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garycohenrunning.com
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Phil Coleman was a member of the 1956 and 1960 United States Olympic team and competed in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. At the 1959 Pan American Games, Phil won the Gold Medal in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. He qualified for his two Olympic teams by winning the 1956 Olympic Trials steeplechase, while finishing second in 1956. Coleman finished in the top five at the U.S. Championships in the steeplechase seven times, with Gold Medals in 1959 and 1960. He set American Records of 8:40.8 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in Warsaw, Poland in 1958 and with an 8:48.0 two-mile in Australia in 1956. Phil won numerous major indoor mile races, capped by an American Record of 4:03.8 in Boston in 1960. At the AAU Cross Country Championships, he finished fourth in 1954 and eighth in 1958. After competing in the 1952 Olympic Trials 5,000 meters, Phil changed focus and was the 1953 Inter-Service steeplechase champion. While competing for Southern Illinois, at the 1951 Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships, Coleman won and led the Salukis to the team title. He was Midwest AAU three-mile regional champion and NAIA mile regional champion, while helping his track team win 24 consecutive dual meets. In high school, Phil started running his senior year and finished third in the conference mile in just under five minutes. His personal best times include: 1500 meters – 3:47.6; mile – 4:03.8; 2 miles – 8:48.0; steeplechase – 8:40.8 and 5,000 meters – 14:23.1. Phil’s 1962 Sports Illustrated article, ‘Idea of an Amateur,’ was awarded the Mohammed Taher trophy by the International Olympic committee. He earned a Doctoral degree in literature and retired after over thirty years as a professor, dean, and volunteer coach at California University of Pennsylvania. Phil lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and was kind to spend over an hour on the phone in 2020.
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| GCR: |
Phil, you are best known in the track and field community for making the 1956 and 1960 Olympic team in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. How big of a goal was it of yours to qualify for the Olympics and what does it mean after 60 years to be once and always an Olympian and to have done it twice?
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| PC |
There was no bigger moment in my life than qualifying for the Olympics in 1956, which was such an extreme step up for me in terms of accomplishment and reputation as a runner. So, it was very big. I did not do well in the Olympics in either year. Making the Olympic team for the first time was a tremendous goal and a tremendous joy.
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| GCR: |
You mentioned at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics you didn’t do as well as you had hoped. I know that you didn’t make it out of your qualifying heat for the Olympic final. Was this disappointing or were you pleased to be there and to have given it your best effort?
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| PC |
It was disappointing. I thought I should be in the final. I did not run well. My supposed coach on the Olympic team was Bob Giegenback from Yale and he sold me a pair of great running shoes that I should wear, English shoes. And I didn’t realize that they did not have a plate supporting the spikes. The spikes were sort of individual and when I hit the top of the water jump barrier, those spikes bent. So, I had very uncomfortable shoes for that race and that was a part of why I didn’t do well.
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| GCR: |
At the 1960 Rome Olympics you again didn’t make it out of your qualifying heat for the Olympic final, though your fifth-place finish in 8:56.72 was only six seconds behind the third place qualifier who ran 8:50.59. How close were you to making the final?
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| PC |
I did finish a couple spots behind where I needed to be, but don’t remember the details of that race.
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| GCR: |
Who were your roommates in Melbourne and Rome, and do you have any great memories of your time in with some of your fellow United States athletes or foreign athletes?
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| PC |
In Melbourne, one of my roommates was Bob Richards who was a flamboyant kind of character and an excellent athlete. There were also two or three distance runners in the room which was a large apartment. It was open and there were several of us there together. In 1960, my wife was a member of the Track and Field News tour, so I spent a lot of time with her rather than with fellow runners.
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| GCR: |
Did you attend Opening and Closing Ceremonies for each Olympics?
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| PC |
It wasn’t a matter of getting a chance – we were expected to be in the Opening Ceremonies, so we were. From the view of a participant, it was not a great thing. Apparently, the crowd loved it, while the athletes didn’t.
