At 30, Jim Grelle was an outlier in a sport that did not foster longevity, still among the world’s best distance runners eight years after he captured the 1959 NCAA title as an Oregon senior.
That he had continued to thrive despite the sport’s draconian and antiquated rules regarding amateurism, that he had bounced back from missing the 1964 U.S. Olympic team by inches, breaking the American record in the mile a year later, elevated Grelle to elder statesman status and a unique perspective he shared with humor and candor.
So as the start of 1967 AAU National Championships mile in Bakersfield approached on a warm night on the southern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, Grelle turned to Dave Wilborn, the latest in a line of world class Oregon milers developed by Bill Bowerman, with a reality check.
“Jim Ryun’s in the race,” Grelle said to Wilborn. “So there’s a race with Ryun and then there’s the rest of us mere mortals.”
The gap between Jim Ryun, the 20-year-old University of Kansas sophomore, and the rest of the human race was never as pronounced as it was on the evening of June 23, 1967.
Leading every step of the way, from the opening gun to his devastating finish on Memorial Stadium’s crushed red brick track said to be created from the remnants of Bakersfield’s 1952 earthquake, Ryun shook the planet, lowering his world record in the mile to 3 minutes, 51.1 seconds, with a performance that promised future tremors would be felt for decades.
At a time when there were only three television networks in the U.S., much of the nation watched in grainy black and white as Ryun ran in and out of the shadows of the stadium’s lights, with each step leaving previously held beliefs about human performance, the limits of the imagination in the red brick dust like the rest of the field until the 11,500 spectators in the stadium, the audience from coast to coast questioning whether they were witnessing history being made or science fiction.
When the field stepped up to the starting line at 9:15 p.m. that night only 21 Americans had ever broken 4:00 for the mile. Seven runners broke 4:00 that night, five of the world’s six fastest miles in 1967 were in Bakersfield. Yet Grelle was right–Ryun was running a totally different race.
If Ryun wasn’t from another planet he certainly seemed to be from another century. The Bakersfield race tightened his grip on global track and field’s most storied and revered record, a hold that would last nearly a decade, an unprecedented reign in the 20th Century.
The questions about what Ryun would run on more modern tracks in lighter shoes continue to persist into the Millennium.
Sub 3:50?
3:47?
3:45?
3:43?
What is clear to those who chased him through the shadows, through history on a night undiminished by more than a half-century or fading memories is Ryun’s unmatched brilliance.
“That was the greatest mile ever run,” said Marty Liquori, later a three-time NCAA for Villanova
The distant echoes of the last outdoor mile world record set on American soil can be heard in the build-up to Saturday’s Prefontaine Classic Bowerman Mile at Hayward Field and the promised assault on Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record of 3:43.13 by Olympic 1,500 champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway, Josh Kerr, of Great Britain and Scotland, the World 1,500 champion, and Yared Nuguse of the United States, all of them chasing a time some of Ryun’s rivals believe he was capable of running nearly 60 years ago.
“The times he was running are still relevant today,” said Matthew Centrowitz, the 2016 Olympic 1,500 champion, “and he did it a half-century ago”
“You can’t set a figure,” Grelle said of Ryun’s potential after the Bakersfield race. “There is no limit.”
The Ingebrigtsen-Kerr showdown has also served as a reminder of an era when track and field was a major American sport, more popular than the NBA or NHL, and Ryun was its first transcendent superstar since Jesse Owens, when the world’s finest milers, the Bannisters and Elliotts and Snells chased world records at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field and on tracks up and down the West Coast, when the sport sold out Madison Square Garden and the Cow Palace drew tens of thousands at the Coliseum, when the sport was a constant on network TV Saturday and Sunday afternoons, on the nation’s front pages and the cover of Sports Illustrated for something other than a drug scandal.
When track actually mattered in America.
Ryun appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated seven times, more than Willie Mays, Wilt Chamberlain, Sandy Koufax or Jim Brown. Several of those covers were taped to the bedroom wall of a carpenter’s son in Coos Bay, Ore., named Steve Prefontaine.
“In his era he was unbelievable,” Ron Warhurst, the longtime Michigan coach who now trains American rising star Hobbs Kessler, said of Ryun. “He was just unbelievable.”
Ryun was the most unlikely of sports heroes. Skinny, frail and awkward, he struggled in Little League growing up in Wichita. He found no more success in basketball or football.
