Beginning our 14th year and 1,200+ postings. A blog for athletes and fans of 20th century Track and Field culled from articles in sports journals of the day, original articles, book reviews, and commentaries from readers who lived and ran and coached in that era. We're equivalent to an Amer. Legion post of Track and Field but without cheap beer. You may contact us directly at irathermediate@gmail.com or write a comment below. George Brose, Courtenay, BC ed.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Legendary Kansas track & field and cross country coach Bob Timmons, who led his Jayhawk teams to four NCAA titles and 31 conference championships, passed away Tuesday evening at the age of 91. He is survived by his wife, Pat; children, Tammie, Beckie, Perkie and Dan, as well as two grandchildren.
Timmons served as the head coach of the Kansas track & field and cross country squad for 22 seasons from 1966-88. “Timmie’s” teams captured 13 Big Eight indoor titles, 14 outdoor titles and four cross country league titles. He led the Jayhawks to three NCAA indoor championships in 1966, 1969 and 1970. Timmons’ 1970 outdoor team tied for the national championship with Oregon, Brigham Young and Drake to give him four titles in five years. To this day, Timmons’ four NCAA Championships are the most among any head coach in Kansas Athletics’ history.
“The Kansas Track & Field family has lost a legendary figure in our history,” said current KU track & field head coach Stanley Redwine. “Coach Timmons led KU to unprecedented success during his time here and should be remembered, not only as a great coach, but as a great mentor as well. He continuously strived to set a standard of excellence that we fully recognize to this day. His contributions of our home cross country course of Rim Rock Farm also shows what a truly dedicated Jayhawk he was. Our thoughts are with Pat, their children and the rest of the Timmons family during this difficult time.”
“KU has lost a true treasure,” said Kansas Athletics Director Sheahon Zenger. “Coach Timmons was one of the all-time greats. His legacy, though, does not end with championships and medals. His real legacy is how much he cared about his student-athletes and the University of Kansas.”
Born in Joplin, Missouri, Timmons grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he attended Pittsburg High School. He joined the Marines in 1943 and spent a year deployed in the South Pacific during WWII. Upon returning to the states Timmons turned his attention to coaching.
He began his career in track & field with the Jayhawks as a student manager and assistant coach starting in 1946 until he graduated in 1950. He worked and learned under another Kansas track & field coaching legend, Bill Easton, during his time as an undergrad, which ignited his love for coaching and mentoring young athletes.
He spent eight years as a high school track, swimming and football coach, beginning his career at Caldwell High School in 1950 and also spending time at Emporia High School, Wichita West High School and Wichita East High School before returning to his alma mater in 1965. Timmons helped the Wichita East swimming program to prominence, enjoying eight-straight undefeated years in all competitions and boasting 52 individual state champions and seven state swimming titles. His high school teams also ran to four cross country crowns and six state track championships.
Timmons took over the Kansas program for the future Hall of Famer, Easton, in 1966 and continued to take the Jayhawk program to new heights over the next 22 years. In addition to all the team’s success, he oversaw the coaching and development of seven Olympians, 16 world record holders, 77 NCAA All-Americans and 24 NCAA Champions. Included on his highly impressive résumé, was being named the U.S. Track & Field Coach Association (USTFA) Coach of the Year in 1975 as well as being tabbed as the District V Coach of the Year in 11 of his 22 seasons at KU.
Timmons’ coaching career also included teaching one of the world’s best track athletes in Jim Ryun. Recruited to Kansas by Timmons, his former high school coach, Ryun emerged as one of the most iconic track athletes in American history. In 1964, at the age of 17, Ryun became the first high schooler to run a sub-four-minute mile. In fact, his high school mile mark of 3:55.3 stood for 31 years. With Timmons leading the way in Lawrence, Ryun put together a spectacular stint at KU from 1965 to 1969, he owned world records in the 880 yards, 1,500 meters and mile run and added an additional four American records during his time under Timmons. Ryun was a five-time NCAA champion and, to this day, still holds 13 Jayhawk school records.
