University Daily Kansan. April 16. 1981
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By GENE MYERS Sports Writer
The '70s should have been the golden age of the Kansas Relays. But the golden age became more and more tarnished as the decade dressed on.
The Relays were golden only when Kansas' golden boy, Jim Rynn, was running, the biggest draw in the state's history, attracted a record 32,000 spectators one year, including 2,000 who walked in just to see his race.
THE YEAR WAS 1972 and Ryun's running career was in jeopardy. It was an Olympic year, his final chance to capture a lost dream. It was a trip to meet, a month after a televised embarrassment in Los Angeles.
The fans were there to bid good-bye to a runner who had attracted thousands with his Wichita high school days. The hops topped for the best and feared the worst.
Ryun, however, did not disappoint the legs. he turned young in the final 330 yards, and he won by five yards, two others under the 4-minute mark.
THE WOULD BE RYAN'S last race in Memorial Stadium. Later that year he would qualify for the Munich Olympic heat and then turn pro.
When Ryun stumbled, the Kansas Relays stumbled too. Without Ryun to
draw the big crowds, the Relays tumbled.
The road down was fast, starting with Ryun's absence, a string of bad weather, renovation of the stadium and just plain bad luck.
However, there were some good times: a decadeate who would win an Olympic gold medal and endorse Wheaties, a black sprinter who
protested during a staged Olympic triumph, a trio of the world's best shot putters and a pair of dueling Swedish pole vaulters.
BUT THE RELAYS almost never made it to the 1970s. The usual bad weather checked into Lawrence in 1969 and turned the cinder track into a quagmire. An all-weather track had to be built, and said, or the Relay would float away.
A Tartan track was built, funded by a $125,000 check from a 38-year-old Wichita oliman, Jihers Hershberger. Fittingly, it rained on the 1970 Relays.
But rain was the least of the problems then. On the Tuesday of Relays week, there were fire bombings and arson attempts in the city on and campus. On Wednesday, Abbie Hoffman of the Chicago Seven addressed 8,000 people at House, and students held a protest stage and stayed away from their classes.
"People have really got to make up their minds that they are going to destroy the University." Hoffman shouted. "If they accept the student's role, they accept the role as a slave. The student is a nigger."
JOHN CARLOS WAS an entrant in Saturday's 10-yard dash. He had been known as the world's fastest human, but he was better known as the U.S. athlete with a black glove and raised fist during the 1986 Mexico City Olympics.
Carlos, with and without his controversial past, was a key figure at the Relays. He won the 10 in 9.3 despite an afternoon rainstorm of 1½ inches.
"Hey, you've got a good track here," he said, declining political statements. "I easter up, threw my hands up and still ran a 9.3 I. d! think it's all me."
Carlos was the attraction because Ryun, two years after his defeat at Mexico City, was in one of his semi-
retirements. His absence showed, as only 3,000 fans came, the others stayed away fearing the rain and campus violence.
Two days later, the Relays were forgotten when a fire bomb ignited the Kansas Union.
CAMPUS LIFE HAD calmed in 1971, and better for the Relays, Ryun was running again. The race would be his first outdoors in a year.
The crowd—swelled to 23,700—came to its feet three times for Ryon: once when introduced, once at the finish line and once on the victory stand with a Kansas congressman and two Kansas-born astronauts.
Ryum's time was 3:55.8 — the same time he ran as a KU fiveman five years earlier and the fastest time in the world in three years.
"I have a couple of emails," he hinted,
"but nothing I want to announce. I want
to discuss those with my coach (KU
Coach Bob Timmons)."
With the victory, 32,000 fans wondered what Rvun's future held.
Ryun's comeback shadowed other outstanding performances. The decathlon winner would become a world-class athlete, and the marital problems a few years later.
would greet the nation's grocery shoppers on the National Enquirer's front cover. His name was Bruce Jenner, a former junior from Gravelock College in Iowa.
Jenner, competing in only his fifth decathlon, won by two points. In future Relays, he would have one of the best decathlon performances ever and suffer one of his most embarrassing performances.
FRANK SHORTER, a future Olympic marathon winner, won the three-mile run in a Relays record that Fuerbach won. Matson, Fuerbach and Kardall Sail won the best shot putters ever, dueted for a second straight year. Matson, the outdoor world-record holder, won. Fuerbach, formerly of Emporia State and the indoor record holder, was named even-twice NCAA champion. was
The success of the '71 Relays ran over to '72 and Ryun's farewell performance. The 32,000 fans followed Ryun's triumph and most stayed until 7 p.m. to watch Kjel Isaksson and Has Lutgerquait, a pair of high-flying Swedes, go for 18 feet in the pole vault. Swirling winds stopped them.
people would attend the Relays. So would an Olympic runner with a golf cap, a Kenyan who ran too fast because he couldn't understand English and a perennial Olympic hurdler, Rod Milburn.
The golf-capped runner, Wade Wottle, had kicked his way to the 800-meter gold at Munich. At KU he was outkicked, a rarity, in the mile.
Wottle, discarding his Olympic white mesh cap for a new one, leased to Leonard Hilton, formerly of the University of Houston, whose claim to fame was losing in the prelimits of the 5,000-meters at Munich.
After that Big Race . . .
"Yeah, he took me by surprise." Wotle admitted. "I should have known. He's still that kind of runner."
THE OUTSTANDING performer award, however, went to Mike Bolt, a Kenyan from Eastern New Mexico that had just started the track, mainly because he had a language problem. In the medley relay he thought he was running a half-mile, but actually was doing the mile. He just timing, speeding on the brink of exhaustion.
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One of the most disappointed athletes in '73 was Bruce Jenner, who not only See 1920 page 5
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