“As a child I couldn’t make the junior high track and field team,” Ryun said. “In fact, I remember going to bed many times during the junior high days saying a prayer, ‘Dear God, my life isn’t much at this point in time but I would really like my life to amount to something and if it could show up in sports I would appreciate that.’”
As a sophomore, he turned out for cross country and was discovered and encouraged by East High coach Bob Timmons, who had served in the Marines in World War II and won seven state swimming titles before turning to track. He coached Archie San Romani, Jr. to the national high school mile record only a couple of years before Ryun caught his attention.
Based of his swimming background, Timmons believed teenage athletes could handle large training volumes and produce world class performances previously only thought attainable in track by older, more mature athletes.
“I asked him once, I said, ‘What kind of workouts do you do Jim?’” Wilborn recalled. “And he said, ‘Oh, the same as you but a lot more.’ It was funny but it was probably true.”
Indeed while Bowerman might have his Oregon milers do 16 440-yard repeats in a workout, Timmons had Ryun doing 40 440 repeats in a single training session.
“Coach Timmons was a gift from God to me,” Ryun said. “I was one of those kids who couldn’t make a team and in two years I was under 4 minutes (in the mile).”
On June 4, 1964, Ryun, then a 17-year-old East High junior, became the first prep runner to break four minutes, running 3:59.0 to place eighth in a world-class field at the Compton Invitational. That summer, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated for the first time and then made the U.S. Olympic team, out-leaning Grelle, a 1960 Olympian, at the tape for the third and final spot at 1,500 meters. Ryun, slowed by illness, was eliminated in the semifinals at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The Tokyo Games were dominated by New Zealand’s Peter Snell, who became the first man since 1920 to sweep the Olympic 1,500 and 800 titles and only the third in history to successfully defend the 800 gold medal.
A year later Ryan beat Snell at the AAU Championships in San Diego with arguably the greatest single achievement ever by an American high school athlete, holding off Snell and Grelle in a dramatic homestretch at Balboa Stadium, finishing in 3:55.3 to set a new American record and a national high school mark that would stand for 36 years.
“That was when I knew for the first time I would someday have the world record,” he told reporters afterward.
Jim Ryun, right, Wichita, Kas., student, beats Peter Snell, left, of New Zealand and Jim Grelle of Oregon in the mile run of the national AAU track and field meet in San Diego on, June 27, 1965. His time of 3:55.3 was the fastest ever run by an American (AP Photo/Harold Filan)
He would get his chance 13 months later in Berkeley.
Ryun followed Timmons to Kansas but under NCAA rules at the time, freshmen were ineligible for varsity competition. The rule didn’t prevent Ryun setting a world record at 880 yards (1:44.9) and then winning the 1966 AAU mile title to qualify to compete for the U.S. in a meet with the Soviet Union and Poland on July 17 at Edwards Stadium on the Cal campus. But when the Soviets pulled out citing the Vietnam War, the Poles following suit, turning the meet into an invitational headlined by U.S. stars, Ryun asked Cal coach Sam Bell, the meet director to switch the 1,500 meter run to the mile Bell laughed. He had already made the change anticipating a world record attempt.
“I can sell more tickets if I announce to the public that you’re going for the world record,” Bell told Ryun. But Ryun asked to keep his plans out of the newspapers. Bell reluctantly agreed.
Even so, 15,000 showed up on a 75 degree afternoon. While Ryun was hesitant to let the media in on his plans he still felt he needed help chasing the world record of 3:53.8 set by France’s Michel Jazy in June 1965.
Oregon half-miler Wade Bell had been training in Alamosa, Colorado that summer as part of a high altitude training project conducted by Dr. Jack Daniels, the renowned sports physiologist, and designed to prepare U.S. athletes for the 1968 Olympic Games and host Mexico City’s 7,439-foot elevation.
“I always wanted to be a miler,” Wade Bell said. “I ran the mile under four minutes. So I really wanted to be a miler but it turned out that Oregon had three guys that ran the mile faster than I did, so therefore Bowerman moved me to the half mile.”
Because of an airline strike, it took Bell two days and a combination of planes, cars and helicopters to get from Colorado to Berkeley. Bell was exhausted as he sat with Tom Von Ruden of Oklahoma State and Texas’ Richard Romo in the stadium when they were approached by Ryun the day before the mile race.
