Former Kansas Track Great Wes Santee Passes Away

Courtesy University of Kansas

Wes Santee was one of the world's greatest distance runners in the 1950s.

Nov. 14, 2010

LAWRENCE, Kan. - Legendary University of Kansas track star and former Olympian Wes Santee died Sunday morning at the age of 78.

Regarded as one of the world's greatest distance runners in the 1950s, Santee, of Ashland, Kan., was a three-time U.S. outdoor champion and set the world record in the outdoor 1,500 meters in 1956, the indoor mile record twice (1954 and 1955) and the indoor 1,500 meter record (1955). Santee was a well-known international athlete and was among an elite group of runners that pushed the four-minute mile barrier.

In his career at Kansas, Santee won three NCAA individual titles, including the 5,000, the mile and a cross country championship. Santee also led the cross country team to its first and only NCAA team championship in 1953.

Santee produced what was arguably his most impressive collegiate feat during a three-race performance against the University of California at Berkeley in 1954. In that meet he won the 880 yards in 1:51.5, the mile in 4:05.5 and ran the 440-yard relay leg in 48-flat.

Santee was a member of the 1952 Olympic team. He competed in the 5,000 meter run in Helsinki. In 1953, Santee was named the nation's most outstanding athlete by the Helms Foundation.

Santee was inducted into the State of Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2004 and the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2005. Santee is immortalized in statue form, along with other KU track stars Glenn Cunningham and Jim Ryun, at The Legends in Kansas City, Kan., and Rim Rock Farm, home of the Jayhawk cross country team.

"This past September Wes and I had a very good visit at a Kansas football game." said Jim Ryun, another former Kansas track standout. "I know he has had peace while fighting this battle with cancer. He was not a quitter by any stretch of the imagination. Wes attended every track meet he could, never missing the Kansas Relays. (My wife) Anne and I, along with the KU track family will miss him."

Santee, who was a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was a 1950 graduate of Ashland (Kan.) High School, where he was a two-time state champion in the mile run and once in cross country.

“Wes Santee was one of KU’s all-time greats, not just in track and field, but in the history of Kansas athletics,” said KU interim athletics director Sean Lester. “He loved KU and the entire Kansas family will miss him. Our hearts go out to his family.”

He was born March 25, 1932, in Ashland, Kan., and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1954.

“Wes’s success is a huge part of the KU tradition,” said Jayhawk head track coach Stanley Redwine. “He will be missed by the KU family and our prayers and thoughts go out to his family."

------------------------

Keith Conning: I attended that meet in Berkeley in 1954. I was thirteen years old. He was a beautiful runner. Bill Taylor, the coach at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo, was Santee's teammate at the Quantico Marines.

I recommend reading THE PERFECT MILE THREE ATHLETES, ONE GOAL, AND LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES TO ACHIEVE IT by Neal Bascomb

The Perfect Mile
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Perfect Mile

Cover of paperback, depicting Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile record
Author Neal Bascomb
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Non-fiction
Publisher Mariner Books
Publication date 2004
Pages 344
ISBN ISBN 0618562095
OCLC Number 54001404
The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It (2004) by Neal Bascomb is a non-fiction book about three runners and their attempts to become the first man to run a mile under four minutes. The runners are Englishman Roger Bannister, American Wes Santee, and Australian John Landy. The book's climax is Bannister's breaking of the record on May 6, 1954.

The New York Times' review calls it an "enthralling book" and says Bascomb "expertly winds up the tension of the three men's many failed attempts to get closer to the magic mark, before Bannister wrote himself into legend first on a windy day at the Oxford University track".[1]

[edit] References
^ Horspool, David (May 2, 2004). "Breaking Away". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1DB153AF931A35756C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
[edit] External links
Audio Interview with author and text excerpt on NPR



This article about a non-fiction book related to sports is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v • d • e

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perfect_Mile"
Categories: 2004 books | Running books | Sport book stubs