Special treat at Texas masters meet: Olympian as guest starter
Thane Baker is a Midwest sprint legend. At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, he won gold in the 4×1, silver in the 100 (behind Bobby Joe Morrow) and bronze in the 200. On Saturday, at age 78, he showed up for the Texas Masters Championships at Coppell High School. Meet director Wayne Bennett sent these results. He also wrote: “Our starter for this meet was former Olympian Thane Baker. Also this was our 30th annual meet and we have had only one rainout of the running events and have never canceled the throwing events. Weather was humid, about 88 degrees most of the day, with very light breezes. Was probably only low 80s when running events started at 6 p.m.” How cool is that? Having an Olympic legend as your starter! (He’s also a member of the USATF Masters Hall of Fame.) Here’s the Melbourne 100 final:
2 Responses
It was great to have Thane as starter, I had privilege of running against him many years ago at all comers meetS even though he was in older age group , he blew us all away, very humble & great guy.Know he would be competive today if not for injuries.
Thane and Wayne-2 class acts. The weather was great for TX Masters. We don’t whine about the heat in Texas, we just carry on and feel extremely blessed with a cloudy 88* day like we had on Saturday.
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