“Jim said, ‘I want to make an attempt on the world record tomorrow and I’d like to know if you guys would help set me up,’” Bell recalled. “We talked about it. I thought to myself, ‘Gosh, we didn’t get much sleep 2 1/2 days to get there because of the airline strike.’”
But the trio agreed to help.
“I believe we all hit our marks perfectly,” Bell said.
Von Ruden led through the opening 200 before Romo took over, covering the opening 440 yards in 57.7.
Bell pounced on the second second lap, passing the half-mile in 1:55.4, and continuing to lead onto the backstretch of the third lap.
“Rich Romo 58 seconds, second lap Tom Von Ruden 1:57-1:58,” Bell said recounting the race plan. “I was to bring him through the third lap in no slower than 2:55 and Jim Ryun would be on his own for the last lap.”
Ryun passed the three-quarters mile mark in 2:55.3.
“When I heard 2:55, I thought to myself-maybe 3:50?” Ryun later told reporters.
He would finish in 3:51.3, knocking 2.5 seconds off Jazy’s global standard.
“I would reflect on Berkeley, Rich Romo, Tom Von Ruden, and Wade Bell, I would have liked to see their name on the world record certificate because they all sacrificed their race to help achieve what happened,” Ryun said. “They all did a great job. To me that was a huge breakthrough.”
Just 19, still eight months away from his first outdoor varsity race at Kansas, Ryun was perhaps the most famous athlete in the world outside of Pele and Muhammad Ali. He received rock star like attention, mobbed by fans and the media everywhere he went. During a West Coast trip he sought refuge at Disneyland one afternoon only to be asked by a fan to sign a $100 bill.
“In those days everybody just wanted to talk to Jim Ryun,” Liquori said.
Including a coed named Anne from his home state who approached him with her siblings after the Berkeley race.
“This young attractive girl from Kansas State University came to ask for my autograph,” Ryun recalled chuckling. “I told her well catch me later.
“Well, later came on a blind date and we’ve been happily married for over 50 years. So to me, that was another highlight of that Berkeley race.”
At the end of a year in which Frank Robinson led the American League in hitting, home runs and RBIs, the first player since 1956 to win the Triple Crown, leading Baltimore to a World Series triumph, Bobby Hull became the first NHL player to score more than 50 goals in a season, and Vince Lombardi led the Green Bay Packers to the inaugural Super Bowl, Sports Illustrated chose Ryun as its Sportsman of the Year.
Unlike Berkeley there would be no teamwork chasing the world record in Bakersfield with spots on the line for a U.S. vs. British Commonwealth meet Los Angeles and a U.S. national team European tour later that summer.
Besides Ryun and Grelle, the 1967 AAU final field included Tim Danielson, who as a Chula Vista High senior in 1966 became the second prep runner under 4:00, Liquori, a senior at Essex Catholic High in New Jersey, and Bowerman’s latest two prodigies at Oregon – Wilborn, an exceptionally gifted if inconsistent runner who had a history of being too hard on himself, and Divine, like Ryun a sophomore, who a year earlier had become the second youngest person ever to break 4:00.
“A talent second only to Ryun’s,” Kenny Moore, a two-time Olympian in the marathon, long time senior writer at Sports Illustrated and Bowerman biographer,” later wrote of Divine. Indeed a few weeks earlier Divine finished second to Ryun at the NCAA Championships.
Even before his pre-race chat with Grelle, Wilborn had no illusions about beating Ryun.
“He was unbeatable at his peak,” Wilborn said. “I don’t care if all the best people were in the race. If it started out slow he would beat them. If it started out fast he would beat them. If they waited to the last 100 to kick he would beat them. If you took off with 300 to go he would beat them. He was literally unbeatable at this peak.”
Said Liquori “The one thing he had going on his side was he knew he wasn’t going to lose.”
Jim Ryun set the world record in the mile twice in 1967 in two of the greatest races in U.S. track and field history. (Photo from Allsport Hulton/Archive)
There was also a sense of mystery to Ryun’s aura of invincibility.
“He was like the Wizard of Oz,” Liquori said. “He was the man behind the curtain. In other words, I didn’t realize at the time his coach protected him. He was hard of hearing and stuff and partly that and the shyness and the fact that in those days we weren’t all that friendly. We didn’t run against each other 10 times a year. I might run against Ryun two or three times a year.”
