My old friend Dave Hughes told me he had seen Gerry Lindgren at an event in Spokane a few years ago, and I was surprised.
Gerald ("Gerry") Paul Lindgren (born March 9, 1946) is widely recognized as having been the best high school long distance runner in the United States at the time, and perhaps the best ever. In 1964, in his senior year at John Rogers High School, Gerry ran 5000 meters in 13 minutes and 44 seconds, setting a U.S. high school record for the distance that would remain unbroken for 40 years, until Galen Rupp ran 13:37.91 on July 30, 2004. Among his other records he established that year was his time of 8:40.0 in an indoor 2-mile race that shattered the previous U.S. national high school mark. Over forty years later this remains the fastest U.S. schoolboy 2-mile time ever run indoors (and the third fastest time indoors or outdoors).
On July 25, 1964, Gerry outran two seasoned Russian runners, Leonid Ivanov and Anatoly Dutov, to win the 10,000 meter event in the US-USSR Track Meet in Los Angeles. In the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, he finished ninth in the 10,000 meters behind gold medalist Billy Mills after having sprained an ankle during training. Gerry had previously beaten Mills in the Olympic Trials that year. Mills later said that a healthy Gerry would have won gold. Four years later, Gerry tried to make the 1968 Olympic team but finished 5th in the 10,000 meters and 4th in the 5,000 meters in the Olympic Trials at Echo Summit, just missing the team at both distances. Gerry also competed against Mills in the 1965 AAU Nationals meet, where they raced the 6 mile. Mills won with a diving lean, while both were timed in 27:11.6, a new World Record shared by Mills and Gerry.
Gerry attended Washington State University in Pullman, where he majored in political science and minored in Russian language. While at Washington State, Gerry won 11 NCAA Championships (his only loss at an NCAA championship was to Jim Ryun in the 1968 indoor 2-mile race.) He was one of only two people to ever defeat Steve Prefontaine in an NCAA Championship. (Gerry won the 1969 NCAA Cross Country Championship in which 1968 NCAA champion Mike Ryan finished second and Prefontaine third.) He competed sporadically after graduating from college but without any notable success.
I met Gerry in 1970 when he was back at Rogers working as a motivational speaker. He had a strong influence upon my friends and I at that time. In the summer of 1970, both he and I took part in a fun run that was the precursor to the Lilac Bloomsday Run. We idolized him as an athlete and a person, but he was always distant and somewhat moody.
Later, Gerry moved to the Seattle area where he started a chain of sports stores called The Stinky Foot. In 1980, to his family's utter shock, he left a note in his home kitchen saying "get a divorce, sell the business" and abandoned his wife and children.
Today, Gerry lives in Honolulu, where he continues to run regularly and is active in the Hawaii running community. He coached the University of Hawaii's women's track and field team 2005-2007. He still has no contact with the family he deserted.
I remain fond of Gerry to this day, but sad to observe that--despite his outstanding athletic achievements--his race seems to have fallen short of the finish line.
I've been doing a lot of work recently with Twitter, a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Twitter message postings--called "tweets" in the jargon of the site--are limited to 140 characters.
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