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Competition clothing worn by Jim Hines and Bill Toomey, respectively the 1968 Olympic 100m and decathlon champions, has now joined the World Athletics Heritage Collection.
This generous donation of Hines’ and Toomey’s clothing has been made by New Zealand’s Roy Williams, who won the decathlon at the 1966 Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston.
The three athletes, who were competing at the USA vs British Commonwealth International meet at the Los Angeles Coliseum on 8-9 July 1967, swapped their team kit from the match.
Hines, who had set his first 100m world record in Modesto in May 1967 (10.0), gave Williams his USA racing singlet. Toomey, who was good friends with the New Zealander, swapped his USA tracksuit top with Williams.
In Mexico City the following year, Hines set the first automatically timed world record in the 100m (9.95), while Toomey established an Olympic record in the decathlon (8193). Toomey, who had set an unratified decathlon record in 1966, finally officially set the world record in Los Angeles in 1969 (8417).
Williams, the brother of New Zealand’s first female Olympic gold medallist, the late Yvette Williams, who won the 1952 Olympic long jump in Helsinki, said: “Rather than these items from two all-time athletics greats just collecting dust at home, I decided to offer them to the World Athletics Heritage Collection so that they can be displayed in public and preserved for future generations of fans.”
Hines’ and Toomey’s kits will be on show in World Athletics Heritage displays in Tokyo during this year’s Olympic Games, and in Oregon in the lead-in to the 2021 World Athletics Championships.
World Athletics
