The rain was falling in torrents. The red cinder track was turning to slush, glistening with shallow puddles. Most of the crowd of 50,000 clung to umbrellas. After 30 minutes' confinement in the reporting room, the runners for the 5,000m final emerged, to be instantly drenched in shivery, cold rain.
Seven of the runners on the track would eventually set 36 world records. But that wet October day in Tokyo 50 years ago, the race was tactical, surging and slowing and surging. The field spread open, then closed again, "like an accordion," in the winner's words. At the bell, nine were still bunched, nudging for position in the coming ferment, for three Olympic medals: Bill Dellinger (USA), Michel Jazy (France), Harald Norpoth (Germany), Nikolay Dutov (USSR), Bob Schul (USA), Kipchoge Keino (Kenya), Bill Baillie (New Zealand), Thor Helland (Norway) and Ron Clarke (Australia).
At the moment Jazy attacked, Schul, from rural Ohio, was blocked. Around the first bend, with Schul trapped, the flying Frenchman seized a lead that looked irreversible. Behind him, Norpoth, Dutov and Dellinger gave chase. As he hit the backstretch, Schul edged into free space and began a sprint that gave him a place in legend.
"Nothing in previous Olympic history ever compared with Schul's finish," wrote Track & Field News Fifty years ago, a blazing kick put Bob Schul atop the podium in Tokyo.
Schul described the last laps in June this year, when we watched the full film together at his home in Fairborn, Ohio:
I'm positioning so that I can cover any break, like Halberg's in Rome [Murray Halberg of New Zealand broke away with three laps to go in the 1960 Olympic 5,000m]. I never feel under pressure. It's befuddling that Clarke slows up so much after his surges--one lap is 70! So his 62 is wasted. Three laps to go, Clarke almost stops. Jazy has to lead, though he doesn't want to; he looks puzzled, decides to wait. Two laps to go, on the backstretch I move up, to be sure. And suddenly at 600 there's Dellinger, flying into the lead. He told me after, "I thought it was the only way I could try for a medal." He's the slowest in the top seven or eight in this field and can't hold it. Coming to the bell, nine of us together, I make my only mistake. Jazy's ready to attack, I'm on the edge of Lane 1; Jazy takes off, like a rocket, but just then Dutov and Keino move outside me, and I'm blocked all round the first bend. I can't push out, so I keep kind of edging out. Jazy's gone, 20 yards up as he hits the backstretch. It's 300 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! At first I'm not gaining on Jazy. I'm cursing myself, thinking, "Just keep sprinting! How stupid to let Jazy get such a jump!" But I move past Dellinger and Dutov--they don't respond--and then it's Norpoth, on the bend. A lot of people would have settled behind till the straightaway, but I make that decision very fast; I'm running to win, and go around Norpoth in Lane 2. At last I'm gaining on Jazy. He's tightening in the shoulders. He looks back. He doesn't have the endurance, and at 80 to go I'm by him, fast. In the last 50 my legs are heavy, but it doesn't matter now. My last 300 is 38.7. Jazy gives up. Watch Dellinger finish! It's amazing how he closes. It took them 30 minutes to decide he got third over Jazy."
Schul had decisively--with one sweep of the sword--beaten history's best 5,000m field to that date. Nine finished within 10 seconds of his 13:48.8 finish. Several that Schul outsprinted were famed for their finishing speed--Keino, Jazy and Norpoth placed first, second and fourth in Olympic 1500m finals; Baillie and Dellinger had been milers. He outkicked them all and won by 0.8 seconds, still one of the biggest margins in the Olympic 5,000m--the same as Emil Zatopek's winning margin in 1952, bigger than Lasse Viren's in 1976, Hicham El Guerrouj's in 2004 or Mo Farah's in 2012. It was a superlative display of speed, endurance, adaptability to conditions, cool tactical intelligence, decisiveness, precision timing, self-belief and fervent courage.
Speed above all. Schul's last lap was 54.8, and those astonishing last 300 meters were indeed 38.7. That's exactly the same as Peter Snell ran in winning the Tokyo 1500m, a few days later, on a firm, dry track; it's 3 seconds faster than Viren's last 300 meters in 1972; and fractionally faster (by my unofficial timing) than Farah's last 300 meters in 2012.
