John Thomas, Olympic high jumper, dies at 71
Photo credit: AP, 1960 | High jumper John Thomas in Cambridge, Mass.
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Notable sports deaths in 2013
He was the overwhelming favorite in his event, so much so that U.S. sportswriters covering the 1960 Summer Olympics boasted that if Americans won just one gold medal over the rival Soviet Union at that year's Games, it would be his.
A skinny 19-year-old from Boston, John Thomas had been the first high jumper to leap 7 feet indoors, setting the mark when he was only 17. When the Summer Games...
