NY Times · Sep 10, 2022
How a Marathon Win 50 Years Ago Kick-Started the ‘Running Boom’
Frank Shorter couldn’t have imagined the impact his 1972 Olympic marathon victory would have on the sport. “I was just a piece in the puzzle,” he said.
Frank Shorter during the men’s marathon at the 1972 Summer Olympics.Credit...Ed Lacey/Popperfoto / ContributorFor people who favor clean and simple marks for the start of something new, America’s “running boom” began 50 years ago today, on Sept. 10, 1972, when Frank Shorter, a Yale graduate and law student at the University of Florida, won the marathon at the Munich Olympics.