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| GCR: |
Before competing in the Olympics, in the U.S. an athlete must finish in the top three at the Olympic Trials to make the team and your first Olympic Trials was in 1952 where you didn’t make it to the Helsinki Olympics. Did that whet your whistle and help you to set a goal over the next four years to go for the Olympic team in 1956?
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| PC |
Not really. In 1952, I was competing in the 5,000 meters – not in the steeplechase. I saw my first steeplechase at the 1952 Olympic Trials. I had never seen a steeplechase race before then. It was not a collegiate event in most places and certainly not for small colleges.
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| GCR: |
After college, you served in the military for two years and developed as a runner and steeplechase racer. Who was coaching you and what were you doing for training while in the military that helped you to improve from never even seeing a steeplechase race to become the inter-service steeplechase champion?
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| PC |
The answer is that hardly anyone was coaching me. I was called at the end of Army Basic Training to the fieldhouse at Fort Leavenworth and told that I was to put together a track team and that we were going to host the Fifth Army track and field meet and we were expected to win. There wasn’t even a track, by the way. Fort Leavenworth was an engineering fort. My advance training was as a combat engineer. When I said that we didn’t have a track, this arrogant Captain or Major at the fieldhouse said, ‘we will build one.’ For practice we had to go into Rolla, Missouri to the Missouri School of Mines track form practice. I drove the bus each day and took the tram there and back. They had built a track at Fort Leavenworth that was unusable, except that Rolla didn’t have a steeplechase, so we held the steeplechase at the unusable track at Fort Leavenworth.
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| GCR: |
You mentioned how exciting it was to make the Olympic team. In the 1956 Olympic Trials, you led for four laps before defending Olympic Gold Medalist Horace Ashenfelter took over. Then on the last lap Deacon Jones went to the front until you passed him with only fifty yards to go for the win. Can you take us through the race, how you were feeling and what you were thinking as the three of you traded the lead and then you summoned up the kick to win by three tenths of a second?
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| PC |
I felt strong and determined. If you can find the Life Magazine from when they covered those Olympic Trials, the centerfold is of me leading with Deacon second and Horace third with half a lap to go and we were going over the water jump. I just had a lot more strength than Horace that day. Deacon was a good water jumper and caught up with me after the water jump and then I ran away again to win the Trials. To go back a bit, Deacon and I were in the locker room getting dressed before the race. Ted Wheeler, who had just made the team in the 1,500 meters, came in and said, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’ Ted had been in the Army with me and was on that Army team. Deacon was at Iowa with Ted, so he was our friend. It made a difference when he said that to us, and we went out to race full of optimism. Ted’s enthusiasm helped us.
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| GCR: |
Four years later you and Deacon Jones were still at the top of your game and in the 1960 Olympic Trials the two of you, George Young and Tom Oakley were joined by Hal Higdon, marathoner and track writer, for five laps. With a lap to go, you led with Oakley second. Then Jones and Young passed Oakley on the back straight and they both passed you. Young sped past Jones in the finishing straight and won by two yards over your resurging effort. What do you recall of that race and, though you made the team, did you really want the win?
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| PC |
It was gratifying to make the team, more than exciting. I fully expected to make the team.
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| GCR: |
The other big international competition was the Pan Am Games where you earned the Gold Medal in 1959 narrowly over Deacon Jones, 8:56.4 to 8:56.6. How tough was that battle that also included Alfredo Tinoco of Mexico and Sebastiao Meddes of Brazil and how critical was it when you were behind Jones approaching the final hurdle that he chopped his steps while you hit it perfectly?
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| PC |
That is what I recall. I barely edged him out. Deacon and I were the two top steeplechasers in the country for three or four years. We ran against each other and went to meets together. Frequently, we would each fly to Chicago and then fly together to wherever the indoor or outdoor meet was being held. We shared a room an occasion. We traveled a lot together and knew each other well. We were always competing against each other, but it didn’t get in the way of our being friends.
