Jack Bacheler
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Jack Strangl Bacheler |
| National team | United States |
| Born |
December 30, 1943 Washington, D.C. |
| Height | 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) |
| Weight | 170 lb (77 kg) |
| Sport | |
| Sport | Track and field |
| Event(s) | 5000 metres, marathon |
| College team | Miami University |
| Club | Florida Track Club |
Jack Strangl Bacheler (born December 30, 1943) is an American former long-distance runner and two-time U.S. Olympian (5,000 meters in 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and Marathon in 1972 Munich Olympics). Born in Washington, District of Columbia, Bacheler was a founding member of the Florida Track Club at Gainesville, Florida in the late 1960s, and personally designed the club's distinctive "orange" logo. Standing 6 feet 7 inches, yet weighing only 165 pounds, he towered over most of his competitors. Now living in Clayton, North Carolina, he is married to Patricia Bacheler. Bacheler has two children, daughter Teresa (Teri), and son Matthew (Matt).
Bacheler grew up in Birmingham, Michigan and grew quickly: he was 6 foot 5 inches in the 10th grade at Birmingham's Seaholm High. Because of his height he played basketball at Seaholm High School, but found in his senior year that he excelled more in cross country and track. At the start of his senior year he tried out for the Cross Country team, much to the surprise of the school's legendary track coach Kermit Ambrose (Seaholm's coach 1952–1967). His basketball coach thought Bacheler was only running to get in shape for the winter basketball season, but, as Bacheler later confided to Sports Illustrated magazine, he discovered he enjoyed running. After his second X-country meet, he was Seaholm's number one runner. He competed in track for the first time in the spring of his senior year and qualified for the Michigan state championships where he finished third in the mile with a time of 4:28. That was sufficient to earn him an athletic grant-in-aid to attend Miami University.
At Miami University in Ohio, Bacheler competed in the Mid-American Conference (the MAC). Following the end of his sophomore year he competed in the U.S. Olympic trials in the summer of 1964, where he finished in eleventh place (out of 13 runners) in the 3,000 meter Steeplechase. As a member of the [then] Redskins team, he earned All-America honors at Miami by finishing seventh in the NCAA Cross Country Championship in fall 1964, and again in spring 1966 by placing second in the steeplechase in the NCAA outdoor Track and Field Championships. He also captured the three-mile run in the Mid-American Conference Track and Field Championships in both 1965 and 1966 and helped lead the Redskins to the All-Ohio and MAC Cross Country Championships in 1965. He broke the school record in the 3-mile run, which had been held by Bob Schul, who won the 5,000 meters at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The metric 5,000 is only slightly longer than 3 miles. He graduated in 1966 and, in 1981, he was inducted into the Miami Hall of Fame: at that time he was the only Miamian to have participated in two Olympics as an athlete.
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