Track & Field News was right--no previous Olympic 5,000m finish can compare. Nor, all things considered, can any subsequent one. Those were the last Olympics before all-weather tracks. No winner since Schul had to splash around five rivals in teeming rain on a mushy surface. Look at his soaked shorts and spattered legs, and the flying, wet cinders flicking back from his spikes. Then imagine him, on that surface, matching Farah, on an immaculate all-weather surface, stride for stride. That's how fast Schul finished.
Fifty years ago, a blazing kick put Bob Schul atop the podium in Tokyo
First Boston Marathon? Here‘s What to Know, looking back on the times when it seemed able to absorb endless work and perform miracles, the times when it flowed with well-oiled perfection, and the many other times when its fallibility imposed a further level of challenge or left him in frustrated despair.
"I felt as if somehow out-of-body, as if I was sitting on my own shoulder, observing how my body performed," he says.
Maybe suffering from severe asthma can give you that kind of objectivity. As a child, Schul remembers wearing a World War II gas mask as protection from the fumes and dust when he was driving the tractor on his father's Ohio farm. Sometimes the attacks were so crippling he thought he was going to die.
"But asthma teaches you to breathe deep and slowly," he says. "There were races when I was getting only 80 percent air intake, so I had to make the most of every breath. The Tokyo race came at the end of the monsoon season, and the rain cleared all the pollutants."
Those early years on a 99-acre farm, picking corn by hand for the dairy cows, may also have given Schul his work ethic. His Air Force commanding officer at Oxnard, California, was 10,000m Olympian Max Truex (sixth, Rome, 1960), who connected him with the Hungarian refugee and coach Mihály Iglói at the nascent Los Angeles Track Club ("How Hungarians Launched America's Greatest Track Era" January/February 2014).
"Iglói killed me at first. He made everyone work harder, so we caught up to the Europeans," Schul says. Like the dairy cows, Iglói demanded twice-daily labor: 5 miles of short speed repeats at 5:30 a.m. and reps from 150m to 400m in the afternoon, up to 16 × 400m, with minimal rest. Sunday was the easy day, with only two hours' running. They had to climb the fence to get into the workout area. Three years of that grunt-level dedication gave Schul his miracle year of 1964, with three American records and one world-best mark, topped with Olympic gold.
I ran a session with him one June evening, at the Fairborn High School track near Dayton, Ohio, and I learned a lot. We ran 100 meters, walked a few seconds, turned, and did it again, 10 times; then 8 × 160m on the same principle. Then the 100s again, and so on. I lost count. I never understood Schul/Iglói before, but suddenly I got it. The walks are Schul's idea, replacing Iglói's jog recovery. Being so short, the breaks give your leg muscles and breathing frequent rest but without letting the heart-rate come down. You can do two hours at precisely controlled pace, from 50 percent to faster-than-race tempo. Calculate 14 hours a week, which Schul did in 1963, and it has to come out to more than 100 quality miles total.
"I was amazed by what my body could do," he says.
The older Schul and I made our bodies do only 40 minutes. Don't ask about the pace. We ignored a 10-minute rainstorm that fell in torrents, like in Tokyo. Disciplined Ohio farmers of German ancestry don't stop work when it rains.
Schul's training is structured but far from rigid. He was there that evening to coach a promising 17-year-old high school runner, Caroline Heitmeyer, but when she confessed to persistent shin pain, he was quick to urge her to take a few days off.
"My best skill as a coach is my ability to understand each athlete. That's more important than a system. Often you change the session, as with Caroline tonight," he says. The Iglói structure of multiple short repeats, which Schul still advocates, in fact leaves ample room for variation.
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"When something happened 50 years ago, not many will know about it," Dan Heitmeyer, Caroline's father, says quietly.
Schul doesn't flaunt his fame. He wore a faded T-shirt from a local road race dated 1997. He kidded with the younger coaches. He has kept competing through the masters age groups, although slowed by age and a hip replacement. There is pride but no vanity in him.
A gold medalist is entitled to be proud. His car has the number-plate "5K 64 GLD." An enlarged photograph of the Tokyo finish is prominent in his living room. He uses it on flyers about his coaching and as the cover of his book, Track & Field News. Marathon Pace Charts for Fine-Tuning Training.
"Now you'll make me cry," he says. "It was stolen."
He is emotional about the athletes he has coached, especially three who have died prematurely. A moving tribute to one is on his website, bobschul.net. He enthuses about the time he was coach at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base: "
Roger Robinson is a highly-regarded writer and historian and author of seven books on running. His recent How to Run Twice a Day Without Injury Health & Injuries Running Times DAA Industry Opt Out 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.