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| GCR: |
After learning to run the steeplechase when you were in the service, in the three years from 1953 to 1955 at the U.S. Championships you finished third, fourth and fifth, but off the pace. What changed in your training in 1956 that helped you to a huge improvement where your third-place finish was right in the thick of things with the two Ashenfelter brothers and it propelled you to make the Olympic team?
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| PC |
For one thing – determination. I was determined to make the Olympic team. That wasn’t something I did Tuesday before the meet. I spent a year training with a definite goal of making the Olympic team. I ran thirteen times each week. I was self-coached. My coach in college didn’t know a lot about coaching track and field. He had been a great high school football coach and didn’t know too much about distance running. He had read Iowa Coach Francis Cretzmeyer’s book and that’s where he learned about distance running. That was Doc Lingle who died suddenly a short while after I graduated from Southern Illinois. In 1954 when I joined the University of Chicago Track Club, Ted Hayden was the coach. But he was in Chicago and I was in Champaign, Illinois at the University of Illinois. So, I got no coaching from Ted. The coach at Illinois, Leo Johnson, was a great team organizer and his team won several conference championships, but he totally avoided cross country. He had an assistant coach who handled cross country. So, I was self-coached all that time.
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| GCR: |
Back to the U.S. Championships where you were consistently in the top five, but without a steeplechase victory. In 1959 you scored your first U.S Championship in the steeplechase. Even though it wasn’t even close as Deacon Jones and George Young were both more than fifteen seconds behind you, was it thrilling to earn the Gold Medal?
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| PC |
Not particularly – it was a meet where I expected to win. There was a difference there though. In an earlier year, I think 1955, the national meet was in Boulder, Colorado, at altitude. That year I was running so well that I thought I could run the mile on Friday and come back to run the steeplechase on Saturday. I did not understand at that point how altitude affected me between races and I simply didn’t have anything left for the Saturday race. I ran an interesting race in the mile on Friday and finished in maybe fifth place. Everyone ran super slow and then I passed five guys on the last lap and four or five guys passed me. Everything was sprinting on the last lap. Then I didn’t have anything left on Saturday. The 1960 Olympic Trials were in Boulder, Colorado, so I took a Pullman to the meet and got to Denver and then on to Boulder on Saturday morning the day I was to run. I was fresh and Deacon was not ready for the high altitude. George was used to high altitude but was new to the event. That’s how it happened.
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| GCR: |
The next year in 1960 you repeated your U.S. Championship as you and Deacon Jones both ran 8:55.6. Next in May at the Coliseum Relays you won the steeplechase in 8:55.3, at the time the fastest American ever on American soil. Two weeks later in June at the Compton Invitational you set the pace and Deacon Jones stayed on your heels. Then he sped a 63.7 last lap to win in 8:49.7 to be the first American to break 8:50 on American soil. It seems like there was a lot of back-and-forth between the two of you.
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| PC |
You are going back to more races that I have totally forgotten. I don’t remember much from those races at all. Deacon and I raced often and had many close races.
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| GCR: |
We’ve been discussing the steeplechase exclusively, but you were strong in other events. How tough were the conditions at the 1958 AAU Cross Country Championships in Chicago on a cold, 13-degree day where you finished in seventh place?
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| PC |
I remember it being very cold that day. I do remember that.
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| GCR: |
You also ran some strong mile races indoors. You raced Ron Delany, 1956 Olympic Gold Medalist at 1,500 meters, multiple times indoors in the year before those Olympics with the usual tactic of trying to put some distance between the two of you to survive his kick. How much fun was it to compete with Ron Delany repeatedly?