He was also the main force behind the creation of one of the top cross country courses in the nation, the home of Kansas Cross Country, Rim Rock Farm. Timmons acquired the land to the north of Lawrence in the early 1970s and quickly turned it into the main home for his cross country squads by 1974. Even after his time at KU came to an end, Timmons remained the caretaker at Rim Rock Farm until he gifted it to the University in 2004. Rim Rock has been the host site for some of the top meets in the nation and the region as it hosted the 1998 NCAA DI and DII Cross Country Championships, 2006 and 2014 Big Championships, numerous Kansas State High School Championships, as well as the upcoming NCAA Midwest Regional Championships in November.
Timmons handed off the reins of the KU track program in 1988, but continued to maintain his close ties to the team. He remained a loyal supporter at Jayhawk home meets and continued to make appearances at the Kansas Relays for many years after his retirement.
In 2011, Timmons became the 11th Jayhawk to be inducted into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame. Along with the National Track & Field Hall of Fame, Timmons is also a member of the Kansas Athletics Hall of Fame, the Kansas Relays Hall of Fame, the Drake Relays Hall of Fame, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, the Kansas High School Activities Association Hall of Fame and the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches of America (USTFCCCA) Hall of Fame.
Services for Bob Timmons are pending.
Bob Timmons and his wife Pat
From Bill Stone
"I am deeply saddened by the news of Coach Timmons' passing. He was a great man and a dear friend. I owe him much. He took a skinny little kid and made him a runner. In the 1957-58 school year, under the Timmons regimen, Wichita East won both the state championship in cross country and in track. That was my senior year and my only year to run on the track team and second year to run cross country. I won the 880 in record time but was disappointed that I had missed his pointed time for me which was one second faster. He knew how to get the most out of his athletes as many can testify. He taught me the benefits of discipline, hard work, setting goals, and humility that were of great value to me during my lifetime. I remember well how after winning the state track championship we urged him to accept the trophy. He would have none of it. He said it was our trophy and we alone earned it. We finally relented but each of us knew that we would not be celebrating had he not been our coach.
When it came to choosing a college I narrowed it down to KU and OSU. I sought coach Timmons counsel knowing that he was a KU alum. He was impartial in helping me through the process and I ended up choosing Oklahoma State. There is no doubt that had he gone to KU at that time I would have chosen KU. In the summers during my college years we spent several evenings together at his home and would talk running, coaching, academics, and life in general. To say that he had a huge impact on my life would be an understatement.
My wife Toni and I offer our sincere condolences to Pat and the family. We will all miss him but remember him well."
Bill(y) Stone From New York Times, August 5, 2015
Bob Timmons, 91, a Demanding Coach Who Developed a Star Runner, Is Dead
Photo
Kansas Coach Bob Timmons with his most celebrated charge, Jim Ryun, in 1966. He guided Olympians and record setters.CreditRich Clarkson/Sports Illustrated, via Getty Images
Bob Timmons, a former wartime Marine whose rugged brand of coaching helped Jim Ryun become America’s most celebrated mile runner of the 1960s, died on Tuesday in Lawrence, Kan. He was 91.
Timmons was the university’s track and cross-country head coach from 1965 to 1988, winning four N.C.A.A. titles and 15 Big Eight titles and nurturing a stellar roster of athletes who broke 16 world records and won seven Olympic berths.
None of his charges were as celebrated as Ryun, a tall, gangly Kansan who loomed over his 5-foot-4 coach. Ryun ran in three Olympics and became a world-record holder in the 880-yard and 1,500-meter events.
Timmons had earlier coached him at Wichita East High School in Kansas, where, in 1963, Ryun made the team as a 16-year-old sophomore after failing to make his junior high school track squad.
In his first meet, Ryun ran the mile in 4 minutes 32 seconds. By his fourth, his time was down to 4:21, and Timmons told him he had the potential to become the first high school runner to better the magic goal of four minutes.
