Bob Schul, America’s only Olympic 5000-meter gold medalist, died on June 16 in Middletown, Ohio. He was 86 and had been living with dementia.
Schul raced into American sports legend in the Tokyo Olympic 5,000 meters in 1964. His thrilling long sprint finish demolished a superlative field that included some of the world’s most feared kickers. Schul won the gold medal by 0.8 seconds, still one of the biggest margins in Olympic 5,000-meter history.
His triumph came four days after the inspiring win by Billy Mills in the 10,000 meters. In the first Olympics to be televised live globally, their breakthrough double victory excited living rooms all over America and ignited a new passion for long-distance running, the first spark of the great American running boom.
Unlike the outsider Mills, Schul came into his race as a co-favorite. In 1964, he had set U.S. records at 3 miles indoors and 5,000m outdoors (13:38.0, the world’s best time that year). He had also broken the world record for two miles (8:26.4), and most significant, he remained unbeaten against strong opponents in that season’s long lead-up to the Games in October.
In the Olympic final, heavy rain and a sodden cinder track might have blunted Schul’s high-stepping stride and reliance on sudden acceleration, but in a race of wildly fluctuating pace, he stayed poised and clear of the jostling. At the bell, he was suddenly blocked and missed a dangerous break by France’s Michel Jazy. But he found a gap with 300m to go.
“Just into the backstretch, now I get space and switch to my sprint style. When I get free, it’s as if exhilaration comes over me—now I can run!” Schul told Running Times in 2014. He flew past Bill Dellinger (U.S.), Nikolay Dutov (USSR), Harald Norpoth (Germany), and finally Jazy, whose speed had given him the Olympic 1500m silver medal in 1960 and the world 2-mile record in 1963. Schul’s final 300m took only 38.7 seconds.
“Nothing in previous Olympic history ever compared with Schul’s finish,” wrote Track & Field News. Taking the soggy cinders into account, that remains true.
Robert Keyser Schul, a seriously asthmatic farm boy in West Milton, Ohio, was an unlikely sporting hero. When he was driving his father’s smoky tractor, Schul used to wear a World War II gas mask as protection from crippling asthma attacks. Later he surmised that asthma had taught him to breathe deeply and efficiently. Dairy farm labor also instilled the ethic of consistent hard work, which enabled him to benefit from the twice-daily training regimen of the immigrant Hungarian coach Mihály Iglói, whose team at the Los Angeles Track Club Schul joined after Air Force service.
He had been a good high school miler (4:34.4), progressed to 4:12.1 at Miami University in Ohio, but the big breakthrough came after his commanding officer, Max Truex, a 1960 Olympian at 10,000 meters, connected him to Iglói in 1961.
The relentlessly fast intervals of the Iglói method brought dramatic progress, but took their toll. Schul’s career at a world class level was brilliant but brief. In 1961, he placed third in the U.S. 3,000-meter steeplechase, and in 1962, he became one of the world’s best indoors 2-milers, running 8:37.5. After injury and illness in 1963, he returned to Ohio and adapted Iglói’s schedules to achieve his 1964 year of miracles.
His best post-Olympic race was the 1965 AAU 3-mile championship, when on limited training, he defeated an international field and set an American record of 13:10.4. Schul called it “the toughest race I ran and won.” Equally hard was a marginal defeat by the Soviet 1960 Olympic gold medalist Pyotyr Bolotnikov on his home track in Kiev, Ukraine, an occasion Schul remembered for the standing ovation he received from the crowd for his courage. A demanding tour of Europe also brought him personal best times at 1500 meters (3:40.7) and 3,000 meters (7:59.9).
Life was not easy or affluent for an Olympic champion in that last era of compulsory amateurism. Schul initially had to fit exhausting training, on cinders from a hospital furnace, between the demands of high school teaching, and he sold his car to enable his first wife to join him on the 1965 tour of Europe. He raced too often in pursuit of modest “travel expenses” checks. He retired late in 1965, at age 28. He worked for the Amateur Athletic Union in California, and then became sports director for the Oakland Athletic Club, where he found his love of coaching.
In 1968, Schul attempted a comeback to defend his Olympic title, but limited training and South Lake Tahoe’s high altitude for the U.S. Trials left him off of the selected team.
“It was a dismal way to end. It’s the champion who scorns himself the most...But I had not given in. I had not quit. Not for a single step,” he wrote, in “After the Olympics,” an online continuation of his memoir In the Long Run (2000).
Schul continued to search for a running-related career. He spent a year as national coach for Malaysia, he opened one of the first stores for running shoes and apparel, and he was founder and executive director of the Association of International Track Athletes of America, which headed the agitation for professionalism. He found greater security in 1978, when he began to coach for the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson Base, a time he recalled with pleasure.
“The most fun I ever had coaching—one kid broke four minutes, another got down to a 2:13 marathon, I had one in the Jamaican Olympic team in ’84,” he told Running Times. An earlier coaching success was Eamon O’Reilly, who chased Ron Hill home in the 1970 Boston Marathon in an American record 2:11:12.
Schul’s final full-time coaching post was at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, from 1996 to 2007. He ran well in masters age-groups from 50 through 60, and continued to coach local athletes in Fairborn, Ohio, where he spent his later years, living alone after his second marriage ended, a few miles from the West Milton farm where he grew up.
Schul was inducted in the USATF Hall of Fame in 1991, but he lived a mainly local and private later life, always overshadowed in the running community and wider public by the adulation given to Mills. The most fitting tribute to him is simply to study the full result of the Olympic 5,000-meter final when, spattered head to toe with muddy cinders, Bob Schul so compellingly dominated one of the greatest 5,000-meter fields ever assembled.
1. Bob Schul (USA) 13:48.8; 2. Harald Norpoth (Germany) 13:49.6; 3. Bill Dellinger (USA) 13:49.8; 4. Michel Jazy (France) 13:49.8; 5. Kipchoge Keino (Kenya) 13:50.4; 6. Bill Baillie (New Zealand) 13:51.0; 7. Nikolay Dutov (USSR) 13:53.8; 8. Thor Helland (Norway) 13:57.0; 9. Ron Clarke (Australia) 13:58.0; 10. Stepan Baidiuk (USSR) 14:11.2; 11. Mike Wiggs (GBR) (fall) 14:20.8.
Roger Robinson is a highly-regarded writer and historian and author of seven books on running. His recent Running Throughout Time: the Greatest Running Stories Ever Told has been acclaimed as one of the best ever published. Roger was a senior writer for Running Times and is a frequent Runner’s World contributor, admired for his insightful obituaries. A lifetime elite runner, he represented England and New Zealand at the world level, set age-group marathon records in Boston and New York, and now runs top 80-plus times on two knee replacements. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and is married to women’s running pioneer Kathrine Switzer.