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| PC |
I never beat Ron. At least, I don’t think I ever beat him. It was interesting and I didn’t ‘disenjoy’ it. I knew good and well that when Ron turned on his speed, he could move very much faster than I could. I was a miler indoors by default because there wasn’t a steeplechase. Sometimes they would hold a three-mile which they had when there was no audience there because it wasn’t important. So, I ran a lot of miles in those years, especially from 1956 to 1960. I was in graduate school and was also teaching as a graduate assistant. I would have a class or two of one kind or the other in the afternoon before I could dash off and get a flight to wherever the meet was. I did that many times.
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| GCR: |
In 1960 you won six major mile races indoors including tying the American citizens record of 4:03.8 in Boston. What stands out from these victories?
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| PC |
That was a big one in Boston. I knew that what I was doing was trying to stay in shape so I would be ready for the Olympic Trials later that summer.
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| GCR: |
At the 1960 Los Angeles Invitational indoors you shared some pacesetting with George Larson before Oregon’s Dyrol Burleson kicked by to win in 4:06.0. How tough of a competitor was Burleson and did you get to know him well as your 1960 Olympic teammate?
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| PC |
I knew the Oregon runners, especially Bill Dellinger, very well. I knew Dyrol, but he was younger. He may have only been a sophomore when I ran that race in Los Angeles. He was more of a miler than me and had a better kick in the end. That is essentially what happened. Bill Dellinger and Jim Grelle were good friends of mine and their coach, Bill Bowerman, was a very helpful guy.
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| GCR: |
You represented the U.S. in 1958 in meets in Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Greece and in 1960 in Athens, London, Dublin, Glasgow and three cities in Sweden. How did it feel to pull on the USA jersey so many times and do any of those races stand out for a big win?
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| PC |
In 1958, I set the American Record for the steeplechase in Warsaw in finishing in third place to Jerzy Chromic and Zdzislaw Krzyszkowiak who both broke the World Record in that race. So, I remember that quite well. I enjoyed those trips and enjoyed the experience of seeing some countries and cultures that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I couldn’t do what a lot of the other runners did because I was a full-time graduate student and had a full-time graduate teaching assistantship. I was working hard and a father who was growing a family. I didn’t go to Europe and spend relaxing weeks like many of the other guys who did.
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| GCR: |
Are there any other races from your top-flight racing years we haven’t discussed that are especially memorable for racing hard against a strong foe, winning with a great kick or running a fast time?
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| PC |
In Australia, about ten days or two weeks before the 1956 Olympics, I broke the American Record in the two-mile. I finished in second place to Chris Brasher who had won the steeplechase in the 1956 Olympics. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do and wasn’t up for the race when we started. I ended up almost in last place after the first lap and this English runner was in front of me. I thought, ‘I’m just going to stay with that guy.’ Well, it was Brasher, and he ran and bullied his way through the field, and I followed him until we were first and second on the last lap.
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| GCR: |
We’ve discussed highlights of your running career, but let’s go back to where it all started as a teenager. Were you athletic in many sports, how did you get started running and what were some of the highlights of your high school distance running where you were only a five-minute miler that wouldn’t have predicted becoming a two-time Olympian?
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| PC |
I spent my first fourteen years, and almost fifteen, in west Texas. We had lots of athletics, mainly football and basketball. There was no baseball at all. After World War II ended, my father took a job up at Southern Illinois University and I was in high school up there. I was a year younger than all the other kids. I looked at the big guys playing football and I knew I didn’t belong out there. I was still fairly small. So, my senior year I started running and realized I could run a little better than most of the other guys could. Then I went out for track and finished in third place in the conference meet and broke five minutes by a tenth of a second or something like that.
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| GCR: |
Were you recruited to run at Southern Illinois, or did you walk on for cross country or track and field?
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| PC |
When I went to college at Southern, I hadn’t thought about going out for running. We were in lines at orientation, getting books and getting shots and all this, that and the other. We were in alphabetical order and I was behind a guy named Harold Coleman. Harold told the girls that he was going out for cross country. The girls thought he was something special since he was doing that, so I thought I’d go out for cross country. Harold lasted one day; I think.