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Coach Timmons won four N.C.A.A. titles and 15 Big Eight titles while at the University of Kansas.CreditWilliam P. Straeter/Associated Press
A year later Ryun did just that, running the mile in 3:59.0. A year after that, he won the Amateur Athletic Union national championship in 3:55.3. The fastest time of his career was 3:51.1, in 1967, a world record that lasted almost nine years.
Timmons practiced a kind of tough but exuberant discipline that harked back to his three years in the Marines, when he fought in the South Pacific during World War II.
“Bob Timmons was probably the most demanding track coach of all time, pushing his runners to the brink — propelling some to greatness and others to the scrap heap,” the magazine Runner’s World wrote in 2009. The article went on to say, “To succeed in his program, you had to trust that the upbeat drill sergeant knew your body better than you did.”
Timmons once dropped an athlete from his college team for drinking beer in the off-season. He once sent a team captain home from a national championship meet because he had not shaved.
But in midcareer Timmons relaxed the reins, concluding that he had been using outdated standards.
“I used a sport to sell a way of life,” he told Track & Field News in 1973. “I’m feeling I can’t make a contribution to the life of the athlete anymore, that I can’t change them; they’re too old and mature. So we’re winning, but I feel like a failure. I can’t cope with what I see.
“But when you come down to it, the problem was me. I had to get out of coaching or change.”
He told his athletes of his problem, and he changed.
Robert Leroy Timmons was born on June 20, 1924, in Joplin, Mo., and raised in Pittsburg, Kan. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical education from Kansas.
He coached Kansas high school teams in track, cross-country and swimming for 14 years. One high school swimmer, Jeff Farrell, went on to win two gold medals in the 1960 Olympics.
Timmons became the University of Kansas’ freshman track coach in 1964, and a year later, after a brief stint as Oregon State’s coach, he returned to Kansas as head coach. In addition to Ryun, he coached such outstanding athletes as the sprinters Cliff Wiley and Mark Lutz, the Olympic javelin thrower Sam Colson, the Olympic pole-vaulters Jan Johnson and Terry Porter, and the high jumper Tyke Peacock. Seventy-seven of his athletes were N.C.A.A. all-Americans.
After retiring from Kansas, Timmons became an artist, a sculptor and a high school track and volleyball coach. He gave the University of Kansas his 96-acre farm outside Lawrence, Rim Rock Farm, as its cross-country course. (Ryun went on to serve in Congress, from 1996 to 2007, as a Republican representing a Kansas district.)
Timmons is survived by his wife, Pat; a son, Dan; three daughters, Rebecca, Priscilla and Susan, known as Tammie; and two grandchildren, the university said.
Timmons felt he might be remembered as a hard-line coach. But Candace Dunback, who oversees the University of Kansas Hall of Fame, once said: “He’s expressed regret to me about being too hard. He felt Jim Ryun could handle it, but not everyone was Jim.”
Ryun had no regrets. “There were those who didn’t make it under the Timmons program,” he said, “but the larger number of us did and became not just better athletes but, more importantly, better human beings.”
Is a rim to rim run through the Grand Canyon on your agenda. Read a few words from an old pro on his recent effort. Jay Birmingham has been around several blocks in his running career. He graduated from Wilmington College, a Quaker school in Southwest Ohio back in the 60s. He's run Death Valley and also a run covering all 48 lower mainland states unassisted. I joined him for about three miles of that run one day outside St. Marys, OH. His 'help' was a credit card.
Anyway here is a recent correspondence between Jay and Steve Price concerning Jay's recent run on the Grand Canyon.
1980 Jay on steps of NYC city hall upon completing his run across America
Jay is an old friend who was the second man to run across Death Valley. He was a student at Wilmington College and one of the early members of the Ohio River Roadrunners Club.......a great guy !
Steve Price
Sent from my iPad
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jay Birmingham Subject:Grand Canyon
Corbitt was a beast! I met him several times and he was instrumental in my 1980 Tran-America run as well as hosting me on my East Coast Run in 1982. He helped get me in touch with young Johnny Kelley in 1988 when I ran through CT before coming to Ohio that summer when you ran with me.
