Bruce Jenner

About Bruce Jenner

William Bruce Jenner (born October 28, 1949, in Mount Kisco, New York) is a U.S. track athlete, known principally for winning the decathlon in the 1976 Summer Olympics.

Bruce Jenner attended Newtown High School in Newtown, Connecticut, from Sleepy Hollow High School in North Tarrytown, New York. (Years later, the stadium there was to be named after him, but following an argument where Jenner would not attend fundraisers or be involved in the naming process, the stadium is now called Blue and Gold Stadium.[citation needed]) 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 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 (and also by John Belushi in a Saturday Night Live commercial parody). He was the 1976 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Jenner was also the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1976. He was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Bay Area Hall of Fame and Connecticut Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.