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.
For 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.