US
Olympian Paul Cummings dies
USAT&F and
Giorgio Reineri
20 September
2001 - Paul Cummings,
a 1984 Olympic 10,000 metre competitor,
died Monday, 17 September, following a boating accident
at Strawberry Reservoir in Utah. He was
48.
The accident occurred as Cummings and his friend Jay Woods, both former Brigham Young University milers, were out fishing, when high winds and choppy water tipped their canoe.
Two-time Olympic marathoner and Brigham Young University track coach Ed Eyestone told the Salt Lake Deseret News that he spoke with Woods shortly after the accident. "They were weighed down by their clothes and boots," he said. "Jay saw Paul struggling and tried to pull him along. Jay barely made it to shore himself."
Divers found Cummings' body four hours later.
The 1974 NCAA mile champion, Cummings' Brigham Young University mile record of 3:56.4 has stood for 27 years. Later in his career, Cummings found greater success competing indoors where allergies could not hamper his performance, setting an American indoor 1500m record of 3:37.6 in 1979 in Long Beach.
With the help of medication, Cummings was able to run longer races successfully. After he set the American half-marathon record of 1:01:32 in 1983, he later won the 1984 Olympic Trials 10,000 metres in 27:59:08. However, another battle with allergies kept him from making it to the final later that summer at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Known for his natural talent and work ethic, Cummings would run several miles to and from work at Geneva Steel Mill, where he performed back-breaking work in brutal heat coming from nearby open-hearth furnaces.
Cummings would often run as many as 200 miles a week in training, which paid off with numerous road race victories, including the 1986 Houston Marathon, where he set his personal best of 2:11:32.
Cummings and his family lived in Spanish Fork, Utah. He leaves a wife and four children.
Cummings' tragic accident comes just a month after the death of Jacques Boxberger, another of the protagonists of international middle distance running from the end of the Sixties and throughout the Seventies. The Frenchman, who was just four years older than Cummings was killed by an elephant during a photographic safari in Kenya last August.
Boxberger too had been a young phenomenon , coming fifth in the final of the 1500 metres in Mexico City at the 1968 Olympics at just 19 years of age.
The paths of Boxberger and Cummings crossed many times in the 5000 and 10,000 metres and, finally, in the marathon, where the French athlete ran a personal best of in the Eighties of 2:11:59, almost as though fate had decided that the lives of both would run a parallel course right up to the tragic end of their lives.
