Lennox Miller (left) receives the baton from Clifton Forbes during the men's 4x100 metres relay final at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968. The Jamaican team finished fourth after breaking the world record twice in earlier rounds.
- File PhotosLENNOX MILLER, one of Jamaica's most outstanding Olympic sprinters, is dead.
The 58-year-old Miller who had been ailing for some time, died of cancer on Monday in Pasadena, California.
The University of Southern California (USC) graduate won silver in the 100m metres at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and followed that up by earning bronze in the same event at the Munich Games in 1972.
In Mexico City, Miller split the American duo of Jim Hines and Charlie Greene in the 100m final to establish a then national record of 10.04 seconds for the sprint. Hines won gold in a world record 9.95 seconds in running the first ever legal sub-10 second mark on electronic timing.
WORLD RECORD
Later at the same Games, Miller led the Jamaican sprint relay quartet to a world record equalling 38.6 seconds in the quarter-finals of the event and a world record 38.3 in the semi-finals on the same day. Jamaica (38.4) were fourth in the final won in a world record 38.2 by the Americans.
Miller, a brilliant schoolboy athlete while attending Kingston College in the mid-1960s, helped the North Street boys school to several triumphs at the annual inter-secondary championships. He was also one of the first athletes to represent KC at the annual Penn Relays.
He also wore national colours at the Commonwealth and Pan American Games.
At the Commonwealth Games of 1970 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Miller won silver in the 100m behind countryman Donald Quarrie and was a member of the sprint relay team which mined gold.
RANKED IN TOP THREE
A year later at the Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia, Miller was again second to Quarrie in the 100m before repeating his gold medal in the sprint relay.
Earlier, he set the world record in the indoor 100-yard dash in 1969, the same year he was USC's team captain. He was ranked in the top three in the world in the 100m dash for three straight years (1967-69) and remains one of the greatest sprinters in USC's track and field history.
Born in Kingston on October 8, 1946, Miller went on to operate a successful 30-year dental practice in California after graduating from the university in 1973.
At USC, Miller distinguished himself at the NCAA championships and in 1967 was a member of the university's sprint team which set a still-standing world record of 38.6 in the seldom-run 4x110 yards. Also running on that team was O.J. Simpson, then the biggest American college football hero.
He served as attaché for the Jamaica team at the XXIII Olympiad in Los Angeles in 1984.
His wife, Avril, and two daughters, Inger and Heather, survive Miller.
Inger won the 1999 world championship 200 metres gold and was a member of the U.S. gold medal-winning 4x100 metres relay at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