While Ryun today says Bakersfield “wasn’t a planned world record race,” that night he told reporters “I realized that I wouldn’t set any records (running with the pack) because no one was going to knock himself setting a record pace. So I decided to push myself.”
He only told Grelle of his plan.
“Fine,” Grelle told him with a laugh. “See you later. I sure won’t be trying to keep up with you.”
No one did as Ryun opened a gap on the field from the gun.
“We might be en route to what we expected all along, that he can run under 3:50 for the mile,” Jim Beatty, the first man to break 4:00 indoors, announced on ABC’s Wide World of Sports broadcast of the race.
But by the time Ryun completed the first lap in 59.2 the pack was on his heels. They stayed there as Ryun led through the half-mile in 1:59.
“I had no plan of leading the whole way,” Ryun said. “It was a shock to me, finally after the first half mile I realized no one was going to help with the race, so I relaxed a little bit and got even faster. So it was one of those moments in time where I look back and thank God for the fact that it went so well but it was a huge surprise to me.”
Ryun surged a few yards into the third lap, opening a wide lead immediately.
“Jim just took off,” Divine said. “It was Jim Ryun and the rest of us.”
His 440 was 58.6.
“All by himself, he runs against time,” ABC’s Jim McKay, sharing broadcast duties with Beatty, said as Ryun charged down the final backstretch.
“He’s got a shot at the 3:50 mile,” Beatty said.
At first, the TV screen flashed Ryun’s time at 3:50.9 before the official time 3:51.1 was announced. Ryun had covered the final quarter-mile in 53.5.
“I didn’t really feel anything until after the race,” Ryun said. “That’s why I was very surprised at the time. I went by the three-quarter mark in 2:58 which then was a good pace and then I relaxed a little more and ran even faster. I think it was 53 seconds on the last 440. If I had known I was that close to the world record I would have tried to accelerate a little more. It was so unbelievably easy that night that when I finished I know I commented to other people I could have kept going at another lap or two at that pace. It just felt really comfortable and easy.”
Grelle held off Wilborn for second 3:56.1 to 3:56.2. Grelle boasted after that he had also set a world record. For his age. It was Wilborn’s first sub-4:00 mile but he doesn’t recall celebrating.
Wilborn recently pulled out his 1967 training diary to show an Oregon teammate. For June 23 all he listed were the results.
“I should have written down, ‘Yay, yippee, I ran under 4:00!’” he said. “But no just (the results). The only thing I can think of was I expected to run under 4:00 at some point in time and I had been slowly creeping down, creeping down. I don’t know that it had been a giant surprise to me.”
Von Ruden was fourth in 3:56.9 followed by Divine in 3:57.2. It was a personal best for Divine yet still a disappointment.
“I was very fast (leading up to the NCAA meet),” Divine said. “But after NCAAs I had to put my dad in a nursing home and I was just burnt out. I remember Bowerman was pretty upset with me.”
Liquori, just 17, became the third prep runner under 4:00, finishing in 3:59.8.
“Some guy lent me a quarter to make a phone call back to my high school coach,” Liquori said referring to widely regarded Essex Catholic coach Fred Dwyer. “Forty years later someone on Facebook said, ‘I was the guy who loaned you the quarter to call your coach.’ (On the call I said) ‘Coach, I did it, but you know someone will probably do it every year from now on.’ And he said, ‘No, you know what, it’s not going to be common place’ and he turned out to be right about that.”
No high school runner would break the 4:00 barrier until Alan Webb of South Lakes High in Reston, Virginia ran 3:59.86 indoors in January 2001 in New York and then lowered Ryun’s national high school record with a 3:53.43 performance at the Prefontaine Classic.
Webb’s record sparked a debate on whether his performance was actually superior to Ryun’s prep time given the advances in track surfaces, shoes and training. When Ryun upset the three-time Olympic champion Snell to set his record, he was 1.7 off Jazy’s world record. Webb was fifth at Pre, his time 10 seconds off El Guerrouj’s global standard.
Webb’s run also renewed a larger debate on what Ryun’s Bakersfield record and his other top performances would translate to in 21st century conditions.
Bell said Ryun would run between a second and a second and a half faster on today’s tracks.
