As he drifted in and out of consciousness, he overheard whispered conversations between his mother and doctors. First, they thought he would not survive. Later, they said he would never walk again, and urged amputation of both his legs.
His mother, mindful that her son had already lost his brother, refused to let him lose his legs, too. When the bandages were finally removed and Glenn was sent home, it was easy to see why the doctors had been so pessimistic. Glenn had lost all the toes on his left foot, and the transverse arch of the foot was ravaged.
The flesh on his knees and shins had been eaten away by the flames. The right leg was grossly misshapen and was now a full two inches shorter than the left leg. The doctors had done all they could. There was no such thing as transplants and skin grafts in those days nearly a century ago, and even if there had been, the Cunninghams were not likely candidates to afford the processes.
They sent him home with a wheelchair and crutches, advising the family to massage the legs to stretch the muscles and restore suppleness to his lower limbs. Glenn was determined to walk again, and endured the excruciating routine as a necessary evil. One sunny day, during the summer of , his mother wheeled him into the yard for fresh air, as was her custom. She went back inside. A few minutes later, she was astonished to see Glenn crawling on the ground!
She rushed outside, thinking something was wrong. By the time she had reached her son, Glenn had pulled himself across the grass and raised himself up on the picket fence. After he began walking again, he made another discovery:. So for five or six years, about all I did was run. Well, he actually started doing something more akin to hopping fast than running.
But before long, young Glenn Cunningham was known throughout the community for his running. Because he ran everywhere. I ran and ran and ran. By the time he as 12, Glenn—running despite having legs that were still riddled with scars—was outrunning everyone in his age group in Elkhart, Kan. He went on to run track at Elkhart High School, becoming a miler.
In his last schoolboy race, he set a national record, running the mile with a time of 4 minutes, It is reputed that Cunningham ran a sub-four minute mile at Elkhart, but such outrageous rumors are unsubstantiated. Cunningham took his incomparable determination and will to the University of Kansas in , running for legendary track coach Brutus Hamilton, who himself had been a famed decathlete, winning a silver in the discipline at the Antwerp Games.
He sat out his freshman campaign, and in the season entered his first inter-collegiate competitions. No man had ever run the mile faster at an outdoor meet in the United States. Glenn Cunningham had arrived on the national scene, and it would be almost a decade before he would relinquish his place as the top middle-distance runner in the country. Olympic team. Later, he also set a new world record while competing in the yard run.
Cunningham was at his peak by the time he made his second Olympic appearance at Berlin in He did not disappoint, setting a new US record at the event by clocking Nearly two weeks later, after his biggest performance on the world stage, the American created a m world record of Another world record in indoor mile run was set by Cunningham in after he clocked During that time, Cunningham had twelve of the fastest thirty-one track records to his name and all this while he was completing his PhD degree in biology, health, and physical education.
He announced retirement in He died on March 10, at the age of Share your perspective on this article with a post on ScrollStack, and send it to your followers. Contribute Now. Read the series. Respond to this article with a post Share your perspective on this article with a post on ScrollStack, and send it to your followers.
By the time he was 12, he had beaten all the local high school runners. His legs remained deeply scarred, however. Throughout his life, he would have to massage them and spend time doing long warm-up exercises in order to maintain circulation. In addition, his injuries meant that he could never run smoothly or efficiently; he compensated with endurance and strength. It is interesting to speculate on how great he might have been if he had never been injured.
According to Cordner Nelson and Roberto Quercetani in The Milers, "The middle s may well be the most exciting short period in the history of the and mile. It was a time of world records and surprises, a time of great improvement and uneasy uncertainty for individuals. Frank B. Bowles wrote in the Biographical Dictionary of American Sports that Cunningham "may have run a sub-4 minute mile in high school, but this feat has never been authenticated.
Cunningham attended the University of Kansas, where he ran for the track team and won his first big race, the NCAA meters. That summer, he was selected for the U. Olympic track team. At the Olympics, held in Los Angeles, he came in fourth in the meter race. In , Cunningham graduated from the University with the highest academic record in his class.
That same year, he won the AAU meters with a time of In addition he won the NCAA mile for the second time, with a time of Overall, he ran 20 races in Europe during that summer, as well as maintaining a busy indoor season and a hard outdoor season. That year, the first year he was called "Ironman," he was awarded the Sullivan Memorial Trophy, which was given annually to the most outstanding amateur athlete.
Cunningham went on to graduate school at the University of Kansas, then earned a master's degree from the University of Iowa in , and a Ph. In , public interest in the mile race was at an all-time high. Cunningham began a tough competition in the mile against Bill Bonthron of Princeton.
According to Nelson and Quercetani, "Madison Square Garden had to turn away thousands of people who wanted to see [Cunningham and Bonthron]. Their exploits made headlines throughout the country. This event consisted of only four races, which began at five in the evening, after the Yale-Princeton baseball game.
Only three runners were slated to run in the mile: Bill Bonthron, Glenn Cunningham, and Gene Venzki; most of the crowd of 25, spectators expected Bonthron to win by a large margin. For the first lap, Venzke was in the lead, with Cunningham closely following. After another half-lap, Cunningham passed him and was in the lead. Bonthron moved in close behind Cunningham, holding steady and seemingly ready to speed past him at the end of the race.
In the third lap, however, Cunningham put on a burst of speed. Nelson and Quercetani wrote, "His scarred legs churned wildly, and he looked as if he had started the last lap. Around the turn he opened up an alarming gap of ten yards over Bonthron. The crowd forgot about cheering for Bonthron, the home favorite, and switched to yelling for Cunningham, trying at the same time to figure out just how fast he was running.
On the home-stretch, he was 40 yards ahead of Bonthron and driving for the record.
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