Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun.
June 20, 2023 at 13:43 JST
The 100-meter sprint final at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. (Ryo Ikeda)
Jim Hines was born into a black family in Arkansas in 1946, one year after the end of World War II. He had nine siblings.
His father was a construction worker and his mother worked in a canning factory. Providing for such a large family could not have been easy.
As a child, Hines was a fast runner whose main interest was said to be baseball and football. He took up track and field in high school. But he could not have even imagined, back then, that he would one day become “the first man to run 100 meters in under 10 seconds.”
It happened on June 20, 1968--exactly 55 years ago today. Hines set a hand-timed record of 9.9 seconds at the 1968 U.S. national championships in Sacramento, California. He ran with such confidence that The Asahi Shimbun at the time reported he “did not appear especially surprised (by the feat).”
Black athletes from the U.S. team were threatening to boycott the Mexico Olympics that year, but Hines participated in the Games, believing the best course of action was to perform to the best of his ability.
He won the gold medal in the 100-meter sprint with a time of 9.95 seconds posted on the electric timer. He held this world record for 15 years until it was finally broken in 1983.
More than 40 years later, Usain Bolt brought the world record down to 9.58 seconds. How much faster will humanity be able to run? Or has the limit already been reached?
Many talented sprinters compete to shave off time that’s shorter than a blink of an eye, shedding and drying many tears in the process. It moves me deeply just to think about it.
Immediately after breaking the “10-second barrier,” Hines signed with the Miami Dolphins football team. After retirement, he worked in social welfare.
He died on June 3 at the age of 76. He is survived by a son, a daughter and four grandchildren.
--The Asahi Shimbun, June 20
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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.
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