Steve Scott

Steve Scott (born May 5, 1956) is an American male athlete who is one of the greatest milers in American history. The silver medalist in the 1,500 meters at the inaugural IAAF World Outdoor Championships at Helsinki in 1983, Scott owns the U.S. indoor record in the 2000 meters (4:58.6-1981). He previously held the American outdoor mile record for more than 26 years and also is the former American indoor record holder in the same event. Track & Field News ranked Scott #1 in the U.S. on 10 occasions, and 11 times during his career he was ranked in the top ten in the world by T&FN.

He ran 136 sub-4:00 miles in his career, more than any other runner in history.

Scott is also regarded as the founder of speed golf in 1979; on December 2, 1982, Scott set a record for the fastest round of golf played on a regulation course, completing 18 holes in 29 minutes, 33.05 seconds at Miller Golf Course in Anaheim, Calif. Using only two clubs and running from hole to hole, he posted a respectable score of 92.

Scott grew up in the 1960s in Upland, Calif. His mother was a runner who preceded the running boom. His father was an overweight physician who smoked and did not see the value of running. Through his mother's influence and a coach's persistence, Scott ran on Upland's cross country team. He caught track fever watching the 1972 Olympics on television, as U.S. runner Dave Wottle won the gold medal in the 800 meters. Wottle is best remembered for forgetting to take off his cap during the medal ceremony during the national anthem. The "Wottle Cap" inspired Scott, so he wore a cap in every race of the 1972 cross country season. In his junior year in high school, Scott made the varsity squad as the fifth runner. In track, he concentrated on the shorter distances and ran the 800 in 1:58 and the mile in 4:30. He also met Kim Votaw, a freshman runner who would eventually become his wife in 1979.

In his senior year, Scott became the top runner on the cross country team and improved his track times to 1:52 in the 800 and 4:15 in the mile. He finished fourth in the California state championship in the 800 and drew several college scholarship offers. He liked coach Len Miller and joined him at the University of California at Irvine in the fall of 1974. He still holds many school records and the UC Irvine Steve Scott Invitational is named after him. At UC-Irvine, Steve won the 1977 NCAA Division-I 1500-meter title after winning the 1500 twice and the mile once at three previous NCAA Division-II meets.

Scott ran his first sub-4:00 mile at the Sunkist Invitational in Los Angeles in January 1977, his junior year in college. In the following year, he blossomed from an unknown college runner to an international miler, competing on both sides of the Atlantic. When he graduated with a degree in social ecology in 1978, Scott had already run 11 sub-4:00 miles.

When Sebastian Coe set a mile record of 3:48.95 in Oslo on July 17, 1979, Scott finished second with a time of 3:51.11. Because records at the time were rounded up to the nearest tenth of a second, Scott missed tying Jim Ryun's American mile record of 3:51.1 by 1/100th of a second. However, in 1981, the IAAF started to recognize records in running events longer than 400 meters to the hundredth of a second, meaning that Scott's 3:51.11 had tied Ryun's record, depending on how the times were interpreted.

Scott won the 1,500 m at the 1980 U.S. Olympic Trials, but did not compete at the Moscow Olympic Games due to the U.S. boycott. His greatest success at an Olympic or World championship came at the inaugural World Athletics Championships in Helsinki, Finland in 1983, when he won a silver medal behind Steve Cram. At the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and the 1988 Games in Seoul, he placed 10th and 5th in the 1,500 m respectively.

Perhaps his greatest legacy was setting three American mile records. While there was uncertainty whether his 3:51.11 was at least equal to the American mile record or not, his first undisputed American record came when he ran third in another Oslo race on July 11, 1981 with a time of 3:49.68, becoming the first American to break 3:50 in the event and the fifth ever to do so. South African Sydney Maree, who was in the process of gaining his American citizenship, ran 3:48.83 on September 9, 1981, though this time was not generally seen as being an American record.

The following year Scott broke the American mile record twice, both times again at Oslo. First, he won a race on June 26, 1982 in 3:48.53, becoming history's third-fastest miler behind Coe and Steve Ovett, then 11 days later he ran 3:47.69, the second-fastest mile in history. That time would stand as the American record for a quarter century until Alan Webb ran 3:46.91 in 2007.

In training, Scott ran several miles every morning followed by an intense track workout in the evening. On the weekend, he ran as far as 20 miles. He routinely exceeded 100 miles per week. This running volume was twice that of today's young milers, which may explain why Scott's U.S. mile record lasted so long.

Steve loved to race—indoors, outdoors, on the roads, and in cross country—sometimes as many as 50 competitions a year. Among his fellow middle distance runners, he was known as one of track & field’s fiercest competitors. During the decade that followed his first sub-4-minute mile, Scott lived out of a suitcase. He traveled the world and competed year-round in the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Germany, Sweden, Norway, England, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Australia and New Zealand.

In the closing stages of a career that saw Steve race at the highest levels for nearly two decades, his attempt to run a sub-4:00 mile at age-40 in 1994 was derailed by a battle with testicular cancer. Thankfully, he won that battle and since retiring from competition he has built one of the most successful NAIA collegiate programs in the country as Head Track and Cross Country Coach at Cal State San Marcos. He later received an OBE for his services to sport. In 2002, he was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame. Steve has two sons, Corey (25) and Shawn (14), and a daughter Megan (23). He and his wife JoAnn live in Carlsbad, California.

Personal Bests

References

*iaaf name|id=2596
* Steve Scott & Marc Bloom (1997). "Steve Scott the Miler".

External links

* [http://www.usatf.org/athletes/hof/Scott_Steve.asp USA Track and Field Hall of Fame]

Video Interviews

* [http://www.flocasts.com/flotrack/search.php?q=steve+scott Flotrack Videos of Steve Scott]