“That was the greatest mile ever run,” Liquori said repeating himself. “And I’ll give you some reasons. A minor reason, he ran 4:07 the night before (in the heats).
“It was crushed brick track. Thirty years later in Gainesville (Florida)” Liquori’s home since the 1970s “I met a guy from Bakersfield. I mentioned the track. He said, ‘You know how we got the crushed brick? After the earthquake we didn’t know what to do with the bricks.
“It was a good dirt track, I can definitely say that that dirt track is a second a lap slower than the tracks today. And the reason I know that is that I ran a lot of laps around a dirt track on a Wednesday and on a synthetic track on a Saturday and I know how much difference it made.
“Give him four seconds faster because it’s a dirt track. Give him another second because the pace was erratic. He ran a (53) second last quarter. Even pace would have run at least a second faster. If he had a pace-setter he would have run at least a second faster. So all in all, and he was 20 years old, and the world record lasted for 10 years. I think it was the greatest mile performance ever.”
Ryun is hesitant to join the discussion.
“I really didn’t speculate because it was a moment in time and when it happens you enjoy it, you thank God for the fact that it went so well,” Ryun said recalling his thoughts after the Bakersfield race. “If I just had a little bit more perhaps expectation for that night as well as the summer.
“If I had a little more expectation perhaps I would have pushed the pace and I would have (gone) under 3:50.”
The day after the Bakersfield race, Ryun did a V02 test with Daniels. The test measures the maximum amount of oxygen a person can use during intense exercise. Ryun’s score was 82. To place the score in perspective consider that cyclist Lance Armstrong recorded an 84 score at his peak.
“That was an indication that there was still more to come,” Ryun said. “I don’t know. I’ve never done a really good job on speculating. Let me say this, and Marty would probably remember this, anybody running that race would remember this. The inside lane by the time we ran that mile it was really torn up and soft. The California tracks were usually really fast. But by the time we got to it, it was like sawdust. So the fact that it was that fast, in fact if you look at the film, you’ll see me wandering around on the inside lane trying to find good footing. And I would find it almost stepping on the curve. Of course that was a little dangerous for me because of a balance issue.
“Maybe a second a lap, I don’t know. That’s very difficult to address. It was one of those nights where you were on top of the world and you thank God for all the help you had. That is where I was.”
Two weeks later on July 8, Ryun and his fellow competitors followed a red carpet down the Coliseum’s stairs, every few steps musicians playing fanfare trumpets announcing their arrival at the U.S. vs. British Commonwealth meet. With the temperature hitting 85 degrees the conditions were far from ideal.
“I remember thinking ‘I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here,’” Wilborn said.
Despite the heat, Ryun shattered the world record for 1,500 meters, running 3:33.1, knocking 2.5 seconds off the seven-year-old standard held by Australia’s Herb Elliott. It remains the largest reduction of the 1,500 world record in history and translates anywhere from 3:50.1 to 3:48.8 for a mile.
Kenya’s Kip Keino, representing the Commonwealth nations. finished four seconds behind Ryun in the race.
“He beat Keino pretty easily,” Ryun said.
A month later Ryun would again beat Keino convincingly, this time in a mile in London, 3:56.0 to 3:57.4.
“You might say that was his last hurrah,” Beatty said. “In 1967, Jim was still the greatest mile runner that we ever knew of. Ever since he came on the scene in 1964 he was completely uninhibited. He ran like the wind. And that continued to do so.
“In 1968 he was still the Jim Ryun of old until Mexico City came along. It is my opinion that after 1968, Jim never again was the Jim Ryun that we knew that ran like the wind and was totally uninhibited about running. After that, it seemed like he became aware of what he was doing and once he became aware of what he was doing, he didn’t run the same way.”
Ryun came down with mononucleosis in the months leading up to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. An asthma attack forced him to stop during the 800 meter final at Olympic trials at the high altitude of Echo Summit near South Lake Tahoe. He won the trials 1,500, with Liquori and Von Ruden joining him on the U.S. team, but he headed to Mexico City no longer seen as invincible.
The Wizard wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
“It wasn’t until ’68 and I was at Lake Tahoe training and Jim was there,” Liquori said “and I remember thinking he was a terrible ping pong player and I realized, ‘Oh, this guy is human.’”
