A Golden Era & A Long Road Ahead
by Jim Knoedel
Fictional tale of the prep
and collegiate careers of a father
in the late sixties and his son
in the new millennium.
An inspirational story that
compares the two eras,
chronicling each runners struggle
to get to the top.
My Story
I was a collegiate track/cross country coach for 35 years and watched the evolution of our sport - from sweep-hand stop watches to computers, low-cut basketball shoes to $175 trainers, cinder tracks to all-weather surfaces, the straddle high jump to the Fosbury Flop. I've seen it all. Over those years I have been in the stands, applauding eleven World Record performances, two within the span of ten minutes, one in a torrential downpour at the 1970 NCAA Championships.
My college coach raced against the great Jesse Owens, giving me a first-hand account of the Performance of the Century at Ferry Field in 1935, but I also watched the incomparable Carl Lewis as he won 9 Olympic Gold Medals in the 1984 and 1988 Games.
I had the good fortune to be selected to coach the 1996 US Ekiden Team in Yokohama, the 1999 World XC Championships in Belfast, and the 2007 US v Germany 'Thorpe Cup' Heptathlon in Stuttgart.
