Jack Daniels

Jack Daniels is one of the three US pentathletes to win two Olympic medals, both in the team event. In 1956 he finished 13th individually based on the strength of a second in riding. In 1960 he was eighth individually with a third-place in swimming. Daniels won the 1958 National Championships, was second in that event in 1957 and 1962, and third in 1960.

Daniels attended the Colorado School of Mines, later transferring to the University of Montana where he competed on the swimming and rifle teams. Graduating in 1955 with a double major in physical education and mathematics, he served in the US Army where he started competing in pentathlon. He later obtained his master’s degree in exercise physiology from the University of Oklahoma (1965) and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1969.

Daniels was head cross-country coach at Oklahoma City University from 1961-65 and then did altitude research with elite American athletes and for the space program with the Federal Aviation Agency. He was Peru’s national team coach for one year and then coached distance runners at the University of Texas from 1969-72 before leaving for Hawai’i, where he coached for one year before returning to Texas where he helped start and coached the Longhorn women’s women’s track and field and cross-country programs.

In 1980 Daniels was hired by Nike as an exercise physiologist. In addition to his research, he also coached the Nike team, Athletics West, before leaving in 1986 to coach the men’s women’s cross-country teams at Cortland State University in New York. While at Cortland he wrote his best-known book, Daniels’ Running Formula_, which went through four editions.

In 2005 Northern Arizona University hired Daniels to coach the Center for High Altitude Training in Flagstaff. That facility closed in 2009, and although 79-years-old, he then took a position at Brevard College, a D-II school in North Carolina. When asked why he would do that at that age, he told Runners World magazine, “Simply put, I love to coach both young ladies and young men, and to be able to continue doing that makes life real enjoyable for me. I truly get as much enjoyment out of watching a young runner improve his or her performance as I get from seeing one of my runners make it to the Olympics.” Far from done coaching, in 2013 he became the head men’s and women’s cross-country coaching position at Wells College in Aurora, New York, an NCAA D-III school.

In his career as an exercise physiologist and coach over six decades, Daniels wrote several books and more than 50 peer-reviewed articles on running. He is considered among the most influential exercise physiologists in American distance running history.