Grand Canyon kicked my butt but I got out of there with only leg cramps. I doubt I will ever go across again unless I have someone carrying my gear/drinks. The 7-mile descent from the south rim beat up my quads and the steps, hollowed out by mules, were gravelly and steep. The middle 7 miles were gently uphill and I pushed hard (1500 feet elevation gain); but I was dead over the final 7 miles (4000 feet of climbing). It was hot and the final altitude is around 8200 feet but I had trained all summer at 8800 so I think the leg cramps (biceps femoris and sartorius) were simple overuse.
I crossed in 1975, 1985, 1995, 2005, and now 2015 on my 70th birthday.
Four days later, we were in Nebraska for a reunion of my 1994-2003 cross country teams at Dana College. About 30 runners, their spouses, kids, and a few fans of our program made it a wonderful event for me.
Just got home to Florida to prepare for the start of the 2015 CC season at St. Johns Country Day, my 12th. I teach anatomy and physiology and also am head track coach. CC and track are the two largest teams at the small college preparatory school, graduating around 50-60 kids per year. I have about 40 CC runners and 60 on the track team.
I hope to swing through there in June 2016 en route to a New England vacation.
"In August of 1978 Jay and I reunited in the mountains of Colorado and we both ran Pike’s Peak (I the ascent and Jay the full trip). He shared his tent space with me the evening prior to the race. He had a running store in Jacksonville at the time. Talking with him then re-triggered my desire to open a run specialty shop. The ‘Rest of the Story’ is that Jay had some influence in the start of the Running Spot."
For those who don't know what 'the rest is history' refers to, Bob went on to start and maintain one of the best independently owned running stores (several stores) in the country located in the Cincinnati metropolitain area. He recently retired and sold the stores to a new owner.
Larry Stuart, Russian Interpreter, and Blaine Lindgren , Moscow, 1963
Mike Solomon sent us this notice of the passing of Larry Stuart. Larry was a lifelong world class competitor. Twice came up short to make an Olympic team due to injuries and illness. The link to his life story on Masters Track is well worth reading to know about a guy who loved the sport, could throw almost his entire life at world level, and who was not afraid to take umbrage with the administrators of the sport when they failed to do their jobs. Wish I had known him, but his friends certainly make their feelings known in this tribute. This picture we have of him came from US teammate Jim Allen from their European tour in 1963.
I'm sitting here this morning working on a new posting for the 1965 AAU meet which Roy has sent my way. Our methodology for these entries is as follows: Roy, in Ukiah, CA, writes the synopsis of the event as culled from the pages of the July, or is it August, 1965 issue of Track and Field News. Only Roy has the skills to do this. I would be befuddled to even attempt such a writing task. Roy sends it on to Steve Price in Piqua, Ohio to proofread. The product is then sent to me in Courtenay, BC to add pictures and maybe some comments. When you look for a picture of a given athlete, often a good story is part of where that picture came from, so that provides me material to add in to the story. I have the Google Blog account, which allows me to put all the copy and pictures online to send out to you and to make available to readers around the world. Truly this is read in over sixty countries each month. If we make a reference to a runner or jumper from the Ukraine, we notice that readership goes up in that country. Same for New Zealand, France, Germany and the like. However there seems to be a strong daily readership in China and a few other unexpected places. Maybe just the sheer number of people in China inflates our readership from that country.
