Legendary miler Jim Ryun didn’t want Olympic glory — he just wanted to make his high school team – oklahoman.com

Back in the 1960s, there weren’t many athletes who were a bigger deal in our neck of the woods than Jim Ryun.

His exploits on the track were chronicled in the sports pages. His records in the mile were celebrated in Sports Illustrated. His story was the thing of legends, a lanky kid from Wichita, Kansas, pushing the bounds of what anyone thought was possible.

A high schooler running the mile in under 4 minutes?

A young man from the heartland setting world records?

Ryun was a Middle America hero.

But to hear him tell it all these years later, his journey began because he was just looking for a sport where he could make the team.

“I was the guy who was cut from every team he tried out for,” Ryun said the other day from his home in Kansas. “That includes the church baseball team, so you can see that’s not a bright future.”

He chuckled.

“When I entered high school, I went out for a team I’d never heard of before — cross country,” he said. “I must have been pretty desperate because I’d never run before, and all of a sudden, I’m running 40 or 50 miles a week.

“I was desperate.”

In running, Ryun found his calling. It’s still among his biggest passions all these years later.

It is why he will be in Oklahoma next month. Ryun will be the keynote speaker at the inaugural Oklahoma Distance Symposium, June 3 and 4 in Norman. While the event will have seminars on the nuts and bolts of running — injury prevention, strength training, performance nutrition — Ryun will bring the motivation and inspiration.

He has first-hand knowledge, after all, of the power of encouragement.

After his first cross country practice at Wichita East High, Ryun was ready to quit.

“I was so sore that the first day I went home from practice, my mom had saved dinner, and I said, ‘Mom, I’m too tired, I’m going to bed,’” he recalled. “I woke up the next morning where I shared a downstairs bedroom with my brother. I had to walk upstairs backwards. I told my mom, ‘Hey, look, that was a one-time experience. I’ll be home today.’

“My first class, my first period, I saw some of my teammates, and I said, ‘I’m not coming back out again. I’m just too sore.’ But by the time I got to sixth period, I had enough of the guys on the team … say, ‘Hey, come back out,’ I took that as encouragement and I went back out for something that made no sense because it was painful.”

Distance running hooked Ryun, and only a few years later, he hooked the sports world.

He made his first of three Olympic teams when he was only a junior in high school. Yes, less than three years after taking up the sport, then nearly quitting it, he was running on the biggest stage in the world.

“I was so new to the sport of running, when I made the team and I got to the Tokyo Olympics, I was like, ‘Wow, they do these every four years?’” he said. “I was so new to the sport, I was not familiar with the Olympic Games. I was more into baseball, the World Series, football.”

But the sports world would soon be into him.

Ryun set the world record in 1966, then landed on Sports Illustrated’s cover as its Sportsman of the Year. Even though he finished second at the 1968 Olympics, an unexpected result for the favorite, U.S. runners had not received adequate preparation and training for the high altitude. Mexico City sits almost 7,400 feet above sea level, nearly 2,000 feet higher than Denver.

Ryun was expected to get his gold four years later in Munich.

Instead, he failed to make the finals, having been tripped, fouled and knocked to the ground in the preliminaries. He fought to be reinstated, but his appeal was denied.

“How do you deal with that?” Ryun said. “I learned a lot about forgiveness and that it’s a constant process. But if you don’t take that experience head on and deal with it, it can destroy your life. … Was it easy? You bet it wasn’t.”

Twelve years later, Ryun and his wife, Anne, were in the stadium for track and field’s final day during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Coliseum had a jumbotron, still a rarity in those days, to show the action on the floor of the massive stadium.

“On that particular day, the high jump was going on,” Ryun said. “One of the officials that happened to walk by in front of the high jump that is now no longer small but is large on that screen is the man who could’ve reinstated me in 1972. I know what I wanted to do in 1972 — I wanted to poke him in the nose and let him feel what I was feeling. But it didn’t happen, and I’m grateful for that.

“But … in 1984 when I saw him, I no longer had that anger toward him.”

Jim Ryun’s disappointments in the Olympics could’ve soured him on sport. Instead, he continues to do running camps every summer. Continues to speak, too, to coaches and athletes and anyone who will listen about the wonders of running.

He acknowledges distance running requires an investment of time and a commitment to consistency.

“Running is not rocket science,” he said. “It is basically putting one foot in front of the other, and over a period of time … you will have some success. It doesn’t mean you will be in the Olympics.”

Then again, that wasn’t his goal when he started out.

He just wanted to make the team.

Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 405-475-4125 or jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK or follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok.

***

Oklahoma Distance Symposium

When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., June 3 and 4

Where: Nancy O’Brien Center, Norman North High School

Tickets: $10 per day. Limited seating available at showtix4u.com/events/2019oklahomadistancesymposium.