Billy Mills wins the 10,000m at the 1964 Olympics (© AFP / Getty Images)
Nobody saw him coming. Not Ron Clarke, certainly. Not Emil Zatopek, even.
Billy Mills did not just confound two of the all-time kings of distance running as he shot from obscurity with his high-speed, high-stepping, home-straight gallop into Olympic immortality in Tokyo’s National Stadium in 1964.
The unheralded Native American caught television commentator Bud Palmer in such a state of unawares that NBC’s athletics analyst Dick Bank memorably screamed: “Look at Mills! Look at Mills!” before whooping in delight as the rank outsider in the blue USA vest surged past Clarke, the world record-holder and red-hot favourite from Australia, and Tunisia’s Mohammed Gammoudi to claim the Olympic 10,000m title.
Sixty years on, Mills travelled to Paris in August last year to present his 1964 Olympic USA team tracksuit as a memento of his stunning upset win to the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) at a special Gathering of Champions during the 2024 Olympics.
Back in Tokyo in 1964, the unfortunate Bank was fired for what was considered to have been improper behaviour in the sober neutrality of the commentary box. Six decades on, however, his spontaneous contribution lends a vivid immediacy to reviewing that still-breathtaking passage of timeless track and field history.
Billy Mills at the 1964 Olympics (© AFP / Getty Images)
“I don’t expect the Americans to do anything”
It was a last lap for the ages: a dramatic denouement in which the least-known member of the supporting cast stole the show.
According to The New York Times, Mills was “a 1,000-to-1 shot, a complete dark horse who barely sneaked on to the United States squad”.
After being forced to settle for the bronze medal, Clarke was asked whether he had been worried about Mills. “Worried about him? I’d never heard of him,” the still-stunned Australian snapped.
Mills himself revealed years later that he had been fuelled by a snub from Zatopek the day before the straight final. The four-time Olympic gold medallist had been signing autographs in the Olympic Village and Mills joined the queue to obtain the great Czech’s signature.
“I must have been 25th when I got in line,” Mills recalled. “When I worked my way up to third, I heard the man who was first in line ask Zatopek: ‘What do you expect the Americans to do in the 10,000m?’
“Zatopek looked at the man as if he were crazy. ‘I don’t expect the Americans to do anything,’ Zatopek said.
“I was offended. I got out of the line. I didn’t need his autograph that much.”
On the same day, Mills was also affronted when he visited a major shoe company’s stall in the Olympic Village and was told he couldn’t have a pair of their spikes.
It just so happened that Dick Bank worked for that company and, after being informed of what had happened, he chased after Mills to furnish him with a pair of blue suede spiked shoes for the big race.
At one time the husband of Pat Connolly, the three-time Olympic pentathlete who coached Evelyn Ashford and a young Allyson Felix, Bank was a leading authority on track and field, not just in the USA but globally.
He was one of the few in the 75,000 crowd in the National Stadium on 14 October 1964 who was aware of William Mervin Mills and his fight just to make it on to the Olympic stage in Tokyo at the age of 26 – overcoming a lifetime of racial discrimination that had left him with ingrained feelings of inferiority and the physical handicap of hypoglycaemia, which had been diagnosed in 1963 after his habit of fading badly at the tail-end of races.
One of 12 siblings, Mills was raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota people in South Dakota.
Orphaned at the age of 12, he took up running at the Haskell Institute, a school for Native Americans, in Lawrence, Kansas, originally as part of his training for boxing.
After being badly beaten up in his first two fights, however, he concentrated on running instead, earning a scholarship to the University of Kansas.
He was a lieutenant in the Marines when he made the US team for Tokyo, finishing runner up in the 10,000m trial race to Gerry Lingdren in a lifetime best of 29:10.4.
Billy Mills donates his USA tracksuit from the 1964 Olympics to Sebastian Coe for the MOWA (© James Rhodes)
“I suppose I was the only person who thought I had a chance”
Clarke’s world record was 28:15.6. He appeared assured of victory when he got to the bell in Tokyo with only Mills and Gammoudi, who had also yet to break 29 minutes, still with him.
The red dirt track was cluttered with lapped runners and the three leaders had to thread their way through the congestion. Rounding into the back straight, Clarke elbowed Mills into lane two to get past one of the stragglers.
Then, with 250m to go, Gammoudi pushed his way in between both men and shot into a lead that he stretched to some eight metres.
The desperate Clarke gradually closed the gap, passing Gammoudi at the head of the home straight.
Mills looked out of it at that stage, but from lane four he surged past a knot of lapped runners, imagining he saw the image on an eagle on one of their singlets.
His late father had told him that one day he might have “the wings of an eagle” and, with that in mind, he soared past Clarke and Gammoudi to take the gold in 28:24.4.
The Tunisian, who had encouraged him to use sprint reps in training to improve his closing speed, finished 0.4 down in the silver medal position, with the dispirited Clarke a further second back.
“I’m flabbergasted,” Mills confessed. “I can’t believe it. I suppose I was the only person who thought I had a chance.”
He shed tears as the Star-Spangled Banner played at the medal ceremony because of his struggle to be accepted in his homeland.
“I grew up with feelings of shame and inferiority,” Mills confided. “I never felt I truly belonged. I felt different.”
In 1965 Mills proved his Olympic victory had been no fluke, smashing Clarke’s six mile world record with Lingdren as they tied for the AAU title at the Balboa Stadium in San Diego, clocking 27:11.6.
In the same year came an honour that meant even more to Mills. He was accorded warrior status by the elders Oglala Lakota, a proud tribe whose past leaders included Crazy Horse, the Native American hero of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876.
A prominent campaigner for Native American youth, Mills was honoured with the US Presidential Citizens Medal by Barack Obama in 2012.
View Mills’s tracksuit in glorious 3D in the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
