Lindgren, Slack, Merrick, McAfee, Waldrop, and on and on..... like I said...all bespectacled... all cool like Fonzi.
Again, all in 60s and 70s.
The thread title said "....Richard Kimball set the tone..." He did not set any tone. All of those runners i listed came before Kimball and were around long after Kimball's short-lived career.
I might be the only one who missed part 2? Very funny picturing a young Centro Sr at 170 lbs chasing a 90 something lb John Treacy. Kimball had been running 15-18 miles per day. At age 17? Wow…
Missing the Gun, Winning the Chase —Richard Kimball and the USA Juniors Make History in ItalyBy Marc BloomPart TwoEight months after the European junior track tour abroad and its oppressive Cold War security apparatus, Monza,...
He went to Oregon State, ran a road relay race against Pre, rolled his ankle and did not do anything in college. May have made one senior cross country team in the late ‘80s, and that was it.
I dont think he ever finished in the top 100 in ncaaa xc.
Okay, glasses trivia question: Who broke the world record in the mile, wearing glasses? Second question: who also held the mile record . . . wore glasses . . . but not when racing?
A few anecdotes. Went to school with his younger brother (8 yrs younger). And knew the assistant coach at the time Rich was running in HS.
- supposedly in the lead up or directly after Worlds, he did something to his ankle on a run. this would plague him for the years following and he would never be fully healthy again (he kept continuously reinsuring it) . I think the attitude then was, run on it, it will heal, put an ace bandage on, etc. And he did. But it never got better
- he ran a 4.02 mile in hs (probably worth 3.57 today?? and 8:46 2 mile, again probably worth mid 8:30's today). one of these was state meet, and the former assistant coach told me that they were out to the lunch before the later in the day race (not sure which), and that they decided he needed a good amount of protein, so they went to a steakhouse and steak and potatoes 4 or so hours before the race. OMG!!
- Finally, there's also a story of when we was first on the force in Sacramento area, he was on the beat and took off after some suspects along with his fellow officers. Needless to say, in 800 meters he had run them down and left everyone in the dust. They were a bit in awe. haha.
"Wooderson was one of the most versatile middle-distance runner of the 1930s and ’40s, known for a finishing kick as bold as he was shy. His record in the mile, 4 minutes 6.4 seconds, set in 1937, stood for nearly five years.
Wooderson also held world records for 800 meters and 880 yards.
Wooderson was known as the Mighty Atom, but he resisted, in bearing and temperament, the extravagance of a nickname. He stood 5 feet 6 inches, weighed barely 125 pounds and wore thick glasses. His poor eyesight kept him out of the war, although he served as a fireman during the blitz of London. He eventually went blind."
Rojo, not sure why you insist on forcing strange thread titles, but , no, Richard Kimball did not make "nerdy glasses" cool. He was just another kid with glasses, as were many other kids back then, and today, and all the years in between.
The two-tone plastic frame with the lighter color bottom half (in picture of him in the DLS singlet) looks good. The John Denver metal ones not so much.
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