Now to get to our headline today on Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED's), one may wonder why most of the time we dwell on the past in this blog. Hey we're old guys, and most of our readers are over 60, so that's what we know more about. The sport has become very inflated with large numbers of fast, strong athletes than it was 50 years ago. The depth in every event today is mind boggling. Putting the money out there to be won, has obviously encouraged a greater number of elite participants and of course has encouraged cheating. Since the first guy went to the line to race against his neighbor, people have been looking for an edge. It's just that now there are so many peripheral individuals trying to make a living off athletes that cheating has become such a prominent part of the sport. We used to complain in the 60s that the rich old fogies like Avery Brundage, Dan Ferris, and many others at the helm of the AAU were abusing athletes by imposing a draconian amateurism philosophy on the sport, and a subsequent revolt took place to allow athletes at first to get reasonable expense money to go to meets. But there still was not much out there to let them make a living from the sport. The guys that stayed with the sport into their late twenties, early thirties were also making a living in another field. I'm sure this made for a more well balanced individual than is the case these days. I cannot imagine only training and racing, and texting all day. I do know of a few young people who are working in their professions and competing, but they are few and far between and they are not among the elite.
So as we moved into the 80s and the sport became more commercially marketable, we began to see a lot more doping beyond the occasional distance runner rumour and the not so clandestine doping by weightmen. In the 80s I heard stories that the USOC was looking the other way when US athletes tested positive for drugs that would mask the use of illegal drugs. It was game on. Of course the East Germans and Soviets had institutionalized doping by then, but there was no supposed overseer to boot them out of the sport. Once the wall fell in 1989 it became openly documented how the East Germans had been playing the game. The East Germans had kept records just like the Nazis, so the evidence was there. In the West, since the doping was not encouraged and controlled by the State, the evidence was easier to cover up. In 1988 the Ben Johnson affair made it quite evident that the western athletes were as guilty as the eastern bloc, but they did it on an individual basis rather than a state controlled basis. It's been said that the risk of getting caught was less than the opportunity to make some money. Of course only a few actually made some money. Johnson had a million dollar contract with a clothing manufacturer Diadora , which was rescinded because of his getting caught. He was led down this path by a leech of a coach who also stood to cash in on Johnson's success.
Next the influx of African talent displaced many of the great European and American runners. The Kenyans were most likely clean and benefited from some genetic and lifestyle advantages over the western athletes, not to mention the incentive of making a few dollars which went a much longer way in their economies compared to what translated to income in the West. Now the Kenyans' honesty is being called into question. The need to get chemical help is there, because still only a few can actually make a good living from track and field, so to assure one has a chance, he or she must go to the pharmacy cabinet. Some of the Middle Eastern countries with no history of athletic tradition are buying athletes from Kenya because of that nation's surplus. Also the refugee movement in some African countries has ended up in Nordic countries with citizen athletes whose origin is Africa. Same can be said for the US who also bought and sold Africans two hundred years ago in a more diabolical way.
The public and the media can also be accused in this modern charade of athletics when the sport is manipulated by media conglomerates, Olympic programming, glamour and sales of sports shoes, clothing, and accessories. Hundreds of thousands of joggers buy millions of dollars of equipment and spend enormous amounts of dollars for event entry fees to feel like they are champion athletes. And the monster grows.
So we old diehards sit in our easy chairs , too old, creaky and cranky to get out there anymore to give those boys and girls their comeuppance.
Now that the IAAF and WADA and some other 'supervisory bodies' have begun an introspective look at their own shortcomings, maybe a slightly new course will be taken. However old institutions and board directors and well paid minions do not give up power easily. So it is fairly unlikely there will be a major overhaul of those well entrenched institutions. Even a change of leadership at the top coming from an election of a new IAAF president is no guarantee of a major change in the institution. Obama couldn't do it, so how could Bubka or Coe? They are too much a part of the system. I can't think of any world bodies that could ever carry out a sophisticated revamping of a world wide problem. The IAAF is much like the UN, a worldwide membership run by a bunch of elite individuals who enjoy being there rubbing elbows with their social equivalents. However the power is in a few countries with the money to push their agendas. The UN couldn't stop a genocide in a small, concentrated area like Rwanda. The IAAF will not be able to stop or slow down an epidemic of drug abuse in track and field. My sympathies are with the honest people in the sport, but I can never be sure who they are.
So how to go forward? I've mentioned this to several people with mixed responses, but it's the only thing I can think of that might work. I'm sure however that plenty of people thinking up ways of dealing with the problem will find some better way of solving it. If you have an idea, we'll publish it, just send it to the commentaries at the end of this page.
