By FRANK LITSKY
New York Times
Published: November 28, 2007
Herb McKenley, the world’s fastest 400-meter runner more than half a century ago and later the driving force in Jamaica’s climb to track and field glory, died Monday in Kingston, Jamaica, where he lived. He was 85.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, his wife, Beverley, said. She said his health had been unsteady since triple-bypass surgery in 1998.
In 1947, McKenley set a world record of 46.3 seconds for 440 yards. In 1948, he set world records of 46.0 for 440 yards and 45.9 for the slightly shorter distance of 400 meters. The same year, he went to the London Olympics as a member of the Jamaican team.
“Once I’m in the lead at the top of the homestretch, no man in the world can beat me,” McKenley said in London before the 400-meter final.
But entering the final straightaway four yards in front, McKenley, at 6-foot-1 and 159 pounds and powered by an eight-foot stride, was overtaken by Arthur Wint, a Jamaican teammate and medical student who, at 6-4 ½, had an even longer stride: nine feet.
McKenley, finishing second, came away with the silver medal and a lasting memory of Wint’s relentless footsteps gaining on him: “Boom, boom, boom,” as he later put it.
After the race, Allison Danzig wrote in The New York Times, “The man who couldn’t be beaten, the surest thing in track and field in the Games of the XIV Olympiad, met his master today in one of the greatest 400-meter races ever run.”
Jamaica remembered both its heroes. On one side of Kingston is Herb McKenley Crescent. On the other side of town is Arthur Wint Drive.
McKenley’s frustration continued at the 1952 Olympics, in Helsinki, Finland. In the 100-meter final, he appeared to catch Lindy Remigino, an unheralded American. The first four finished inches apart. But despite Remigino’s urging that McKenley had won, the judges said that Remigino had been first and McKenley second.
In the 400-meter final, McKenley started his kick too late and finished a foot and a half behind George Rhoden, another Jamaican. “Now I’ll never win a gold medal,” McKenley said. But he won one in the 4x400-meter relay when he turned a 10-yard deficit into a 2-foot victory with a spectacular leg in 44.6 seconds.
His 1948 world record of 45.9 in the 400 has long been eclipsed — the current record, at 43.18, has been held by Michael Johnson of the United States since 1999 — but McKenley ran in an era when most tracks were dirt or clay, not the artificial surfaces of today, and when training methods, diet and equipment were far less advanced than they are now.
Herbert Henry McKenley was born July 10, 1922, in Clarendon, Jamaica. His father was a doctor and wanted his son to become one, too. His mother wanted him to be a violinist. Starting him with lessons at age 12, she sent him to a teacher two and a half miles away. Rather than wait for a bus, Herbert got there faster by running.
In high school, he ran 400 meters in 51.6 seconds, and a track career was born. He became the first Jamaican sprinter to receive a college scholarship in the United States and earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois.
His amateur career ended in 1953, a year after Helsinki, when he joined the professional sprint circuit in Australia. He received travel expenses, $22 a week in spending money and, when the six-month season ended, a $1,500 guarantee plus prize money of $31,360.
He returned to Jamaica, coached the national team from 1954 to 1973 and later served as president of Jamaica’s Amateur Athletic Association.
He led a youth program that produced international stars like Don Quarrie, Lennox Miller and Merlene Ottey. Soon, 60 to 100 Jamaicans were receiving track and field scholarships to American colleges every year.
In 1964, for the first time, McKenley entered a Jamaican high school team in the Penn Relays in Philadelphia. Now, almost 30 Jamaican high schools send more than 400 boys and girls a year to the meet, held in April. Since their first year, Jamaican schools have won almost half of Penn’s major relays for high school boys and more than half for girls.
In addition to his wife of 40 years, McKenley is survived by four children from a previous marriage, Herbert Jr., Michael and Kirsten, all of Atlanta, and Laura Bryce of Pembroke Pines, Fla.; a stepdaughter, Yanick Omeally, of Miami Beach; eight grandchildren; and a brother, Dudley, of Jamaica.
McKenley’s racing philosophy was simple. “I run as fast as I can as long as I can,” he once said. “That means the other chaps can’t pocket me. They have to beat me in the stretch. All I think about is a good start and then speed, speed, speed.”