Bob Richards, the only male two-time winner of the Olympic pole vault, who in the 1950s became a hero of American Cold War competition with the Soviet Union and the first champion on the front of the Wheaties box, died Sunday. He was 97.
American pole vaulter Bob Richards, left, talks with Brazilian pole vaulter Helcio Buck-Silva during a break in a training session in Helsinki, July 11, 1952. Bob Richards, a two-time Olympic pole vault gold medalist who also became an ordained minister, died Sunday, Feb. 26, 2023. He was 97.
Even Richards’ son Brandon, as a teenager using a fiberglass pole in 1985, vaulted 18 feet 2 inches, which was then a national record for a high schooler and stood for 14 years. “The family that plays and prays together stays together,” Richards intoned on countless occasions. At 20, he had been ordained a minister of the Church of the Brethren, an Anabaptist denomination, and the news media had reflexively called him the Vaulting Vicar and the Pole Vaulting Pastor. He had been a pastor in California only briefly, but the dual image of minister and champion athlete was irresistible on the speaking circuit.
His autobiography, “Heart of a Champion,” was published in 1959. Until 2012, he had lived on a ranch in Santo, Texas, which he named the Crossbar Ranch and which was involved in numerous commercial activities, including oil and gas exploration and horse and cattle grazing. He retired to a ranch in Waco, where he owned a golf course.
In 1946, he was ordained and transferred to the University of Illinois. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1947 and a master’s in 1948.
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