Walt Murphy’s News and Results Service (wmurphy25@aol.com)
This Day in Track & Field–March 10
1868—Great Britain’s Walter Chinnery set a World Record of 4:29.6 in the Mile in Cambridge, England.
https://runner500.wordpress.com/tag/walter-chinnery/
1967–The 1/2-mile, held on the first day (3-10) of competition at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Detroit’s Cobo Arena, was a dream matchup between Villanova’s Dave Patrick, who had been tearing up the tracks in the East, and Kansas’ Jim Ryun, who had already established himself as one of the best runners in the world.
Both had run heats in the 880y earlier in the day, while Ryun had also run a tougher than expected heat in the Mile. When the gun went off, Patrick never gave Ryun a chance, moving out to a quick lead and winning easily in 1:48.9 to set a World Record. A tired Ryun, who made no excuses after the race, finished 2nd in 1:50.7, with Notre Dame’s Peter Farrell, the now-retired women’s coach at Princeton, right behind in 1:51.1.
Ryun came back the next day (3-11) to win the Mile in 3:58.6, while Patrick ran a 4:00.6 anchor on Villanova’s runnerup distance medley (Kansas State set a World Record of 9:44.6). Patrick tried to come back 1/2 hour later in the 2-mile relay, but collapsed at the end of his 2:07 split! Other winners at the meet included Nebraska’s Charlie Greene, who took the 60-yard dash for the 3rd year in a row (6.0), and Washington State’s Gerry Lindgren, who repeated in the 2-mile (8:34.7).
A couple of footnotes to the 1/2 mile–finishing 6th (1:55.0) was the late Joe Kearney, a senior at Manhattan College, who was my teammate at St.Augustine H.S in Brooklyn for two years. We ran together at Penn in 1961 on one of those early-morning mile relays.
As mentioned above, the 880 was on Friday, and I knew that ABC was going to include coverage of the race in its live show on Saturday. Not wanting to know the results before watching the show, I avoided reading the newspapers and never turned on the radio. So what does announcer Bill Flemming say at the top of the show? “Be sure to stay tuned to watch Dave Patrick beat Jim Ryun and set a world record”!
Video Highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prm-OFs3DIU
Results: http://trojanforcestats.us/iNCAA-Meet-Results/iNCAAresults1967.pdf
1973—Manhattan College needed only 18 points (scoring was 6-4-3-2-1) to upset the “big boys” and win the team title at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Cobo…
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