WINTERSVILLE – Lane 8.

Who wins an Olympic medal from Lane 8?

Lester Carney.

The 1952 Wintersville High graduate won the silver medal in the 200 in the 1960 summer Olympics in Rome.

“What track has done for me in my lifetime is unbelievable,” Carney said Friday night. “We never had a track when I went to school. We had to practice on the football field.

“We played here one time, my senior year, in football.”

Carney played football for Wintersville from 1949-51 and was a part of one loss. He also played basketball, baseball and ran track. He was a running back for the Ohio team that won the 1952 Ohio-West Virginia All-Star Football Game.

He was back in town with his family as the new track at Indian Creek High School was dedicated as the Lester Carney Track at Kettlewell Stadium during halftime of the football game with Brooke.

“I am honored,” said the 81-year-old Carney. “This is hard to believe. When I got the call – it still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. To look over (at the scoreboard) and see my name, my mom and dad would have been very proud. Maybe even more proud than I am of this honor.”

Carney was a member of the U.S. Army Special 3 from 1954-57 and graduated from Ohio University with a degree in science-commerce in 1959.

He was a member of the 1953 Mid-American championship football team at Ohio University in 1953 and was drafted by the Baltimore Colts in the 15th round 1958.

“Lester Carney is a wonderful, humble man,” said Indian Creek Board of Education member Dr. Ted Starkey. “How many people can say they were a silver medalist in an Olympics? Really, not many.

“The man has a great, personal story. He has done a lot of things throughout his lifetime and it started here. We are lucky in this community to have him. There is so much inspiration. He came from a small town and ended up being an Olympic silver medalist.”

Carney started running track because it was a requirement from the football coach.

And, he wasn’t the fastest runner on the team.

“I won one race in high school in three years,” he said. “That was it.”

One race.

“I qualified third and my two teammates set the world record at 20.5,” Carney said about earning a position on the Olympic team. “An Olympic in ’56, Bobby Morrow, came in fourth.”

Morrow won gold in the 100, 200 and 4×100 relays in the 1956 summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

“All during training I had to make sure that I beat him in every race, otherwise, I would have been replaced on the team by him,” Carney said. “That was all the pressure.”

He won the silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1959 Pan-American Games.

Seventy-four athletes from 54 nations entered the 200 in Rome in 1960. Sixty-two athletes from 47 nations eventually competed as Italy’s Livio Berruti became the first 200 Olympic champion not from the United States or Canada.

His 20.5 time tied the European World Record and nipped Carney by one-tenth of a second.

It was a grueling road to the 200 final.

There were 12 heats in the first round. The top two runners in each heat advanced, as well as the next four fastest runners. He qualified first in his heat at 21.1.

There were four second-round heats and the first three in each heat qualified for the semifinals. Carney was clocked in 20.9 to win his heat.

The top three in each of the two semifinal heats advanced to the final. Carney ran 21.1 to finish third in his heat. His time would have placed sixth in the other heat.

“I never had time to be nervous,” he said. “We prepared and prepared and prepared. We knew we had to run heat after heat after heat. I had to keep telling myself, ‘It’s just another race. Do what you know how to do.’

Carney said many hands helped him stand on that podium in Rome, watching the Americanm flag raised.

“Being in the Olympics was too far-fetched to even be a dream,” he said. “This area, here, when I grew up was nothing but a blackberry patch. We used to come up here and pick blackberries all during the summer.

“To be able to play here my senior year and see what it is today, it’s unbelievable.

“It’s an honor for this to happen. Words can’t describe it.”