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| GCR: |
At Southern Illinois you led the cross-country team against teams such as Michigan Normal and Northern Illinois. Were you developing a love for running and how much fun was it to race with teammates such as Joe McLafferty, Ray Palmer and Harry Pick?
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| PC |
Joe McLafferty was an excellent runner in high school and finished second to Warren Drussler in the Illinois State meet the year before when I was a junior and he was a senior. He ran a four twenty-five or something like that in high school. Essentially, Joe didn’t improve after that. He ran well, ran competitively, and kept trying. Central Michigan and Michigan Normal had just become part of our conference. At the 1951 Conference Meet at Central Michigan, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, I won it, Joe McLafferty was second and Ray Palmer was third. A kid named Roy Lambert, who was from Centralia, and a high school teammate of Harry Pick, got ninth place. Harry Pick got forty-third or something like that. We barely won the team championship. Harry told his girlfriend that he had outscored the whole team. Joe McLafferty came from a poor, Irish family that lived in a little shack west of town. He had a hard life, but he did manage to get a PhD in Chemistry and he kept doing well even though his family was struggling.
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| GCR: |
Race results were difficult to find, but in 1952 in a dual meet in May vs Washington University, you broke Southern Illinois school records in the mile and two-mile, winning both in 4:21 and 9:40.2 Do you remember those races where second place in both races were runners from Washington, Gregory Wetheroth in the mile and Martin Bitner in the two-mile?
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| PC |
The main thing I remember from that meet is Washington University had a one-third mile track, not a quarter-mile track. That made it interesting. I remember that meet but it wasn’t extremely important to me and I don’t know why.
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| GCR: |
You were a Midwest AAU regional champion in the three-mile and NAIA regional champion in the mile, while helping your track team win 24 consecutive dual meets. Was it more exciting excelling individually or as a team, or were they both thrilling?
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| PC |
I enjoyed the distance running team camaraderie with guys you mentioned, Joe and Ray, and there was a guy named Buddy Miller. Some other guys came along for only one season. We had a good feeling coming out of cross-country season and into track season. The rest of the team was not extremely close. One thing you may not have thought about is those were the years, especially the earlier years of 1949, 1950 and 1951, when many of the athletes were veterans who came back from World War II and were older. Many of our teammates were older than us.
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| GCR: |
When you finished your eligibility at Southern Illinois and started competing with the University of Chicago Track Club, what do you recall from your first big meet with UCTC when you went to Philadelphia for the 1954 AAU Cross Country Championships where you finished fourth and your team came in second place?
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| PC |
I had spent twenty-three months in the Army before that and had just joined the track club. We had a good team and I thought we might win. It was an interesting course. We took off down by the river and ran a mile or so and then went up the hill into Fairmount Park and turned around and came back down. Walt Deike, who was our best runner, went out too hard and faded badly at the end. That was probably the reason we finished second rather than first. I always suspected the New York Athletic Club had recruited a teammate after the race was over. A guy who had never been with them before, a Canadian, was suddenly a member of their team and we didn’t know that. And he wasn’t wearing a New York Athletic Club jersey. Sadly, Walt Deike drowned a few years later when swimming in a strong current in the Pacific Ocean.
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| GCR: |
When you finished your military service and were running with the University of Chicago Track Club, how did you balance training, graduate school, being married and being a father for the next seven or eight years?
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| PC |
I didn’t think about it being tough. I only think about it that way retrospectively. I remember that I got the English Department secretary to not give me an eight o’clock class to teach in the morning so I could go out and run before school because I was doing thirteen workouts a week. Running and getting back in time to teach a class at nine o’clock was something I did.
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| GCR: |
After the 1960 Olympics, when you were still on top of your game, was there any thought of training and racing for another four-year Olympiad, or was it time at age 29 to focus on the next phase of your life?
