Billy Mills Wins Olympic Gold

Oct. 14, 1964 - Billy Mills took up running to get in shape as a boxer while attending an Indian school for orphans and went on to score one of America’s greatest track triumphs.

“I’m flabbergasted; I can hardly believe it,” the Marine lieutenant beamed today after beating 37 of the world’s top endurance racers in Tokyo for the Olympic gold medal in the 10,000 meter-run.

Mills set an Olympic record with a time of 28 minutes 24.4 seconds, breaking the mark of 28:32.2 set in 1960 by Petr Bolotnikov of the Soviet Union.

A complete dark horse who barely sneaked onto the United States squad in his last race of the qualifying trials at Chicago, he was about a 1,000-to-1 shot.

“Still, I always felt I had an outside chance because I had been training well,” he said. “I have been running 100 miles a week until the last two weeks. Then I settled down to long, easy running. I felt the spark and spring coming back to my legs.”

The winner, who had run the 10,000 only five times previously and never beaten the leading U.S. hope, Gerry Lindgren, said he knew he had a good chance with five laps to go.

Mills said he believed he could outkick Mohamed Gammondi of Tunisia, the second-place finisher.

The surprise 10,000-meter champion is 26 years old, 5-11, and weighs 155 pounds. He was born in Pine Ride, S.D., a town with a population of 2,000.

He was in the eighth grade when he started running, just to condition himself for the boxing ring. After losing his first two bouts — winding up with a pair of big black eyes — he decided to stick to running exclusively.

His mother died when he was a baby, and his father passed away when he was 12.

Mills, who is part Sioux Indian, was placed in the Haskell Institute at Lawrence, Kan., as an orphan and stayed there until he entered the University of Kansas. He was a two-mile and cross-country champion at Kansas.

As a distance runner bidding for an Olympic berth, he attracted little notice. In five 10,000-meter races, he won only one — and that was an interservice event against negligible competition.

His best previous time for the distance was 29:10.

“I thought I would cry,” he said when he saw the United States flag hoisted on the flagpole at the medal ceremonies. “And I did.”

Mills’s wife, Patricia, mother of their 6-month-old baby, also wept.

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