Jim Hines, who in 1968 turned the primary man to dash 100 meters in below 10 seconds, and later that 12 months gained a gold medal in that distance on the Olympic Video games in Mexico Metropolis with a blistering time of 9.95 seconds, a mark that stood as a world file for 15 years, died on Saturday. He was 76.
His loss of life was confirmed in an obituary on the official Olympics web site, which supplied no additional particulars.
Hines first formally broke the 10-second barrier within the 100-meter occasion at the USA Out of doors Nationwide Observe and Discipline Championships in 1968 in Sacramento, which he gained with a hand-timed pace of 9.9 seconds.
Hines was assured within the months earlier than the Video games. When The Oakland Tribune requested him if he thought he would win in Mexico Metropolis, he mentioned, “Yeah, for certain.”
The 1968 Olympics are broadly remembered for the civil rights protest staged by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two African American medalists within the 200-meter race who raised their fists in solidarity with the Black Energy motion whereas standing on the winners’ podium as “The Star-Spangled Banner” performed.
Hines, who was additionally Black, had no remark when a reporter requested what he considered makes an attempt to prepare a Black boycott of the 1968 Video games. However in 1991 he informed The Los Angeles Occasions that not the entire Black athletes on the Video games — himself included — agreed with the protest.
“Most of us felt the easiest way a Black athlete might make an announcement was by going and doing his greatest,” Hines mentioned. “Tommie and John felt what they had been doing was for all Black athletes and Black males in America. They didn’t suppose it out.”
On the 100-meter finals, Hines confronted a subject that included the Jamaican sprinter Lennox Miller and his American teammates Charles Greene and Mel Pender.
In 1974, Pender informed The New York Occasions that Hines used his confidence to intimidate opponents.
“You’d simply hear him saying, ‘I’m prepared, child,’” Pender mentioned. “He’d say it so nonchalant, like there was no method he might lose.”
Hines thought-about Greene the best menace within the gold medal race, he informed The Tribune, however added, “To inform the reality, I’m quicker than he’s.”
In Mexico Metropolis, Hines burst out of the blocks and ran with the wind at his again, eyes large and enamel clenched as he tore to the entrance of the pack and broke the tape.
“It was the most effective begin I had in my life, and it was the most effective 100 I ever raced,” he mentioned afterward.
His 100-meter file stood till 1983, when Calvin Smith broke it with a pace of 9.93. The web site for World Athletics, the worldwide governing physique for monitor and subject, lists Usain Bolt as the present world-record holder, with a time of 9.58, set in 2009 on the World Athletics Championships in Berlin.
Hines gained one other gold medal on the 1968 Olympics, serving to his teammates Pender, Greene and Ronnie Ray Smith triumph within the 4×100 males’s relay for the USA.
After finishing the 1968 monitor and subject season, Hines, coveted for his pace, performed within the American Soccer League. He joined the Miami Dolphins as a receiver, and in doing so gave up any additional probability to compete within the Olympics, which on the time required athletes to be amateurs.
He performed with Miami in 1969 however recorded solely two receptions and one rush try in the course of the season. The Dolphins then traded him to the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, however he didn’t play within the 1970 season and shortly left skilled soccer behind.
James Ray Hines was born in Dumas, Ark., on Sept. 10, 1946, and grew up in Oakland, Calif., in line with the World Athletics web site. His father, Charlie, was a development employee; his mom, Minnie West Hines, labored in a cannery, in line with the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
As a youth Hines was extra fascinated about baseball and soccer than operating, however his pace impressed the monitor coach at McClymonds Excessive Faculty in Oakland, who requested him to hitch the crew.
Hines attended Texas Southern College in Houston, the place he ran monitor. The Dolphins drafted him in 1968 although he had not performed soccer since highschool. He delayed signing a contract with the Dolphins in order that he might compete within the Olympics.
After his soccer profession ended, Hines ran as an expert, coming into meets into his 30s and generally struggling to make ends meet. After retiring from sports activities, he labored for a few years as a social employee and based a charitable group to assist individuals within the Oakland space.
Info on his survivors was not instantly out there.
Kitty Bennett contributed analysis.