Ralph Hill

(This piece is for my latest book titled Pacesetters: Runners Who Informed Me Best and Inspired Me Most. I am posting an excerpt here each week, this one from July 1990.)

GOLDEN OLDIE. Across the decades flash images from the event that brought this old man here today. The videotape has rewound him back to 1932.

The scene: Los Angeles’s first Olympics. The event: 5000 meters. The stars: Lauri Lehtinen of Finland and Ralph Hill from the United States.

Two ghost-like figures in grainy black-and-white race for the gold medal. Lehtinen leads as they enter the last straightaway.

Hill looks stronger. The 24-year-old Oregonian tries to pass Lehtinen. The Finn won’t allow it and veers into lane three to prevent it.

Hill breaks stride. He tries to pass again, on the inside this time.

Lehtinen cuts him off. Hill drops back, then makes a final charge that goes unimpeded.

Too late. He loses by centimeters as both men share a time of 14:30.0, an Olympic record.

The mostly American crowd showers the winner with boos. An announcer breaks in to plead, “Remember, these people are our guests.”

Results don’t become final for two hours. Officials wait for Hill to file a protest that might have made him the gold medalist. He refuses, and later stands below Lehtinen to accept the silver.

Fast-forwarding to now, the hazy image of the young men on the screen jumps to the real-life scene of Ralph Hill turning away from the screen after watching his 58-years-younger self compete. He stands beside the same University of Oregon track where he ran as a student.

Ralph Hill has come back to his old school today to have a track meet renamed in his honor. It used to be called the “Last Chance Meet,” an ironic touch since his chances to be remembered now are so few.

History doesn’t treat silver medalists kindly, even those who lose by the time it takes to blink. How much different Hill’s life might have been if he’d cried “foul” that day in Los Angeles.

Yet he appears certain that he made the right decision 58 years ago. He betrays no bitterness over his lost gold, and he displays the silver medal as proudly as if it were one better.

Today he brought that medal with him to Eugene. At home in Klamath Falls he doesn’t lock it in a bank vault but keeps it on a coffee table for guests to see.

Now 82, Hill is retired from a lifetime of farming. His back remains straight, his gaze steady, his mind sharp.

Another ex-Oregon runner with the same last name, unrelated Jim Hill, introduces himself to Ralph. The elder Hill says, “Oh yes, you ran…” and then recites Jim’s racing highlights from the early 1980s, which only a close follower of the sport would know.

Ralph attended the 1984 Olympics, his first since running in the same Los Angeles stadium. He recalls, “My son tried to talk me out of going. He said the trip would cost too much. I told him I’d waited 52 years for this, and I wasn’t going to miss my chance.”

Hill’s own running ended early. Farm work gave him more than ample activity.

He contracted polio at age 44. The disease gnarled his hands and weakened his shoulders, but spared his legs.

“Now I get my exercise by dancing,” says Hill. The woman friend who drove him to Eugene calls this man who has outlived two wives “the most popular dance partner at the senior center.

He acts as if he would enjoy the party at Hayward Field just as much even if it weren’t in his honor. He looks the way you would want one of the oldest living U.S. Olympic medalists to look.

UPDATE. Ralph Hill died in 1994 at age 85. Unfortunately, the track meet named for him at his old school, the University of Oregon, didn’t last.

[Many books of mine, old and recent, are now available in two different formats: in print and as ebooks from Amazon.com. Latest released was Miles to Go. Other titles: Home Runs, Joe’s Team, Learning to Walk, Long Run Solution, Long Slow Distance, Pacesetters, Run Right Now, Run Right Now Training Log, See How We Run, and Starting Lines, plus Rich Englehart’s book about me, Slow Joe.]