The Fall of Jim Ryun

Nowadays he certainly would be advanced.

Trivia: He shouldn't have been in that preliminary heat with the defending champion, but the U.S. team officials entered his fast mile time from that summer as his seeding time...rather than a 1500m time. So in the seed list he was one of the slowest performers, and got seeded accordingly.

Since you mentioned he is 76, which is getting up there, I believe I will be sad when he passes. I can't put my finger on why exactly. Other famous people who I appreciated have passed, and I didn't feel it so much. But, I think Jim will feel like a loss.

Kind of odd and morbid, I know.

That's really cool. You never hear much about this race, more about his silver after getting beat by Keino.

Was he a/the favorite in the '72 games?

Not cool for Ryun. He really got treated unfairly.

There was some anti-American bias in the way he got treated. Same with the American basketball team.

That is true, whether or not anyone wants to dispute it.

If anything, the Ghanaian should have advanced, and Ryun should have been DQ'd for impeding him. You don't cut in front without enough space.

Them advancing every tripper nowadays may eventually lead to a soccer dynamic, where people get "tripped" on purpose.

I wish we had more random footage from those Olympics. I know this is a significant moment despite being a prelim so it isn't "random" per se, but it's still cool to see footage from a non-final preserved and available to watch. You get to see some runners from countries you wouldn't often see like Ghana, and that's fun! But I wish we had more footage available just of random events, like preliminary heats and that sort of stuff. I'm sure it exists in ABC's archives or whatnot but this would be just before VCRs, so it's not like the late 70s and onward where you can often find random NFL games, track meets, etc. on Youtube just because someone taped it at the time.

Are you kidding me? What an absolutely disgusting comment. Go home and rethink your life.

I also wish there was a video of Pre at the 1972 Trials when he set the AR 5000 record.

I guess you weren’t around then but was a huge deal and I must have seen the replay a hundred times. Everything was the U.S. verses the Soviet Union then, so doing the right thing was always second to politics.

Ryun was “a” favorite.

He'd been up & down -- equally likely to run a 3:52 mile as a 4:10. He had lots of allergy problems but the bigger issue was that mentally he was never the same after Mexico.

Mentally? Yeah, he bumped his head and became a politician.

He was the world record holder in the 1500 and mile at the time and the US champ. So it seems likely he would be advanced today. The denial of his appeal was a big deal and got a lot of press.

The first Olympics I watched the entire coverage. So many big stories: Spitz going for 7 Golds, media darling Korbut, US top sprinters missing the semi because of a time mix up, Ryun's fall, Viren, Wottle and of course the massacre top it off.

I remember Matthews and Collete and their victory stand chat and the US-Russian basketball final craziness.

As has been mentioned, the Ryun fall was disappointing for fans but nobody knew exactly what to expect from him given his recent performances. Far different than in '68 when American fans basically took it for granted that Ryun would win.

This ^ is weird. We all pass my friend. He might live another 20 years. Will you or I be around. Who knows?

I always thought that putting his mile time (3:52) as a 1500m time was wrong. I was present at that mile in Toronto, and as great as it was at the time, it put him in the wrong heat.

The poster surely means the replay video. I started a thread with that video a few years ago, probably been deleted by the mods since then.

Ryun's form was very patchy, but he did run a 3:52 mile before these Games, so he definitely would have been the guy they all feared.

If you watch the full race video, you see him get up several seconds after being dazed from banging his head and absolutely going like a locomotive making ground on the leaders. It was too much though, obviously. If he hadn't been stunned, amd managed to get up quickly, he would have qualified easily. I think he would have destroyed everybody in the final, including the Finnish doper.

I thought from the thread title that this was about his 2004 Senate run. He ran so many distastefully mean ads against his opponent that he lost a pretty sure seat.

Is this what happened? I’ve always remembered it as he was seeded off his best 1500m time of the year instead of his mile time which was far superior. If they submitted his mile time as a 1500m time that’s even worse.