He rocked the swimming world in the late 1980s, breaking world records with his controversial start. But David Berkoff won Olympic gold before and after his innovation was banned.

Ivy Leaguers have a remarkable record of innovation in sport. Harvard’s James Tyng invented the baseball catchers mask in 1876. In the late 1800’s Yale’s Walter Camp pretty much invented modern football, including the 11-man team, the quarterback position, the scrimmage line, offensive signal calling, and the requirement that a team turn over the ball after failing to gain a set yardage in a set number of downs.

Columbia played the first basketball game using a three point line in 1945. In the 1960s Charlie and Peter Gogolak created the football ’soccer-style’ field goal kick — now used exclusively in competitive football – while playing at Princeton and Cornell, respectively, before their dual NFL careers. In the 1970s Brown’s Dick Dreissigacker and his brother developed the carbon-fiber oar for rowing, now standard equipment for crew.

David Berkoff is such an innovator. A Harvard swimmer who specialized in the backstroke, Berkoff invented the “Berkoff blast-off,” starting each race by diving five feet into the water, locking his hands together, and propelling himself submerged with a dolphin kick, then surfacing 30-plus yards into the race to continue with the conventional backstroke. It’s faster to swim underwater, using a dolphin kick, because it minimizes drag. Berkoff elaborates, “my [Harvard] roommate Jeff Peltier and I started it. I took it to a new level, and [Coach Joe] Bernal massaged it and critiqued it and got us to the [optimum] point.”

Berkoff and Peltier started working on the start soon after arriving on campus in the fall of 1984. “Joe was also the kind of coach who was willing to take the time to experiment with new techniques,” he remembers. He told us “try and do something to get an advantage,” and Berkoff first “blasted off”in a meet against Dartmouth later that year.

While continuing to refine the underwater start Berkoff had to contend with the rigorous Harvard curriculum. Majoring in anthropology with an emphasis on archeology, “the first two years I was in academic ’survival mode,’” he says. “It took two years for me to figure out how to manage my time better and make better decisions about prioritizing.”

But then “I turned a corner of sorts. My swimming improved greatly and so did my grades.” And the underwater start began to make its presence known in international competition. In 1988 Soviet swimmer Igor Poliansky used the start to lower the 100m world record three times in one month, shattering American Rick Carey’s record that had held since 1983. “I taught [Poliansky] the start a few months earlier in February 1988 in Bonn, West Germany after a meet there,” says Berkoff.

Berkoff broke the record twice himself at the 1988 Olympic Trials, then set it again during the Olympic preliminaries. By this time his competitors were mastering his start as well, and Japan’s Daichi Suzuki took the gold in the 100m backstroke final, with Berkoff taking the silver. He did win the gold medal, and set a world record, with the U.S. team in the 4×100m medley relay.

Berkoff’s complete profile can be found at Ivy@50.

Although no Ivy League athlete will be participating in the 200 meter Men’s final, it has become the defining race of the Olympics. Traditionalists will state that the 100 meter will always be the race of pure speed, and although true, it is not the race of the fastest human being. It is the race of the quickest. And since 1996 the 100m record has been tied or broken (legally) on eight occasions. Most recently, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt rewrote the mark at 9.69 earlier in the Olympics.

But the test of the fastest human being stretches over a slightly larger distance. This is why the argument is out for the 200m as the new (and true) measure of speed. It combines quickness and stamina, speed and strength, strategy and (perhaps) a bit of luck. This is why not only has the record not been broken since Michael Johnson ran to Olympic glory 1996, it has not even been remotely in danger. Johnson’s mark is a full 0.3 seconds faster than any other human has run the race.

So it is our duty as fans to honor that moment. Michael Johnson’s perfect race. A lifetime of sport immortalized in 19.32 world-record breaking seconds. Enjoy it all over again.

Will Jamaica’s Usain Bolt rewrite it? Immortality awaits.

And just for fun – because international crews have no problem conveying excitement.

And why not – the actual telecast that came into U.S. homes that day. “He destroys his own record!”

He started a running revolution after winning Olympic gold in the marathon, but the roots of Frank Shorter’s gold-medal journey began with the inspiring words of a Hall of Fame coach at Yale University.

Frank Shorter was settling into a routine as he was just days away from the biggest race of his life. It was 1972 and he was back in the city of his birth — Munich, Germany — for the Olympic Games.

The organizers of the Games were determined to show the world a new Germany, as well as a stark contrast to the lasting visions of flags bearing swastikas waving in the breeze at the 1936 Berlin Games.

At these Games, called the ‘Serene Olympics,’ the guards at the Olympic Village didn’t want to ruffle feathers. Passes were not checked closely. Shorter’s roommate, Dave Wottle, was recently married and his wife — using a fake pass — was staying in the Village with him.

To give them privacy, Shorter took to sleeping on a mattress on the balcony of the apartment. That’s where he was when he heard the shots on the morning of Sept. 5. The shots woke him up, but he was unsure what he had heard. Listening intently and hearing nothing else, he wondered if he had simply heard a slamming door. Shorter drifted back to sleep as Arab terrorists took Israeli hostages less than 100 yards away.

After a day of demands and negotiations, the terrorists took the remaining hostages to Furstenfeldbruck airbase. About 20 hours after the drama began, the hostages were killed by the terrorists after a failed rescue attempt by German police.

The athletes back at the Olympic Village were devastated. In this confusing and sad time, Shorter wasn’t sure that competing even made sense. He had a difficult decision ahead.

“At first we thought it would be better to just go home,” said Shorter. “Nothing is more important than a human life. After the memorial service we all began to realize that we had to go on and compete, because otherwise the terrorists would ‘win.’”

For Shorter the 1972 Olympic marathon was to be the culmination of an unexpected journey. Heading into his senior season at Yale, he had never won a Heptagonal Championship [Ivy League plus Army & Navy] event. Not in cross country, not indoor, and not outdoor. He had been good enough to twice finish second at the cross country championships, but both times a distant second to Harvard’s Doug Hardin.

Shorter’s complete profile can be found at Ivy@50.

1920 — The United States epee team, which included Harvard’s William Russell and Princeton’s Henry Breckinridge, was in action at the Antwerp Games. Breckinridge would serve as Charles Lindbergh’s attorney during the Lindbergh kidnapping trial and would defeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt — opposing the New Deal — in the 1936 New Jersey Democratic Primary. He would lose badly elsewhere and ultimately endorse Republican nominee Alf Landon in the general election. It didn’t help.

2004 — Tora Harris of Princeton failed to qualify for the high jump finals in Athens, a disappointing turn of events for the nation’s top high jumper in 2002. Harris had never lost a Heps championship, indoor or outdoor, capping his career with a clearance of 7-7 at outdoor Heps at Navy in 2002. He actually didn’t begin to jump until all his competitors were finished. Harris also won at the Penn Relays that year, leaping 7-6 1/2 in front of more than 45,000 fans. He failed to make the U.S. Olympic team this year. He would have been a huge hit in Beijing, given that he speaks Chinese fluently. Below is Harris’ all-time best clearance of 7-7 3/4 at the USA Nationals in 2006.