- Harold Osborn
Harold Marion Osborn (
April 13 ,1899 –April 5 ,1975 ) was a U.S. track athlete. He won a gold medal in Olympicdecathlon andhigh jump in 1924.The apex of the athletic career of Harold M. Osborn occurred at the 1924 Olympic games inParis ,France (the VIII Olympiad, featured in the popular film,Chariots of Fire ). Osborn was the first and, to this day, the only athlete ever to win gold in both thedecathlon and another event.Osborn won
gold medal s and set Olympic records in both thehigh jump and thedecathlon at the 1924 Olympics. His 6' 6" high jump remained the Olympic record for 12 years, while his decathlon score of 7,710.775 points also set a new world record, and resulted in world-wide press coverage calling him the “world’s greatest athlete.” The decathlon competition was especially grueling, conducted just four days after the high jump competition, and consisting of ten events run in extremely hot and humid weather conditions over two days at the end of the games.Harold Marion Osborn was born
April 13 ,1899 , the fourth child and third son ofJesse Ware Osborn andEmma Ware , whose parents and grandparents were settled in centralIllinois in the early 1800's. Osborn grew up on the family farm in Butler Grove Township in Montgomery County.Family lore tells us that Harold and his brothers, Wesley, Clarence, and Loren, were encouraged to run and practice jumping hurdles on the farm. Their father, Jesse, built a track and hurdles on the farm so that the boys could practice. After team practices in
football ,basketball , and track atHillsboro High School , Harold had to walk or run the four miles home to the farm. Throughout Osborn's long athletic career, few people were aware that he had lost most of his vision in one eye due to an injury during his teenage years. As a result he had very little depth perception, making it difficult to know when to jump as he approached the cross bar. He compensated by carefully measuring from the take-off point to a point where he began his running approach.After high school, Osborn attended the
University of Illinois atUrbana , from 1919 through 1922, majoring inagriculture . While at Illinois, he was a founding member ofKappa Delta Rho Fraternity. He then accepted a high school teaching job atLewiston ,Illinois , where, sponsored by theIllinois Athletic Club of Chicago , he continued to train and to compete in track and field events in preparation for the upcoming 1924Olympic games . Osborn left Lewiston after a couple of years to take a job atChampaign High School , where he would be closer to the University as he continued his training.Osborn did not, however, forget one of the students he met at
Lewistown . He stayed in touch withMargaret Bordner , a striking brunette, and after the 1924 Olympic games, Osborn began a serious long-distance courtship of Margaret by mail while he was competing inEurope . Osborn prevailed in love as well as in track and married Margaret in 1928.Although the 1924 Olympic games were a high point in Osborn’s career, there were many others. While competing for the University of Illinois in 1920, 1921, and 1922, Osborn helped Illinois win both the indoor and outdoor
Big Ten titles all three years. He tied for theNCAA andAAU outdoor high jump championships in 1922.On May 27, 1924, Osborn's 6' 8-¼" high jump set a world record at an AAU meet held at the University of Illinois campus in Urbana. He won the AAU outdoor title in 1925 and 1926, the indoor title four years in a row, 1923‑26, and he was the AAU decathlon champion in 1923, 1925, and 1926. He also achieved prominence in several events which have since been discontinued, winning the AAU indoor 70‑yard hurdles in 1925, and the AAU indoor standing high jump from 1929 through 1931, and taking second place in the standing broad jump in 1930. Osborn was 5' 10 ½" tall and weighed about 175 pounds during his competitive years.
Osborn spent much of the year after the 1924 Olympics traveling and competing in European games with a small group of other
track and field athletes who had competed in the Olympics. As a result of the Olympic gold medals and the many meets in Europe, he became well known in Europe and acquired fans there who followed his career.A month after the 1924 Olympics he competed in
Croke Park inDublin ,Ireland , in theTailteann games . His major competitor in those games wasLarry Stanley , a native ofKildare ,Ireland , and Ireland's entrant in the 1924 Olympics. Stanley was a celebratedGaelic football er and the Irish emotions ran high at the Tailteann games, but Osborn defeated Stanley, jumping 6' 4-1/2" to Stanley's 6' 3-1/2".Osborn returned from Europe to compete in track meets in the
United States . In 1925,Clyde Littlefield , an outstanding track and field athlete fromTexas , became the coach at theUniversity of Texas . Littlefield started an event known as theTexas Relays , a showcase for track and field athletes, which continues today. Osborn competed in the first of the Texas Relays, along with the 1924 Olympic 200‑meter champion,Jackson Scholz . Both did well. Scholz won a special 100 meters, and Osborn reportedly “thrilled" the 6,000 spectators by clearing 6' 8-15/16", higher than his earlier world record set in 1924. (see TexasSports.com) This reported height may not be accurate, however; it conflicts with other sources reporting that Osborn's highest lifetime jump was 6' 8-1/2".Osborn competed in the Olympics again in 1928. In the high jump, four competitors tied for second place. In the runoff jumps, Osborn was not able to jump high enough to win the bronze medal and had to settle for a participant medal. The initial tying jumps for second place were 6' 3- ½", just an inch behind gold medalist,
Robert King , who jumped 6' 4-1/2". No one was able to match or better Osborn's 1924 jump.After the 1928 games Osborn returned home, married Margaret Bordner, and continued to teach and coach at
Champaign High School until 1933, when he returned to school. He received hisDoctor of Osteopathic Medicine fromPhiladelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1937. He credited a share of success as an athlete toosteopathy , especially after a Paris practitioner helped him with a pulled muscle at the 1924 games. In 1937, the Osborns, by then the parents of two daughters, returned toChampaign ,Illinois , where he practiced osteopathic medicine, continued to compete in athletics, and assisted the University of Illinois track coach in the 1940's. Two more daughters were born in Champaign, where Harold and Margaret Osborn continued to reside until his death onApril 5 ,1975 .Altogether Osborn won 17 national titles and set six world records during his career. He held world indoor records in the standing hop, step, and jump; the 60-yard high hurdles; and the running high jump. His world record in the standing high jump of 5' 5-3/4" still stands today (and will continue to stand as this event is no longer part of track contests). He achieved that record at the age of 37.