Even so he was the Olympic headliner as the Mexico City Games opened, mobbed everywhere he went. One incident involved Percy Cerutty, Elliott’s controversial and eccentric coach.
“We’re at the ’68 Olympics outside the dorm looking for the van to take us to the stadium, Tom Von Ruden and Jim and I,” Liquori said. “Jim was signing autographs, shaking hands and Percy Cerutty starts yelling out to him that he shouldn’t do that before a race or at all, I guess because when you do that the energy flows from the superior human being to the lesser human being. Just a crazy thing.”
Ryun already suspected his sea level superiority would not be enough in Mexico City’s thin air to match athletes like Keino, raised in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley more than a mile above sea level.
Keino and the Kenyan coaches had similar suspicions. In the Olympic final Ben Jipcho, Keino’s Kenya teammate, set a suicidal pace from the opening gun, covering the opening 400 in 55.98.
“The Kenyans trying to make the altitude tell and take the finish out of Jim Ryun,” the BBC’s David Coleman announced .
Seven-hundred meters into the race Keino took over from his lieutenant, passing 800 in 1:55.31, ahead of world record pace.
“This is the race of my life,” Keino told reporters later. “If I die, I die here.”
He didn’t.
He led Ryun by 30 meters with 500 to go, 25 at the bell.
“The Kenyans have really been taking Ryun for a ride,” Coleman said.
Ryun launched his kick but never got within 12 meters of Keino, who held on to set an Olympic record 3:34.9 with Ryun claiming the silver medal in 3:37.8.
Von Ruden was ninth in 3:49.2, Jipcho faded to 10th at 3:51.2. Liquori was never a factor finishing 12th in 4:18.2.
Kipchoge Keino of Kenya hits the finish line of the 1968 Olympic 1500 Meter run Oct. 20, 1968 in 3 minutes, 34.9 sedconds for a new Olympic record. Fifteen yards back in second place is Jim Ryun of the U.S., world record holder for the event, who could not overtake Keino in the last lap. Behind Ryun is Bodo Tummler of West Germay, who placed third.(AP Photo/stf/rw)
“There’s just no way a sea level guy is going to beat people from high altitude and I think when he lost, the American people looked at him like he was a loser, the comment was you let America down,” Liquori said of Ryun. “And that was very unfair and I’m sure hurt him a lot. He just lost some of his confidence.”
Looking back, Ryun said he realized in 1967 that he would be at a disadvantage at the Olympic Games against athletes raised at altitude like Keino.
“I was trying to get ready for Mexico City,” Ryun said. “That meant altitude preparation. I had worked with Dr. Daniels and some of the other athletes, Conrad Nightingale, George Young, trying what we could for Mexico City. But we realized after the fact, after Mexico City, that really the guy that lived at altitude had such a huge advantage. No matter how hard we worked we would adjust some but we would never get to the point where it was equal footing. So quite frankly after 1967 it was trying to do the best we could to get ready for Mexico City and the very thin air we would be racing in.
“I have to say it was a disappointment in many respects but on the other hand not many people understood what altitude did to the sea level athlete. When I returned to my hometown, the Topeka paper, read ‘(Ryun) only wins the silver medal.’ It was really a reflection on the fact that media did not understand what altitude was. But you can’t live your life (upset). Anne and I chose to move on.”
Liquori upset Ryun to win the 1969 NCAA mile and then took the AAU title a week later, Ryun dropping out less than a mile into the race
“I was disgusted with myself,” Ryun told reporters. “I just simply quit. It wasn’t like me.”
A short time later he retired.
Ryun came out of retirement in 1971, breaking the world record in the indoor mile (3:56.4) in San Diego and relocating from Kansas to Eugene where he planned to train with his friend Steve Prefontaine, the Oregon 5,000-meter superstar and cult hero.
“I had a great relationship with Steve Prefontaine,” Ryun said. “Whenever I go to an Oregon meet, he’d come over and greet everybody and say hello to the children. And during the spring of that year Pre and I had worked out an agreement between the two of us. We thought we could help each other by training together and we wanted it to be more of a training effort than a racing effort and so we began training that way.
“Well, Bowerman found out about it and brought an end to it. He said, ‘Steve you can’t do that anymore. You need to break off that training regimen.’”
More than 50 years later, the regret can still be heard in Ryun’s voice.
“When you have the intention to help each other to a new height in training it’s the right attitude,” he said. “It’s the right thing.”
