Olympic champion in the 100m in 1968, he was above all the first athlete under the bar of ten seconds over this distance. American Jim Hines, whose career was as meteoric as his Mexico straight, died Saturday at the age of 76, announced World Athletics.
Published on : 05/06/2023 – 11:51
He will forever be the first. The first to have crossed this symbolic bar of ten seconds in the 100 m, running in 9 sec 95 at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, a record that stood for 15 years.
On October 14, 1968, the American became Olympic champion ahead of Jamaican Lennox Miller and his compatriot Charles Greene in a final which brought together eight black riders for the first time. His time, 9 sec 9 on the stadium panel then 9 sec 89 on the electric stopwatch, was finally set at 9 sec 95. If they corrected my time, it’s because nobody could believe that a man could run so fast. “, launched Jim Hines, bravado, in an interview with the French sports daily The Team in 2016.
In the Mexican capital, only the podium of the 200m or so is remembered, when Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists during the American anthem to protest against racial discrimination in the United States. But the 100m also went down in history by dedicating Hines.
He quit athletics at 22
Four months before his coronation, the American had already played with the lap times. On June 20, 1968, at the United States Championships, on the cinder track of Sacramento, he completed the 100 m in 9 sec 9 according to manual timing, finally revised to 10 sec 03. But on the tartan of Mexico, while the electrical timing is now authentic, it writes the history of the sprint for good.
Shortly after the Games, and when he was only 22, Jim Hines gave up athletics to embark on American football without much success, signing with the Miami Dolphins and then the Kansas City Chiefs. Born in Arkansas on September 10, 1946, Hines had also come close to becoming a baseball player before a coach, impressed by his burst of speed, convinced him to drop the bat for the athletic tracks. And to enter the legend.
(With AFP)
