The Wild One

"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" became one of the most familiar slogans on television for the American Broadcast Company (ABC) sports show that lived up to its title. Beginning as a summer replacement in 1961, Wide World of Sports endured into the 1990s, making a household name of original host Jim McKay and launching the domination of ABC in sports and the rise of future ABC Sports and News president Roone Arledge.

Arledge came up with the concept of packaging various sports under this umbrella title and sent Jim McKay to anchor live coverage of two venerable track meets—the Drake Relays from Des Moines, Iowa, and the Penn Relays from Philadelphia—for the inaugural broadcast of the program, on April 29, 1961. Wide World of Sports survived its initial 13 weeks and returned every year as a 90-minute program on Saturday afternoons beginning in January, and often expanding to Sundays as well. The opening narration became famous: "Spanning the world to give you the constant variety of sports. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human drama of athletic competition. This is ABC's Wide World of Sports."

Early on, Wide World of Sports covered many sports that later became separate live broadcast institutions—tennis's Wimbledon, golf's British Open, soccer's World Cup. But Wide World made its name with "nontraditional" sports, such as auto racing, boxing, swimming, diving, track and field, gymnastics, and figure skating. The particularly daring and unusual sports drew the most fans: surfing, bodybuilding, World's Strongest Man competitions, lumber-jack contests, cliff divers from Acapulco, the Calgary Stampede rodeo, and most notably, stunt motorcyclist Evel Knievel. Knievel dominated shows of the early 1970s jumping barrels, cars, and busses and nearly making it across the Snake River Canyon on his motorcycle (and by rocket), breaking numerous bones in the process.

The program provided ABC Sports with sports coverage experience that it utilized to cover the Olympics. Wide World truly traveled the globe, covering events in Europe and Asia, even Cuba and China. Many of the events were carried live via satellite. The program also developed the style that made Americans sit still and watch unfamiliar sports and foreign performers such as Russian gymnast Olga Korbut, Brazilian soccer star Pele, or Russian weightlifter Vasily Alekseev. The "up close and personal" features emphasizing the life stories of the athletes grew out Wide World of Sports and revolutionized sports coverage. After Wide World, sports coverage became storytelling rather than simply showing games and scores. The success of the Olympics propelled ABC out of its low ratings status into a respectable television network and Roone Arledge into a position as the head of ABC Sports and ABC News.

During the 1970s, Wide World of Sports became a brand name, and its most famous image was set: the "agony of defeat." While the "thrill of victory" changed almost every year, "the agony of defeat" was forever symbolized by hapless Yugoslavian ski jumper, Vinko Bogataj, whose spectacular wipeout was taped in 1970.

By the end of the 1980s, Wide World of Sports lost its prominence, as cable network ESPN became a superior ratings grabber as the ultimate sports show—24 hours a day of the type of sports coverage that Wide World pioneered. ESPN's rise was ironic, as it was partly owned by ABC.

In the 1990s, McKay left the role of studio host to a succession of other ABC Sports personalities including Al Michaels and Julie Moran. On January 3, 1998, McKay declared that Wide World of Sports was canceled; the hour-and-a-half of all sorts of sports was replaced by a studio host introducing single event broadcasts such as the Indy 500, horse racing's Triple Crown, and the national and world championships in figure skating.

—Michele Lellouche

Further Reading:

The Best of ABC's Wide World of Sports (three volumes). CBS/FoxVideo, 1990.

McKay, Jim. with Jim McPhee. The Real McKay: My Wide World of Sports. New York, Dutton, 1998.

Sugar, Bert Randolph. Thrill of Victory: The Inside Story of ABC Sports. New York, Hawthorn Books, 1978.