Rinaldo Nehemiah

He was awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't tell you how much anger I have towards Jimmy Carter for depriving me of seeing him at the Olympics. No one ever looked smoother over the hurdles than he.

Skeets was the most elegant hurdler in history. Pure ballet over the sticks. I had a few chances to see him in HS and I feel blessed.

You should have asked him how to spell his name

R-E-N-A-L-D-O

but you can just call him Skeets

Even better was when he walked-down Tim Dale of Villanova in the 4x400...I pretty sure he ran under 45 split..Last event of the day and everyone stayed to hear his split..of course I can't remember.

oldie wrote:

Even better was when he walked-down Tim Dale of Villanova in the 4x400...I pretty sure he ran under 45 split..Last event of the day and everyone stayed to hear his split..of course I can't remember.

I think it was 43.9. It was awesome.

Saw him run 12.9h at the IPI meet. It surprises me how people often say Carter's 81 foot SP is the greatest HS track accomplishment. Nehemiah was running legitimate 12.9's in high school (I think he ran 12.9 twice) when the world record was 13.2. Of course, the sticks were three inches lower.

The name {when spelled correctly}brings back memories of the Terrapins when they fielded decent teams

I hated it when he decided to play football.....what a GREAT HURDLER......probably the BEST!

I got his autograph as a wide eyed 9 year old and he signed it Renaldo. He didn't put any hyphens in it.

sub20 wrote:

I don't know what the world best is for a leg on the 4x200, but 19.1 seems damn fast, it sure looked it.

I remember one of my former jc teammates splitting sub 20 on a 4x200m relay. He was a sub 21 sec 200m runner.

bump

Wow: I was setting at the 150m mark and I still can't believe he won that race. The margin looked like 30-40 meters at the baton pass. Tim must have shit his pants.

I saw him at the PanAm Games in 1979. He was great to watch run. I was always a fan of him.

He gives clinics and is still a great student of the event. Listening to him for an hour and you get some solid info - not just a past star spinning tales-of-old.

GebFan wrote:

I hated it when he decided to play football.....what a GREAT HURDLER......probably the BEST!

This probably won't surprise anyone, but I was teaching an ex phys class about 13 years ago and used Nehemiah as an example in class, can't remember what for.

Hardly any of the students knew who I was talking about and one of them said "Oh yeah, he played for the 49ers".

Sigh.......

I was one of the officials that signed off on his 12.9h HS record. As I watched him hurdle down the track I knew by the second or third hurdle he was going to be fast over the big hurdles. That was an understatment he turned out to be best in the world. Over the years we ran into each other at a lot of meets and I felt and still feel special because in that little way it was my record also and he lived up to the title CHAMPION.

Noah Webster wrote:

You should have asked him how to spell his name

R-E-N-A-L-D-O

but you can just call him Skeets

How embarrassing, mea culpa.

oldie wrote:

Even better was when he walked-down Tim Dale of Villanova in the 4x400...I pretty sure he ran under 45 split..Last event of the day and everyone stayed to hear his split..of course I can't remember.

Did you see him in the 4x100, he mentioned he ran that too.