Better Than Gold ― Olympian Kenny Davis and the Most Controversial Basketball Game in History

An Olympics like no other… Every four years in the middle of the summer heat, the whole world turns its eager eyes upon a single gathering of the planet's best athletes for a series of sporting events to determine new thresholds of human excellence, strength, speed and skill, to determine the limit's of the human capacity to perform and to become unequivocally victorious in doing so. In the summer of 1972, however, there occurred such an Olympic gathering much unlike any other before it or, thankfully, since. Conducted in the aftermath of an unprecedented terrorist attack that had invaded the tranquility of Olympic Village, leaving 11 Israeli athletes dead and the world aghast, was what was to become the most controversial basketball game in the history of the sport. As the USA's team took the court to play for the coveted Gold Medal, a team that had never been defeated in the history of Olympic basketball, there was an unnerving tension building as they prepared to play out the hardwood metaphor for the Cold War itself against the best and most experienced Soviet Union team ever assembled.This is the story of Kenny Davis, captain of that very team, a sharp-shooting farm boy from Kentucky, cast onto the world's center stage in the challenge of a lifetime. Author Gary West once again rivets the reader to the pages as he relays how the hometown hero Davis' strong rural principles propel him into that position of leadership, poised to take the crushing disappointment that would befall them, and head back home to success as a businessman marketing Converse's famous athletic shoes. Discover what Davis and all of the members of his 1972 USA Olympic Basketball Team did in amidst tragedy and injustice; something much more valuable than just winning a ball game, something much BetterThan Gold.

Gary P. West has simple criteria when it comes to writing books. "I only take on a project that I will enjoy writing about and I only write about something I think people will enjoy reading," he says. West grew up in Elizabethtown, Kentucky and attended Western Kentucky University before graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1967 with a journalism degree. At U.K. he was a daily sports editor for the Kentucky Kernel. Later he served as editor for the nation's largest civilian enterprise military newspaper at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. From there he was employed in the corporate advertising office of one of the country's largest insurance companies, State Farm Insurance in Bloomington, Illinois, where he was a copywriter. He returned to Kentucky in 1972 where he began an advertising and publishing business. Along the way, for twelve years, he was the executive director of the Hilltopper Athletic Foundation at Western Kentucky University, and provided color commentary for Wes Strader on the Hilltopper Basketball Network. In 1993, he became the executive director of the Bowling Green Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. He retired from there in 2006 to devote more time to writing. He is a freelance writer for serval magazines in addition to writing a syndicated newspaper travel column, Out & About...Kentucky Style, for serval papers across the state. Gary is in demand as a speaker and for book signing throughout Kentucky. This is his eighth book. Previous books are King Kelley Coleman: Kentucky's Greatest Basketball Legend (2005). Eating your Way Across Kentucky - The Recipes (2007), Shopping Your Way Across Kentucky (2009), 101 Must Places to Visit in Kentucky Before You Die (2009), The Boys From Corbin: America's Greatest Little Sports Town (2013) and co-authored Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association: The Real Story of a Team Left Behind. Gary and his wife, Deborah, live in Bowling Green, Kentucky.