Kurt Thomas, Trailblazing Champion Gymnast, Dies at 64

Kurt Bilteaux Thomas was born in Miami on March 29, 1956. His father, who managed a meat company, died when he was 7, and he and his siblings were raised by their mother, Ellie, a secretary.

“I wanted to be a doctor and then a policeman, and then a pro basketball player or football,” he told The New York Times in 1979, recalling his childhood.

But at 14, he watched the Miami‐Dade Junior College gymnastics team at a practice and was highly impressed. “I saw this guy swinging on a high bar, and I just thought it was kind of a neat sport,” he said.

Thomas played on a newly formed gymnastics team at his high school and won a scholarship to Indiana State University in Terre Haute.

He was a multiple N.C.A.A. champion, winning the parallel bars and all-around in 1977, and parallel bars, horizontal bar and the all-around in 1979. He helped take the men’s gymnastics team to the 1977 national collegiate championship and ranked behind only Larry Bird, the future basketball Hall of Famer, as a campus celebrity.

Thomas received the Sullivan Award as the nation’s leading amateur athlete in 1979 and was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2003.

In addition to his wife, Rebecca (Jones) Thomas, his survivors include their children, Hunter and Kassidy, as well as a son, Kurt, from a previous marriage.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/sports/kurt-thomas-dead.html