Jim Ryun - Mile World Record 23Jun67



USA Jim Ryun breaks the world record in the mile with a time of 3:51.1 in Bakersfield on June 23, 1967

Comments

  1. While in college in 1972 I ran a 3 mile race in a  dual meet against Kansas in Lawrence and Jim Ryun  was given permission to enter and run,this was weeks before the Olympic Trials and Jim used the race as workout. Standing at the start line I did not know what to do,ask for an autograph,shake his hand,or stand dumbly at his side looking at my idol. I was not in his class but I remember I ran next to him in the race as long as I could,just so I had would have the memory of running side by side with him
  2. When Ryun was in his mid-1960's prime, nobody, NOBODY, could touch him. Even the great Peter Snell was second to Jim-bo.
  3. My all time running idol. I didn't realize when he ran this record it was done in this fashion, alone out front the entire time no body even close after the half. I ran into him on "Pre's Trail" back in 83 or 84 and got to shake his hand. Needless to say it made my day. Jim Ryun you are the MAN.
  4. To Jed CLAMPETT, there ´s a french Book on the Story of athletisme : The titre is : la fabuleuse histoire de l'athlétisme. A Book from Robert PARIENTE, this journalist sais he considèred Jimmy RYUN as The greatest Miler he ever knew .
  5. Jim Ryun still holds the NCAA record in the 800 meters.  That is if the conversion of 880 yards is used.  Ryun also holds the Univ. of Kansas records in the 1500 and 5000!!!  We are talking 1966 and 1967!!!That was back when the world as a whole did not know much about training.  We always overworked our distance running with too much interval training.  Actually we still do this today in many cases.
  6. No rabbit, cinder track, crappy shoes,
  7. Deano takes Ryun's splits as metric and then mistakenly converts them to yards, probably because in Europe splits are for metric marks. Ryun's splits were actually for the 440/880/1320 yard times. Which means Ryun's last quarter mile converts to 53.2 for 400 meters, which is very fast for a guy who wasn't shooting for a record, had no one near him, and felt so fresh afterward. Ryun was as talented as anyone who has ever run the mile. But he was trained horribly. Modern runners like Ovett, Coe, Cram, El G, Morceli, the whole lot, were far better trained. But that's the way things were way back in the 1960's, not to mention the short careers most athletes in the US enjoyed. Ryun was never the same after having mono, but a lot of his regression was probably due to simply being burned out from the ridiculous training he followed.
  8. In 1967, in West Germany, he finished the last lap of a
    1500m in 49'9 " !
  9. Comparing milers, or other classes of runners 40+ years apart is silly. The were/are the best for their time. Track surfaces, shoes, training methods, and diets are all different. My hat is off to all the great milers Jim Ryun, Hicham El Guerrouj, Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe, Roger Bannister, and all the others
  10. June 23 is my birthday. :D
  11. Jim Ryun would have beat this kid alan webb no problem whatsoever. I can see Jim Ryun having a time of 3:35 against webb!!!!! you heard it here!!!!!
  12. Great Race, My son got to run with him today. Were in the Military station out here in Okinawa Japan, and Mr Ryun came out here to run with the High School trck team. What a great experience for my son....
  13. and he did it on dirt.
  14. I would never put Pre in the same class as Ryun.
  15. Great race, running in front the whole race with out a rabbit is simply amazing, if he raced the King (no disrespect to the greatest miler ever) but I think Jim would win. He can out kick anyone and I mean anyone! GO JIM!
  16. That is about what Ryun did. The AAU race was on June 27, 1965. The standing world record was 3:53.6 just set by Jazy on June 9. The prior world record was 3:55.1 of Snell (set November 17, 1964), which Ryun misses by a mere .2 . It also set an open American record for the mile, the only one ever set by a high school athlete unless Francie Larrieu b.1952 could be considered an HS athlete when she set her first American record in 1971 at age 18.
  17. Yes, the first time he raced Snell he finished 3rd behind Snell and Grelle in a time of 3:56.8. He said that Snell just exploded in the last 220 yards. In his hs record race he said he wasn't nearly as afraid of Snell as he was three weeks earlier, and he ran a 53.9 last quarter (the fastest last lap at that point) to win what he described was the most painful race of his career. The most impressive part for me was that he was just outside of hs when he did this.
  18. For Webb to have equaled Ryun's 3:55.3 against Snell, Webb would have to have beat El G that day in a time that was 1.7 seconds off the world record. I believe that if Ryun in his 67 shape were to run on todays tracks with some good pacing, I think he could've run around 1:42.4 for the 8 and 3:45.5 or so for the mile. If athletes could've made money back then he probably would have stuck around for a bit longer.
  19. But no one else, not even Webb, has run a sub-four in a pure HS race.
  20. If you read the The Jim Ryun story you will see that Ryun raced Snell twice. The first time Snell won, but Ryun felt he had been surprised by tactical timing (he could not quite run past Snell with a lead in a full kick) not really beaten. The next time, since Snell followed this pattern routinely and it always worked, Ryun made his move first and won.


Additional Information:

Visibility: 104810

Duration: 4m 11s

Rating: 137