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| PC |
It was time for me to get very busy finishing my Dissertation and getting out of graduate school. I thought I had done what I could do with running, and it was time to get out. Very few runners did stay running as long as I did, as many finished college and quit running. Not too many kept running for a long time after that.
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| GCR: |
I read the lengthy 1962 article you wrote for Sports Illustrated, ‘Idea of an Amateur,’ for which you were awarded the Mohammed Taher trophy by the International Olympic committee. Could you summarize what it meant to you to run as an amateur and having running as a part of your life’s balance, but not as dominant as it was for some athletes?
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| PC |
I had never had a job at that point where it didn’t put obligations on me. Being an amateur runner and not owing anybody any money or anything else from my running made a lot of sense to me. I recognized that there were a lot of runners who couldn’t afford to do it if they didn’t make a little money from their running, but I simply believed that being an amateur was the way to simply enjoy running.
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| GCR: |
After your fulfilling running career, how great was it for you personally to focus on teaching literature and serving as dean at California University of Pennsylvania for over thirty years?
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| PC |
It was a good career. I would like to mention that, even though it wasn’t part of my job, for all that time I was coaching cross country and helping with track and field. I did that on my own. I didn’t lose sight of my track background. But all the work I did and the responsibilities I had were important.
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| GCR: |
You mentioned that you ran thirteen times a week during your competitive running years. What did you do to remain healthy and fit while working and did you run at a lower level through those years?
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| PC |
There was a brief time before I got to the California University of Pennsylvania where I didn’t do much running. Most of the time I was there I was running a bit every day. Not speed running but covering some miles. Good aerobic conditioning.
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| GCR: |
Since you have retired and now as you are into your late eighties, are you able to do some cardiovascular exercise and resistance training to maintain some fitness?
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| PC |
I do not run. I go to exercise here at Westminster Suncoast Retirement Village which is one of about fourteen of their facilities in Florida which are operated by the Presbyterian Church. We have an organized group at nine o’clock in the morning five days a week. Walking, with a little speed walking is a part, of that but also some weight training and flexibility training and so forth. That’s about the limit of my physical endeavors. I’m eighty-nine and just trying to stay healthy.
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| GCR: |
With your experience in the world of running, what advice do you give to both children and adults who want to succeed in distance running and to have running as a healthy, lifetime endeavor?
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| PC |
Cover some miles every day. That is about all I would say.
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| GCR: |
What are the major lessons you have learned during your life from growing up through the 1930s Depression and 1940s World War II, your collegiate experience and military service, the discipline of running, your professional life and adversity you have encountered that sums up the ‘Phil Coleman Philosophy’ that you would like to share with my readers?
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| PC |
I don’t give people a lot of advice, but I like them to be playful. That is the best thing I can say. Don’t get so serious that you can’t be playful.
