Our Greatest Bespectacled Distance Runner?

Kareem Abdul Jabbar overall.

Tony Parilla still better than Gary Martin at the NCAA level. 1:43 & an Olympian a sophomore.

Lindgren

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We’ll have to get a judge’s ruling on Kareem’s eligibility. Wore the goggles to protect his eyes not for vision correction. Pulled them up to take free throws if I recall correctly.

The over 60 crowd remembers Craig Masback

2nd for Lindgren all things being equal!!!!

en.m.wikipedia.org

El Amin Chentouf

El Amin Chentouf, (Arabic: الأمين شنتوف) (born 9 June 1981) is a Moroccan para-athlete running in T12 distance races. He has represented his country at three Summer Paralympics winning gold medals at each competition. Outside...

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Always found this guy pretty inspirational

Cracking running for someone with eyesight so bad

Mike Freary.

Kareem hated running

Good point. I thought the Paralympian downhill skiers were pretty bad@ss

Not the greatest but a runner of interest

en.wikipedia.org

Sydney Wooderson

Sydney Charles Wooderson MBE (30 August 1914 – 21 December 2006), dubbed "The Mighty Atom", was an English athlete whose peak career was in the 1930s and 1940s. He set the world mile record of 4:06.4 at London’s Motspur Park...

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https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/69160

Dave Holt, Hercules Wimbledon, 13:50/28:40, represented GB in 10,000, Olympic Games, Munich, 1972. His twin brother, Bob Holt, had slightly better times, 3:51/7:59/13:48/28:39/48:00/2:16:00.

Don McGregor was 7th in the '72 Olympic Marathon. As far as I can tell that's the highest Olympic placing of any marathoner wearing glasses if not the highest in any distance race. The Soh brothers from Japan were under 2:10 in the marathon and wore glasses.

Gary should get an NIL deal from Warby-Parker or some other on-line glasses company!

Or maybe Nike?

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Alternatively, he could try some Super Specs. Carbon fiber or titanium frames with polycarbonate lenses would be way lighter than his current giant black plastic frames.

Good choice. But perhaps more than just a runner of interest. World record holder in the 800/880 and the mile.

Off topic, but I would have loved to have seen that race.

Dieter Baumann won gold for Germany in the 5,000m in 1992. I loved watching him run in the mid-late 90s with glasses on. He was the only white [non-East-African-born to be more accurate] sub-13:00 5,000m runner back then. However, he was a PED user & busted later. So he doesn't count and/or goes down in ignominy & deserved shame.

Gary is really good, but the greatest U.S. bespectacled distance runner ever has to be Gerry.

Gerry Lindgren set a world record in the 6-mile run, won 11 NCAA titles (losing only once in his 12 NCAA Championship races), was an Olympian, and set numerous high school and U20 records.

His high school 5k record of 13:44 set in 1964 stood for over 40 years and is still the 7th fastest ever on the all-time HS 5k list. He ran that wearing leather spikes on a dirt track.

Only five other high school runners have ever gone faster than the high school 10k record of 29:17 he ran in 1964.

Contact lenses were only just beginning to become popular when Gerry was at his best.

I love this movie. This scene could comedically carry most modern films but for Airplane its just another scene.