He had broken the mythical bar of 10 seconds over 100 meters. American Jim Hines died on Saturday at the age of 76, announced World Athletics overnight from Sunday to Monday. On October 14, 1968, the Arkansas native became Olympic champion in Mexico ahead of Jamaican Lennox Miller and his compatriot Charles Greene in a final that brought together eight black riders for the first time. Frenchman Roger Banbuck finished 5th.
Hines’ time, 9”9 on the stadium board then 9”89 on the electric stopwatch, was finally set at 9”95. “If they corrected my time, it’s because no one could believe that a man runs so fast”, launched the hero, bravado, in an interview with the French sports daily The Team in 2016.
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 9.9 seconds according to manual timing, finally revised to 10.03 seconds. But on the tartan of Mexico, when electric timing is now authentic, he writes the history of the sprint for good. This record will stand until his compatriot Calvin Smith’s 9”93 in Colorado Springs in 1983. The Jamaican Usain Bolt raised it to 9’58 in 2009, in the final of the Berlin Worlds.
He had snubbed the IOC president
In Mexico City, where he also won gold with the American 4X100m relay, Hines distanced himself from the gestures of protest of his compatriots Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the 200m podium. Both athletes had raised their fists in support of African Americans facing discrimination. “This controversy has cast a dark cloud over what [nous] had accomplished,” he said in 2016.
On the 100m podium, however, he refused to shake hands with the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the American Avery Brundage, in favor of the return of South Africa to the Games, while apartheid reigned in this country. Shortly after the Games, and when he was only 22, Hines abandoned athletics to embark on American football without much success, signing with the Miami Dolphins and then the Kansas City Chiefs. He had also almost become a baseball player before a coach, impressed by his burst of speed, convinced him to drop the bat for the athletic tracks. It was well seen.