Otis Davis wins the 400m at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome (© Allsport / Getty Images)
World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that Otis Davis, who won 400m and 4x400m gold at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, died on Saturday (14) at the age of 92.
Davis only started running the 400m competitively at the age of 26 but the US athlete became an Olympic champion a couple of years later. He was the first man to break 45 seconds in the one-lap event when he ran 44.9 in that 1960 Olympic final to win ahead of Germany’s Carl Kaufmann in a photo finish, and he went on to anchor the US team to the Olympic 4x400m title.
Davis was born on 12 July 1932 and grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He spent four years in the US Air Force and after playing on the Air Force basketball team, he joined the University of Oregon on a basketball scholarship.
While there, he joined the athletics team under coach Bill Bowerman and started out in the high jump and long jump before focusing on sprinting.
Despite having raced the 400m just nine times before the 1960 Olympics, Davis stormed to the title in Rome as he narrowly held off Kaufmann. They both clocked 44.9 – becoming the first to dip under 45 seconds for the event – and they met again in the 4x400m final two days later, when Davis anchored the US quartet to victory in another world record of 3:02.2.
Davis retired from athletics the following year and went on to become a teacher, mentor and coach. He was a torchbearer for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and is one of the University of Oregon icons featured on the Hayward Field tower.
World Athletics