Bruce Jenner

While in high school, Bruce Jenner three times won the Eastern States water ski championship and placed well in the Connecticut State High School track & field meet, but he gave no indication that he would one day become the world’s greatest athlete. Jenner went to tiny Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, on a football scholarship, but shortly took up the decathlon and only one year later qualified for the 1972 Olympic team. After placing 10th in the 1972 Olympic decathlon, Jenner won the 1974 AAU title and in 1975 he was PanAm champion and set a world record (8,524) in the triangular meet with the USSR and Poland. In 1976, Jenner won his second AAU title and crowned a brilliant career by taking the Olympic gold medal with a new world record of 8,618 points.

The charismatic Jenner became a television and movie personality as soon as his competitive days were over. After splitting with his first wife, he married Linda Thompson, who was Elvis Presley’s girlfriend when that legend passed away in 1978. After that marriage ended in divorce, Jenner married Kris Kardashian, ex-wife of Robert Kardashian, one of O. J. Simpson’s lawyers, and star of a reality television series in the United States.

With that reality series, Jenner was thrust back into the public spotlight as “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” became very popular, although he and Kris Kardashian would later divorce. However, it was easily noted that his appearance was changing, in part due to multiple plastic surgeries. Rumors persisted for several years about his gender preference, and in 2015, Jenner bravely announced that he identified as a woman rather than a man. In an interview on ABC Television in April 2015, he stated that the interview was the last time he would be known publicly as Bruce. In a June 2015 interview in Vanity Fair magazine, Jenner announced that his new name would be Caitlyn.

Personal Bests: 100 – 10.7 (1975); 400 – 47.5 (1976); 1500 – 4:12.6 (1976); 110H – 14.3 (1976); HJ – 6-8 (2.03) (1976); PV – 15-8 (4.80) (1974); LJ – 24-0¼ (7.32) (1974); SP – 50-4½ (15.35) (1976); DT – 169-7 (51.69) (1976); JT – 227-11 (69.47) (1972); Dec – 8634 (1976).