Near the end of his life Osborn enjoyed new honors and a chance to revisit Europe and some of the sites of his earlier competitions. Osborn was enshrined as a charter member of the
U.S. Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1974, along with such other track greats asJessie Owens ,Babe Didriksen Zaharias ,Bob Mathias , andWilma Rudolph . In 1974, he was also invited to return to Dublin for the Golden Jubilee commemoration of the Tailteann Games, where he met and reminisced withLarry Stanley .Even with his busy life of coaching, practicing osteopathic medicine, and raising a family, Osborn never lost interest in staying physically fit, active, and healthy. At the age of 40, he could jump 6'3". At the age of 50, he could clear his own body height of 5' 10½". In his later years he also competed in the field of
archery . The coach atHillsboro High School summed up his career quite aptly at Osborn’s induction into the high school Hall of Fame: “As a world class athlete, Osborn is one of the greatest. As an individual competing for the sheer joy of sport and dedicated to the highest ideals of amateur sport, he has few equals. Osborn died at the age of 75 after a long life of service to his community and inspiration to all who knew him.”Olympic Athlete Harold Abrahams, who also competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics, and who later wrote and published about the Olympiads of his era, wrote in 1950, “After Nurmi, I think the outstanding performer was the American, Harold Osborn, who won both the high jump and the decathlon.
'High Jumping Styles - the Osborn roll and the
Western roll Harold M. Osborn developed a unique variation of the Western roll style of high jumping. While Osborn was practicing his hurdles and jumping in the field at his farm home in Illinois, the Western roll was gradually replacing an earlier jumping style called the
scissor-kick . In the Western roll, the bar was approached on a diagonal -- the inner leg used for the take‑off, while the outer leg was thrust up to lead the body sideways over the bar. Using the Western roll,George Horine first took the world high jump standard to 6' 7" (2.0m) in 1912. Horine is sometimes cited as the originator of the style.Osborn worked on his own form and obviously paid attention to the style that was developing as he competed in high school and at the University of Illinois. He modified the Western roll technique by developing an efficient side‑to‑the‑bar clearance, which resulted in more height and consistency. [http://www.usatf.org/HallOfFame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=125] His jumping style was sometimes referred to as the Osborn roll, but is also often lumped together with other variations of the style of jumping that is generally referred to as the Western roll. By 1924 he was using the style to attain new heights.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's Osborn corresponded from time to time with
Volker Kluge ofAltenburg ,Germany , a journalist who published a sports magazine, and who had a passionate interest in the Olympics and the changes in track and field over the years. Volker asked Osborn many questions about his participation in the '24 Olympics and published articles about Osborn and other athletes who competed in Europe. In a letter to Volker datedJanuary 31 ,1969 , Osborn described how he developed his style of jumping: “I more or less found my style of high jumping by accident, as I was trying to imitateEd Beeson ’s style, and what developed was natural to me, and as I became more proficient and with much practice, I utilized leg and arm lift and body ‛kip’ and then slid across the bar more or less on my back, and as I got to the far side of the bar then started to uncoil and dropped my take-off leg and arms for landing.”Ed Beeson was a
Berkeley student and track competitor who also used the Western roll style. In the same letter to Volker, Osborn commented onDick Fosbury ’s jumping style --the Fosbury flop . Osborn wrote that Fosbury’s style would have beenillegal when he was competing in 1924 because the rules did not allow the head to cross the bar first. The flop was an innovation in the high jump that attracted a lot of attention when Fosbury introduced it at the1968 Olympic games inMexico City . Fosbury jumped with his back to the bar and went over head first. It required much more cushioning on the landing side, also a dramatic change from the days when Osborn jumped intosand .Osborn was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974. [http://www.usatf.org/HallOfFame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=125]
References
# USA Track and Field website http://www.usatf.org/
# The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics, 1996 Edition, Sports Illustrated.
# Olympic Trials Website http://www.usatf.org/statistics/OlympicTrialsStats2004.pdf
# The Olympics Fact Book http://www.Rediff.com/
# Article from July 18, 1996 - "The Hillsboro Journal," Hillsboro, Illinois
# Obituary - "Chicago Tribune," Thursday, April 10, 1975
# Reminiscences of Margaret Bordner Osborn to Marianna Trekell and family members
# Letters written by Harold Osborn to Margaret Bordner in 1925 (copies in possession of author; original letters in possession of Osborn's daughters0.
# Trekell, Marianna, and White, Cyril M., unpublished manuscript titled “Harold M. Osborn at the Games of the VIII Olympiad Paris, 1925,” written in the 1980's. Trekell was a faculty member in the Dept. of Physical Education at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. White was a sociologist at University College, Dublin, Ireland, with an academic interest in the Sociology of Sport.
# Article from the "Illinois Alumni News," September 1974, titled “Dublin Remembers Harold Osborn '22”.
# Hansen, Willard, "Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette," Urbana, Illinois, April 25, 1975.
# Sports News, "Christian Science Monitor," Boston, May 9, 1944, “Osborn Still Clears 6 Feet Long After Leaving College.”
# Murray, Feg, “Crossing the Bar,” newspaper clipping dated February 16, 1926, University of Illinois Archives-- Harold M. Osborn file. Released through Metropolitan Newspaper Service.
# Letter written by Osborn to Volker Kluge, January 31, 1969, in possession of Osborn's niece, Emily Osborn.
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