Dick Buerkle, Master of the Indoor Mile, Dies at 72
After graduating from Villanova in 1970 with a major in Spanish studies, he ran at top levels for more than a decade, showing versatility at one, two and three miles, as well as at distances of 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
In 1976, Buerkle won the 5,000-meter race at the United States Olympic trials but finished ninth in a heat at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. He qualified again at 5,000 meters for the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, but the American team did not compete after the United States boycotted the event because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Buerkle disagreed with boycott, ordered by President Jimmy Carter. “Of course, the boycott is justified if it can bring about peace,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer at the time, “but the way it was handled was obnoxious, underhanded, threatening.”
He left elite racing in 1981 and worked primarily as a Spanish teacher and track coach at middle and high schools in Atlanta.
He married Jean Brockwell in 1971. In addition to her, he is survived by two daughters, Lily and Tera Buerkle; a son, Gabriel; four grandchildren; three sisters, Anne, Teresa and Mary Pat Buerkle; and four brothers, Daniel, Robert, Joseph and Thomas.
As a top American at 5,000 meters from 1970 to 1981, Buerkle’s chief rival was Steve Prefontaine, America’s finest distant runner at the time. Competing in a two-mile event in 1974, Buerkle won decisively, breaking Prefontaine’s four-year winning streak at numerous distances.
Shortly after Prefontaine’s death the following year in an automobile accident in Eugene, Ore., Buerkle wrote a poem that he dictated over the telephone to a reporter at The Register-Guard in Eugene. It read in part:
And now it’s over just like that.
The hearts begin to bleed.
No more will dirt in London, Oslo,
Crush beneath your feet.
It’s up to other artists now
To make the tempo sweet.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/sports/olympics/dick-buerkle-master-of-the-indoor-mile-dies-at-72.html