My Solution:
All events will have two groups of athletes, Group A (No testing) and Group B (Heavy Testing).
Group A athletes will go to the line with whatever they want to put into their bodies. They sign a waiver that they don't care what harm may come to them by using PED's. They will never be banned from the sport and their resultant medical and/or funeral expenses will be covered by the IAAF
Group B athletes will be tested regularly. If they test positive, they will be banned for life from competing with other Group B athletes. They will be moved to group A. However since they chose to lie about what they were doing, they will be required to pay back up to 80% of what they earned as Group B athletes before they can compete in Group A. Some of their winnings will have to be held in escrow in case they get caught in the lie.
For the Americans:
All university athletes will be in Group B. If they test positive, they will be banned from competing in University but be allowed to go to Group A. They will not lose their scholarships and be allowed to attend university for four years at their athletic department's expense. That will put a lot of pressure on the universities to run clean programs.
So, please feel free to blast away.
GB
I'm still chewing on your latest well written soapbox blip. I am not sure your proposal would work but have heard nothing better. The fallout of all this might be something to ponder as other sports may or may not follow track's example. The NCAA will pretty much do as they please. In other countries, our sport is run by a federation so they have more "control" over the individual athlete.
Steve Price Roy adds some interesting perspectives to my thesis. I can see that the committee will be analyzing and debating these issues for some time to come.
"Creaky and cranky", great line, George.
Obviously there is no easy answer to this. I like your A and B system, but here is the problem I see as a spectator. The "A" guys aren't cheats. They are what they are and we have created a system whereby the only competitive advantage they might have is a superior pharmacist. No aspersions will be cast. Whether they will run in separate meets or concurrently as in the B mile at 2:05 pm and the A mile at 2:15 pm, is but a minor detail to be worked out. The question is, as a fan, what division do I want to watch? Do I want to see a 3:41 mile or a 3:50 mile?, a 18.98 200 or a 19.87 200? Compare that to men's and women's races now. As much as I love the women's competition, if I have the choice of watching a men's or women's 800. PV or steeplechase, I'll pick the men every time. I think this holds true in nearly all sports, NBA or WNBA? Let's check the TV ratings. The same would be true of the A's and B's. Do I want to watch the varsity or the JV's?
The financial situation is another aspect. Where do Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc. invest their dollars? Do they sponsor A runners or B runners? Both maybe, but my thinking is that they will go with whichever draws the larger crowd and the highest TV ratings. If that is the A division, the B's would be like the minor leagues in baseball, fun to watch but not the cachet of the major leagues.
And then we get to the Olympics. If we keep them "clean", well and good, but would they have the status they have now? The winner of the shot put throws 74' but his feat is diminished by the 15 guys regularly over 80' in the A division. Would we have an A Olympics and a B Olympics? Obviously with any of this, problems outnumber solutions.
An afterthought: The A league could save T&F with a huge infusion of money. Nike and Adidas couldn't pay athletes the kind of money Pfizer, Lilly or Novartis would shell out. Johnson and Johnson could pay athletes like NBA players. The A athletes would be living proof that whatever the pharmaceutical they were using, was effective. "That dude just ran 41.5. I'm getting that stuff tomorrow." A Nike athlete wins but can you really say it was because he wore Nike? With drugs, there would be empirical evidence. The guy hitting the tape first has Bristol-Myers Squibb on his shirt.
From George
My kickback on this is as soon as Big Pharma gets involved and supporting teams of dopers, they'll want to start making rules about how much an 'athlete' can ingest before a meet etc. and it will cut out Bernie down at the trailer park who has discovered how to produce the best boost known to man. Then we'll be calling the cheats cheats. The problem here is that the American public truly wants to be deceived. We want to believe in fairies and avatars and 3:32 milers.
As to which race the public will want to watch, pay TV will figure that one out for us and the market will prevail. I guess there's no sane solution. We at Once Upon a Time in the Vest will continue to dwell on the past.