That May the nation was focused on a Ryun-Liquori showdown at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field, a race billed as the “Mile of the Century,” hyped almost as much as the first Ali-Frazier fight earlier that year.
“It was like that and it was around the same time of Ali-Frazier,” Liquori said.”It was a great time in track and any time you have two athletes from the same country that are closing in on the world records that seems to make it more interesting. Sweden (with world record-holders Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson in the 1940s) and you had it with Coe and Ovett and you had it with us. I feel tied to him in the sense that I don’t think I would have been a great miler if he hadn’t preceded me.”
Liquori held off Ryun, who got out of a sick bed to race, 3:54.6 to 3:54.8.
“LIQUORI GRINS–AND WINS” blared Sports Illustrated’s cover headline above the iconic photo racing shoulder to shoulder around the race’s final.
Ryun won the 1972 Olympic Trials 1,500 and then clocked a 3:52.8 mile in Toronto in one of his final pre-Olympic races. But in Munich his showdown with Keino came not in the Olympic final but an ill-fated opening round heat. With 550 meters remaining, Ryun was tripped and fell. He suffered a sprained ankle, a bruised hip, a contusion on his Adam’s apple, and a scrapped knee. By time he was able to resume running his Olympic dream had disappeared.
Many of those who chased Ryun in Berkeley and Bakersfield would have their own Olympic disappointments.
Bell set the American record at 800 (1:45.0) and won the AAU 880 title in Bakersfield, emerging as the pre-Olympic favorite. In the weeks leading up to Mexico City he and Bowerman were convinced he was ready to run well under Snell’s world record of 1:44.3.
But he was struck with dysentery shortly after arriving in Mexico, losing seven pounds by the time the 800 competition started.
“His workouts had been amazing,” Bowerman is quoted in the book “Bowerman And The Men of Oregon.” “Only two men in the world had a chance against him, and their tactics in the final would have set him up perfectly. Wilson Kiprugat of Kenya went out hard, and Ralph Doubell of Australia sat on him. Wade would have gone by Ralph just as Ralph went by Kiprugat. Doubell won in a world record (equaling) 1:44.3. Wade would have been the first man to crack 1:44.”
He has been the clerk of the course for Hayward Field meets for decades. Saturday he will direct Ingebrigtsen and Kerr & Co. to the starting line.
Wilborn led the 1968 Olympic trials 1,500 until the final 300 meters before fading badly in the thin air, finishing last. He was back under 4:00 again at the Oregon Twilight in June 1970, running 3:58.2. But he finished behind Divine’s 3:56.3 and Prefontaine, then a freshman, breaking 4:00 for the first time at 3:57.4.
Divine’s winning time would finish 1970 as the world’s fastest mile and stamped him as an Olympic medal contender in 1972. “I thought I could win a medal too,” he said. That night the buzz around Hayward Field was about a Divine-Liquori showdown at the NCAA Championships later that month.
But Divine also began feeling the first signs of a torn Achilles tendon. There would be no showdown with Liquori and he never again was able to run world class times.
Liquori entered 1972 as the clear Olympic favorite. But like Divine, injury prevented him from competing in Munich. He would attend the Games as a reporter, hired by ABC at the urging of Howard Cosell. For the next four decades Liquori would be one of track’s most recognizable and authoritative broadcast voices.
Liquori also returned to the track, finishing second in a personal best 3:52.2 behind Tanzania’s Filbert Bayi who knocked a tenth off Ryun’s mile record in the spring of 1975 in Kingston, Jamaica. New Zealand’s John Walker took the world record below 3:50 later that summer, running 3:49.4 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Liquori had hoped to be in the Gothenburg mile as well, but was placed in the 5,000 instead by the meet promoter.
“When John Walker ran 3:50 in the mile, he knew he wasn’t going to lose the race because he kept Rod Dixon (the 1972 Olympic 1,500 bronze medalist) and I out of the race. That’s how my 5,000 career got started. I wouldn’t say we were supposed to race. We wanted to, Dixon and I, but they said no. Rod and I were forced into the 5,000. For years I thought I won the 5,000, but I think actually Rod won it now.
“But after running it, I realized this is the race I should run in the Olympics next year because I might beat Walker and I might beat Bayi but I’m not going to beat both of them at the same time.”
