It appears that the 2020 Olympics will finally be reality. Because of COVID-19, the world-wide event is happening a year late. Scheduled for Tokyo, everything was put on hold in 2020 and rescheduled for this year. And because of COVID-19, the Olympics won’t have the same look as in the past. For one thing, no fans will be allowed in any of the venues because the virus is on an uptick these days in Japan and some of the teams have been affected with members testing positive.

However, all of that isn’t preventing folks in Ponca City to hark back to the 1960 Games which were held in Rome. At that event, 61 years ago, two wrestlers from Ponca City won gold medals--Doug Blubaugh was the winner in the 160.5 weight division and Shelby Wilson earned gold at 147.5 pounds. Statues of the two now grace the interior of Robson Field House on the campus of Ponca City High School.

Blubaugh was the better known of the two. He was an NCAA national champion representing Oklahoma State and was named All-American three times. In the NCAA tournament he finished third at 147 as a sophomore in 1955, second as a junior at 157 the next year and then won the national title as a senior.

Wilson had been a wrestler at Po-Hi and at Oklahoma State, but had never won any championships in his career. He was a runner-up several times, finishing second in his weight division in the Oklahoma State High School tournament two times, and as runner-up two times in his weight division in the NCAA. Things came together for him at Rome, and he won each of his matches by points, good enough to secure gold.

I had the privilege of talking to Blubaugh several times before his untimely death in 2011. I was saddened to hear that a pickup truck had run into him as he was riding on a motorbike on the streets of Tonkawa. I had been looking forward to continuing our visits.

He was proud of his farm boy roots. He worked on the family farm which helped get him in shape for wrestling. He told me “I never lifted weights in my life. The hard work on the farm was all I needed.” He would often get up predawn to run from his farm to the Stillwater campus where he had a job cleaning latrines before classes. Then he would run back to work on the farm.

He told me that he really had wanted to wrestle at the University of Oklahoma for legendary coach Port Robertson. But he said his parents had visited with Robertson urging him not to recruit their son because they needed him on the farm. That’s how he wound up in Stillwater.

Both Wilson and Blubaugh were coached by Grady Peninger at Po-Hi. Peninger went on to be a Hall-of-Fame wrestling coach at Michigan State.

After the two won gold in Rome, the citizens of Ponca City rolled out the red carpet for their heroes. To this day they are the only gold medal winners from the same home town to have earned that distinction. There was a parade down Grand in their honor and they were feted as community icons.

In my conversations with Blubaugh he recalled the road to gold for him in 1960. Just making the Olympic team was a challenge. Another OSU wrestler, Phil Kinyon was in the picture in the weight class. According to Blubaugh, Kinyon was as tough as most of the opponents he was to face later in Rome. The two battled through four scoreless draws before Blubaugh was able to win a solid victory.

At Rome, Blubaugh won six matches by pin and one by decision. The win in the fifth match was the biggest of his career against an Iranian--Emamali Habibi, who had won six world championships and was the gold medalist at 147.5 pounds in the 1956 games. The Blubaugh-Habibi match remains to this day an Olympic legend, as some wrestling observers believe it may have been the best match of its kind ever.

Blubaugh told me he had no idea who Habibi was, as it was his practice not to concern himself with his opponent. “I just wanted to go out and wrestle the way I knew I could,” he said.

Habibi took an early lead as most of those with wrestling know-how expected. Folks believed the match was nearly over when Habibi forced his opponent into a high bridge. But Blubaugh fought back, got out of the dangerous position, came to his feet and began stalking the Iranian. Eventually, he got Habibi on his back and in a while came a pin.

Blubaugh told me that there were two parts to the match. “He beat the heck out of me for the first minute and a half, and then I beat the heck out of him for the next minute and a half.”

Blubaugh had two more matches to go before he earned gold. He defeated Ismail Ogan of Turkey. The Ponca City wrestler won that match on a 6-1 decision and then went on to pin Muhammad Bashir of Pakistan in less than a minute for the gold.

Wilson never had won a major championship before Rome, but there may have been a reason for that.

He told me in a telephone interview that his coaches in high school and college had always asked him to wrestle at 135 pounds. He was wrestling at a heavier weight in the Olympics, which he felt was his best competitive level.

Wilson is an ordained pastor and performed Blubaugh’s marriage. He later was to participate in his friend’s funeral at Ponca City’s First Baptist Church.

The pair went on the television program “I’ve Got a Secret” once. They had a twopart secret. One part was that they had both won wrestling gold medals in the 1960 Olympics while hailing from the same home town. The second part was that Wilson had performed Blubaugh’s wedding. The show’s panelists guessed the wrestling portion of the secret, but were stumped by the second part.

Doug Blubaugh went on to coach as an assistant at West Point, the University of Oklahoma and as Peninger’s assistant at Michigan State. From there he became the head coach at Indiana University. Wilson was a high school coach in Indiana before his retirement.

Blubaugh left Indiana and returned to his farm in the Tonkawa area where he remained until his death.

He and Habibi had a reunion in Dallas in 2003 arranged by Habibi’s son who lived in that area. Blubaugh told me that it was an emotional time for both men. “Habibi had wondered why he hadn’t seen me when he came to the United States to wrestle after 1960. I told him that wrestlers in Iran make big money, while American wrestlers don’t. I had to farm to make a living.”