- Milan Tiff
-
Medal record Men's athletics Competitor for 
United StatesPan American Games Bronze 1975 Mexico City Triple jump Milan Tiff (born July 5, 1949) is primarily known for his Triple Jumping, but his skills pass through several arenas. He was the Bronze medalist in the 1975 Pan Am Games.[1] At the Pan Am Games, his name shows the additional name of Abdul Rahman, and in the 1976 Olympic Trials he used the name Caleb Abdul Rahman but he has not gone by that name in other competitions. Tiff was an elite black athlete at UCLA at the same time as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in an era when converting to Islam was happening. By 1980, he was a favorite to win the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow before the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott.[2]
A childhood victim of Osgood-Schlatter disease, he did not walk until he was age 8.[3] He went on to become the first American to jump 57 feet while winning his second USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.[4] He expected to retire from the sport after the Olympics, but continues to jump in Masters athletics events into his 60s. In 2009, small gust of wind is all that prevented him from equalling the M60 world record.[5]
Growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, set the national high school record for the triple jump in his senior year. He first attended college at Miami University[6] before switching to UCLA to work with Jim Bush, where he was a teammate of John Smith and Dwight Stones.[7] While there he won the 1973 NCAA Championship in the Triple Jump.[8] Later he joined Bush as an assistant coach[9] He was ranked in the world top ten twice, 1975 and 1977.[10]
A talented painter,[11] he spends many hours working on art. He approaches many other activities with an artistic perspective. Like several athletes of his era he acted in the 1982 movie Personal Best. Later he trained Emilio Estevez for two of his mid-1990s film roles.[12] He has continued to train athletes at UCLA including many NBA players.[13] In 1991 he wrote a book on his own form of exercise called "Traveling light: an original form of exercise".[14] He was later credited on James Ingram's album "It's Real" as "giving us the map."
References
- ^ http://www.gbrathletics.co.uk/ic/pag.htm Pan Am Games
- ^ http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1095193/3/index.htm Sports Illustrated Article July 30, 1979
- ^ http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073523,00.html People Magazine April 30, 1979
- ^ http://www.usatf.org/statistics/champions/USAOutdoorTF/men/mTJ.asp USATF National Championships
- ^ http://www.scausatf.org/events/usatf_masters/2009_USATF_Masters_West_Region.htm USATF West Region
- ^ http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/champs_records_book/1999-00/m_idtrack.pdf NCAA Results
- ^ http://www.uclabruins.com/genrel/ucla-100-70.html UCLA of the 1970s
- ^ http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/track_outdoor_champs_records/2009-10/2009_m_d1_otf.pdf NCAA Results
- ^ http://articles.latimes.com/1990-07-24/sports/sp-763_1_jim-bush L.A. Times
- ^ http://trackandfieldnews.com/rankings/men/tjworldbyathlete.pdf
- ^ http://nelsonga.ipower.com/archives/2007/04/shared_historie.html UC Davis showing
- ^ http://www.inbaseline.com/person.aspx?person_id=1015515 Inbase
- ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_8_227/ai_97997869/ Sporting News Feb 24, 2003
- ^ http://www.faqs.org/copyright/traveling-light-journal-with-quotations-from-the-book-by/ Copyright FAQs
Milan Tiff at the Internet Movie Database
Masters athletics Events Records World Records · American RecordsAthletes World Masters Athletics · List of Masters Athletes · USATF Masters Hall of FameCategories:- 1949 births
- Living people
- American triple jumpers
- Athletes (track and field) at the 1975 Pan American Games
- Pan American Games track and field athletes of the United States
- University of California, Los Angeles alumni
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