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Inside Stuff |
| Hobbies/Interests |
I like to write imaginative writings. I write a fair amount of poetry and short essays. That’s one thing I still have going for me. Because of the covid-19 virus, we are truly shut down because, if we got the virus in here at Westminster, if would be devastating. I am not active member, but am still a member of the Sierra Club and have been since 1972. I spent a tremendous amount of time outdoors, hiking and camping and so forth, mainly in western Pennsylvania and places I would go to from there to hike and camp. I also became a whitewater canoeist and did a lot of whitewater canoeing. Those were activities that took a lot of my recreational time
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| Favorite movies |
One of my favorite movies is ‘Groundhog Day’ with Bill Murray
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| Favorite TV shows |
I loved ‘Seinfeld,’ which would probably be number one on my list. I watched ‘Cheers’ regularly. I watch a certain number of reruns these days like ‘Law and Order’ and ‘The Heat of the Night’
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| Favorite music |
Big Band Swing. When people talk about contemporary bands and singers, I don’t know them. I grew up with swing and listened before amplification. Glen Miller and all his contemporaries are who I enjoyed and still enjoy
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| Favorite books |
I would have to put ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ up there since it was central to my dissertation. I like Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis. I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about the American writers of the first half of the twentieth century
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| First cars |
My first car was a Nash. It wasn’t an Ambassador model because that was bigger. But it was a Nash sedan that I bought for maybe five hundred dollars back in 1953. When it quit running, which wasn’t too long after that, I bought a Nash Rambler, which I drove until it gave up
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| Current car |
I now drive a Honda Insight
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| First jobs |
I had a couple of sort of part-time jobs as the janitor of a doctor’s office and elsewhere. Then I got a job at the theater as a ticket taker and popcorn maker. That was my first continuous job, working at the Alpine Theater in Granada, Texas. The year I graduated from high school, I worked on the railroad. I was with the Illinois Central Section gang for twelve weeks
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| Family |
We are a family that started in the 1970s having a family reunion every three years of all the descendants of my parents. We have been close as an extended family for years. I am the oldest now of the surviving Colemans. My brother and sister have died and so I’m sort of out there by myself as the oldest with lots of nieces and nephews. I have three children of my own who are still very active. My wife was Wyona and she died in 2005. I have not remarried. I have a friend that I am taking care of at my house. I have not remarried and have no plans to. One marriage is enough. My children are two boys, Phillip and David, and a girl, Sydney. I have only three grandchildren and no great-grandchildren yet
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| Pets |
I have no pets now and didn’t really have pets as a kid. When we were married, we ended up with a cat that had more kittens and we had dogs most of the time. We went through four or five dogs and we liked to have pets around
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| Favorite breakfast |
Scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. I’m a pescatarian, so I eat fish, but not red meat, so no bacon for me
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| Favorite meal |
I don’t particularly have any favorite. I like a variety of fish cooked a variety of ways
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| Favorite beverages |
I like red wine – cabernet sauvignon. I do not drink carbonated beverages
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| First running memory |
I remember once a physical ed teacher said they were going to put together a team to go to a Texas public school league meet and he wanted to see if we had any milers. He had us all line up and go for a run around the athletic field. I started around and my buddy, Eddie Martin, said, ‘this is dumb. Let’s quit.’ So, I quit. That was the start of my running career
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| Running heroes |
I want to mention one who is kind of a hero and an anti-hero – Wes Santee. He threw his career away as a runner by openly defying the rules of amateurism and got disqualified. Wes Santee would have been the first American sub-four-minute miler and he might have been equal to Bannister and Landy if he had not been disqualified by reason of his declaration of professionalism. Coach Bill Easton did a terrible disservice to Wes in not giving the right kind of advice. Wes was a nice guy. I talked about Ron Delany and the way he could turn on the speed. That is the way Wes was. He could turn it on. He had a tremendous talent and never was able to do what he should have
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| Greatest running moment |
The biggest moment was winning the 1956 Olympic Trials. That seemed to cap my determination of what I expected to do as an athlete. It was great. There was nothing close
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| Worst running moment |
I would have to say the Olympic steeplechase in Melbourne in 1956. I was running well before that
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| Childhood dreams |
I didn’t have any ambition. I had very little ambition. I loved what I was doing and the mount of time I spent outdoors playing and adventuring
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| Funny memory |
After you called last week, I read a few of your interviews of people I knew, and one was Joe Newton. Joe was at Fort Leavenworth and on that team as a sprinter. He was not a very good sprinter, but a sprinter. I notice that Joe says at one point in the interview, ‘if you add in my two years of coaching at Fort Leavenworth, I’m in my 60th year of coaching.’ Joe didn’t coach at Fort Leavenworth. But he was there and worked out with the sprinters. He was a very good-natured guy
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| Favorite places to travel |
Costa Rica. My son had a whitewater rafting company in Costa Rica from the late 1980s up until approximately 2010. I made a lot of trips down there to be with him and to enjoy the part of Costa Rica that is not on the standard tourism routes. I enjoyed that a lot
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