friend,” they never discussed that moment.

“You know, we never really did. But we all felt we owed a great deal of gratitude to Kurt, and I think he knew that. He turned pro because he needed to find a way to support himself and his family. He turned pro and that train left the station. Pros weren’t allowed in the Olympics then. There was no turning back.”

On the 25th anniversary of the Moscow boycott in 2005, Thomas told me in a phone interview that he had come to terms with the disappointment of missing the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.

"You can sit around and 'if' all day, but eventually, you have to learn to live with it," he said.

Conner’s memories of Thomas go back to the mid-1970s, when they were teenagers at a summer gymnastics camp in northern Wisconsin hoping to make the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which both did.

“We were sitting on the pommel horse, talking about the greats in our sport at the time, and Kurt said, ‘Bart, we can beat those guys!’

“I thought, ‘You’re crazy, man.’ What kind of guy has the audacity to think that we can take on the gods of our sport?

“And Kurt said back, ‘We can beat those guys. We just need to work a little bit harder.’”

Said Conner: “That was Kurt. And guess what? He’s the first guy who actually broke through and did it. He was the game changer. I was the kind of guy, I stayed in my lane. Kurt, he never had any concern about staying in his lane. He had the guts to go for stuff. He was naturally one of the most talented gymnasts I’ve ever seen. I would work on a skill for months; he would learn it in an afternoon. 

"Because of his courage and his originality and his audacity, he just broke down the door for all of us to walk through.”