Bruce Jenner
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| Olympic medal record | |||
| Men's athletics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold | Montreal 1976 | Decathlon | |
William Bruce Jenner (born October 28, 1949 in Mount Kisco, New York) is a U.S. track athlete.
An excellent high school athlete, Bruce Jenner attended Newtown High School in Newtown, Connecticut, transferring from Sleepy Hollow High School in Tarrytown, New York. (Years later, the stadium there was to be named after him, but following an argument between the school and Jenner concerning the high school's construction project that was to displace an ancient Native American burial mound, the stadium is now called Blue and Gold Stadium.) Jenner earned a football scholarship and attended Graceland College (now Graceland University), but a knee injury forced him to stop playing football and switch to the decathlon. He was mentored by Graceland's track coach L.D. Weldon, who was the first to recognize Jenner's potential and encouraged him to pursue decathlon. Jenner debuted in the decathlon at the Drake Relays in 1970, placing sixth.
Jenner placed third in the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials and finished in an impressive tenth place at the 1972 Munich games. He became an American champion in the event and won a gold medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics, setting a world and Olympic record of 8,634 points. Jenner was handed a large American flag from a bystander in the audience as he spontaneously ran a celebratory victory lap, a gesture that has been emulated frequently since that time by athletes in other sports from countries around the world. He was the 1976 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States and was considered by many at the time to have earned the right to be known as the world's greatest athlete.
Soon afterwards, Jenner appeared on the front of Wheaties brand breakfast cereal as a Wheaties champion. Of several hundred athletes who have been so featured, Jenner is one of seven Wheaties spokespersons. He was invited to the White House to meet with President Gerald R. Ford who autographed a political cartoon that featured the pair.
In 1980, Jenner made his acting debut in the film Can't Stop the Music. The disco-era comedy about the singing group The Village People was a notorious flop, though, and Jenner never made another theatrical film. (He did appear in a few TV movies, though, and a handful of episodes of the 80s TV drama CHiPs.)
Jenner is widely known to have struggled with dyslexia -- he appeared on the sitcom Silver Spoons where he revealed his condition to the Stratton family -- and after retiring from sports, built a successful career as a motivational speaker and television sports commentator. In 2006, Jenner competed on the FOX reality show Skating with Celebrities, partnered with former U.S. and World Champion pairs figure skater Tai Babilonia; they finished third out of six couples.
His sons (with second wife Linda Thompson, to whom he was married from 1981 to 1983) Brandon and Brody appeared in their own reality show The Princes of Malibu, which featured them living with their stepfather David Foster. His stepdaughter Kourtney Kardashian likewise appeared on the E! network's reality series Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive. Jenner is currently married to the former Kris Kardashian; his first marriage was to the former Christy Crownover.
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| Olympic champions in the all around, pentathlon and decathlon |
|---|
| As all-around: Tom Kiely |
| As pentathlon: Hjalmer Mellander | Jim Thorpe | Eero Lehtonen (twice) |
| As decathlon: Jim Thorpe | Helge Løvland | Harold Osborn | Paavo Yrjölä | James Bausch | Glenn Morris | Bob Mathias (twice) | Milt Campbell | Rafer Johnson | Willi Holdorf | Bill Toomey | Nikolay Avilov | Bruce Jenner | Daley Thompson (twice) | Christian Schenk | Robert Změlík | Dan O'Brien | Erki Nool | Roman Šebrle |
