Jim Hines

This article is about the sprinter Jim Hines. For the fantasy author, see Jim C. Hines .

Jim Hines
Full name	James Ray Hines
nation	United States
birthday	September 10, 1946
place of birth	Dumas
size	183 cm
Weight	81 kg
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	9.95 s ( 100 m )
society	Houston Striders
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Mexico City 1968 100 m gold Mexico City 1968 4 × 100 m

Jim Hines (actually James Ray Hines ; born September 10, 1946 in Dumas , Arkansas ) is a former American sprinter and Olympic champion . He held the world record in the 100-meter run for almost 15 years .

biography

Hines was a baseball player in his youth until he was discovered by an athletics coach who built him into a world-class sprinter. At the US Athletics Championships in Sacramento , Hines was stopped with 9.9 s (electronic timekeeping: 10.03 s), making it the first athlete in history to undercut the 10-second mark . In the other semifinals, Charles Greene and Ronnie Ray Smith equalized this time.

The preparations for the Olympic Games in Mexico City in October 1968 were overshadowed by the racial unrest in the USA. The US national team's black athletes, including Hines, were considering boycotting the Games. Ultimately, it did not come to that, and Hines qualified for the Olympic final over 100 meters on October 14, 1968. He won the run in front of the Jamaican Lennox Miller and his compatriot Charles Greene in the time of electronically stopped 9.95 s. At first it was unclear whether this time represented an improvement on the world record. The IAAF , the World Athletics Federation, rated the 9.95 s as faster than the hand-stopped 9.9 s and recognized it as a new world record. Hines was also the first runner to break the 10-second limit using electronic timing. In the 4-by-100-meter relay , Hines ran together with Charles Greene, Mel Pender and Ronnie Ray Smith to his second world record in 38.2 s and won gold.

After the Olympics, Hines played American football with the Miami Dolphins in the National Football League (NFL). He had been drafted by the Dolphins in 1968 in the sixth round in 146th place . Hines was used as a wide receiver . In 1970 he moved to the Kansas City Chiefs . After a game with the Chiefs, he ended his career.

His world record over 100 meters lasted almost 15 years. It was not until July 3, 1983 that the American Calvin Smith improved the mark to 9.93 s.

Web links

• Jim Hines in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Jim Hines in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Entry in the database of Pro-Football-Reference.com (English)