RUNNING MAN. Back in my misspent youth, which was so long ago that track and field still mattered to well over 200 American sports fans, Jim Ryun was a bona fide star. In 1966, when he was 19, he smashed the world-record in both the mile and the half-mile, and he was named Sports Illustrated's "Sportsman Of The Year." In 1967, he ran a 3:51.1 mile, a world record that laster nearly a decade. He was snakebitten in the Olympics, though. In 1968, he got run down by Kip Keino of Kenya and, four years later in Munich, he got tangled up with another runner and fell.
He went on to a career as a Christianist rightwing congresscritter. And now, it seems that, like many of them, he's in a spot of trouble. I wonder if he feels Kip Keino's breath on his neck.
--Charles P. Pierce
