The sprinting champ who ran from the spotlight

In the late 1950s, Bobby Morrow could claim to be the fastest man alive. The American sprinter set 14 world records, and at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne he notched gold in the 100-meter and 200-meter races and the 4-by-100-meter relay. No athlete had so dominated the Olympic track since Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Games; only Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt have since matched his medal haul. Morrow returned home a national hero, appearing on the cover of Life and visiting the White House. A God-fearing Texas farm boy, he seemed to perfectly embody the values of Eisenhower’s America. But disillusioned with the way amateur athletics was run and by his rejection from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, Morrow soon retreated from public life. “He was the finest sprinter of his era,” said Olympic historian David Wallechinsky. “But it was a short era.”

Born in the Rio Grande Valley, Morrow developed his speed “chasing jackrabbits on his father’s farm,” said The New York Times. His brilliance as a high school runner attracted scholarship offers from across the country, but Morrow chose to

Bobby Morrow

stay in Texas, at Abilene Christian College. He won the 1955 Amateur Athletic Union championship in the 100-yard dash. The next year, he successfully defended his title and won the 100- and 200-meter races at the NCAA championships. Morrow continued his winning streak at the Melbourne Olympics, said The Washington Post. He narrowly missed a world record in the 100 meters, and matched the record in the 200. In the relay, he ran the final leg in a winning effort against the Soviet Union and helped his team “set a world record of 39.5 seconds, breaking a mark that Owens had helped set 20 years earlier.” Back in the U.S., Morrow chafed at the governance of amateur athletics, said The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). While officials and coaches enjoyed a “feather-bedded life,” Morrow griped that he and other Olympic athletes received only about $15 a day. After failing to make the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, Murrow hung up his running shoes and “made a life as a cotton farmer.” His track success has largely been forgotten by the athletics establishment. “I get left out a lot,” he said in 2016. “And I think that’s because I was fighting them so much.”