Injury would keep Liquori out of the 1976 Games well. A year later Liquori knocked three seconds off the American record at 5,000, running 13:16.0 at Zurich’s Weltklasse meet running away from New Zealand’s Dick Quax, the 1976 Olympic silver medalist and the event’s world record-holder, Ethiopia Miruts Yifter, later the 1980 Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 champion, and Kenya and Washington State’s Henry Rono, who in 1978 would set world records at the 5,000, 3,000 steeplechase, the 3,000 and the 10,000. It was another chapter of “what if?” in Liquori’s life story.
On a magical night in 2016, a torch bearer of the flame first lit by Ryun would finally cross the finish line of an Olympic 1,500 final first.
Matthew Centrowitz grew up in a house that worshipped Ryun. His father, Matt Centrowitz, an All-American at Oregon made two U.S. Olympic teams and in 1982 broke Liquori’s American 5,000 record.
My childhood hero,” Matthew Centrowitz said of Ryun. “A guy I always looked up to. The “Jim Ryun Story” is probably one of the few books I finished from start to finish.”.
Matthew Centrowitz followed his father’s footsteps to Oregon, where he was an NCAA 1,500 champion.
On the afternoon of August 20, 2016, the younger Centrowitz checked his email after waking up from his pre-race nap.
“I woke up and I had an email and I had to do a double take because not many guys spell their name ‘Ryun’ with a u,” Centrowitz said. “I’m not sure how he even got my email.”
In the email Jim and Anne Ryun wished Centrowitz luck in the 1,500 later that night and said they were praying for him.
They also included a Bible verse–II Corinthians 2:14
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of knowledge of him everywhere.”
It was the Bible verse the Ryuns had recited to their children before youth soccer games and Junior Olympic races.
“I read it,” Centrowitz said. “And then I re-read it and re-read it again before the final.”
That night Centrowitz won the Olympic 1,500 with a tactical masterpiece, becoming the first American gold medalist in the event since 1908.
“We still talk about the way in which he won that race,” Anne Ryun said. “It was like God parting the Red Sea. In this case, God parted Matt’s opponents and Matt went running through to the finish line. God is so good.”
Ryun, 77, spent 11 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He and Anne now live in Tampa and are looking forward to watching Saturday’s world record attempt on TV.
In decades after Bakersfield, Great Britain’s Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram, Alegia’s Noureddine Morceli and El Guerrouj followed Bayi and Walker in lowering the mile world record bit by bit, second by second to a place where Ryun’s rivals that night in Bakersfield thought he would ultimately take it, each new record touching off another round of debate over Ryun’s place in history.
“Year by year my respect for him just increases,” said Tom Jordan, a former Track & Field News writer and the longtime Prefontaine Classic meet director. “I don’t think he got the credit he deserved frankly. I worked at Track & Field News from ’74 to ’82 and so everybody came through there. Every international star, everybody who was pretty much untouchable. I think Jim was kind of unique in that he was the first person, first American in many years to really transcend the sport and be untouchable when he was fit and healthy.”
“All things being equal he’s one of the greatest of all-time,” Divine said. “Ryun, El Guerrouj, Elliott, I wouldn’t say who’s better.”
No one, insisted his old rival Liquori.
“He’s the greatest miler ever,” Liquori said.
Related Articles
LA Grand Prix: Benjamin, McLaughlin-Levrone back overcoming hurdles
La Mirada artistic swimming coach on U.S. Olympic staff is suspended amid investigation of abuse complaints
Alexander: Kristen Nuss, Taryn Kloth are potential beach volleyball stars of Olympics
The champs are back: New mothers April Ross and Alix Klineman reunite on the sand
Congress told that USA Badminton CEO discouraged sex abuse reporting
Beatty is 89 now and by his own admission the details of the race he called 57 years ago are no longer crisp. But in his mind, the vision of Ryun, running free and bold, his imagination unbound, in full stride in San Diego or Berkeley or Bakersfield is clear, unclouded by time.
“In that mid 1960s period,” Beatty said. “He could have done anything he wanted to do both in the half-mile or the mile. To this day, I don’t think I’ve seen a runner who had the 100 percent natural build he had for running the mile. He was perfectly proportioned, beautiful height, long stride, good kick, speed, stamina. He was just amazing.”
Beatty paused for a moment.
“He was a thing of beauty.”