When the calendar page flips to March it’s time to think about Camden’s Carolina Cup.  However, it was not too long ago that Columbia was a major stomping ground for horse training.  In the 1920’s the Buxton brothers, Clarence and Merritt, discovered that Columbia’s winter weather provided an ideal training location for thoroughbreds. 

Capital City Stadium has a long recreational history.  As early as 1825 the Mills Atlas shows a “Fishers Mill Pond” located on the property. In 1852 the Charleston Courier reported that the temperature had dropped so much Columbians were ice skating on Fisher’s Mill Pond.  The early part of the twentieth century brought an end to the historic Fisher’s Mill Pond when the Olympia Mill bought and drained the property.

The largest and most comprehensive collection of sports biographies published in a single reference work. Virtually every athlete and every sport readers might reasonably expect to find can be found here. Although there is an emphasis on sports that are popular in North America, there is considerable coverage on sports and athletes from other parts of the world. Most North Americans have at least some familiarity with such sports as baseball, basketball, football, golf, ice hockey, and tennis. They are likely to have had less exposure to badminton, cycling, and soccer and even less exposure to sports such as cricket, fencing, and Tae Kwon Do. No matter what the sport, however, readers of Great Athletes will learn that outstanding athletes from all parts of the world and all cultures have in common histories of hard work, rigid discipline, goalsetting, and sacrifice-points that Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson discusses in his Introduction to this set.