Bruce Jenner: Track and Field Sports Documentary

Bruce Jenner: Track and Field Sports Documentary

Sports Documentary on legendary decathlete Bruce Jenner.

William Bruce Jenner (born October 28, 1949) is a former U.S. track and field athlete, motivational speaker, socialite, television personality and businessman. He won the gold medal for decathlon in the Montreal 1976 Summer Olympics.
Following his Olympic win and the related recognition, he married Kris Kardashian, and his professional career evolved into being a television celebrity. By 1981, he had starred in several made-for-TV movies and was Erik Estrada's replacement on the top rated TV series CHiPs. He has six children: Burt, Casey, Brandon, Brody, Kendall and Kylie. Since his 1991 marriage to Kris Jenner, he is the stepfather to Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob Kardashian. Since 2007, he has appeared with his blended family on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Jenner was born in Mount Kisco, New York, the son of Esther R. and William Hugh Jenner. He attended Newtown High School in Newtown, Connecticut, after spending a year at Sleepy Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Jenner earned a football scholarship and attended Graceland College (now Graceland University) in Iowa, but a knee injury forced him to stop playing football and he switched to the decathlon. He was mentored by Graceland's track coach L. D. Weldon, who was the first to recognize Jenner's potential and encouraged him to pursue the decathlon. Jenner debuted in the decathlon at the Drake Relays in 1970, placing fifth.

Jenner placed third in the decathlon at the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials and finished in tenth place at the 1972 Munich games. His success prompted him to devote himself to an intense training regimen, while also selling insurance outside training hours. He acknowledged that he was supported and subsidized by his then wife, Chrystie Crownover, who worked as an airline stewardess. In the era before professionalism was allowed in athletics this kind of training was unheard of. During that period he spent eight hours a day at the San Jose City College track. Centered around Bert Bonanno, the coach at SJCC, San Jose at the time was a hotbed for training aspiring Olympic athletes, including Jenner, along with Millard Hampton, Andre Phillips, John Powell, Mac Wilkins, Al Feuerbach and others. In 1974 and 1976, Jenner was the American champion in the event.

At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, he won the gold medal in the Decathlon, setting the world record of 8,616 points. The world record was broken by just 4 points by Daley Thompson in 1980. In 1985, the IAAF Decathlon scoring table was changed, so Jenner's winning score has been reevaluated against that table and reported as 8634 for comparative purposes. As of 2011, Jenner is #25 on the world all-time list and the #9 American.

As a result of winning the Olympic decathlon, Jenner was a national hero. He was the 1976 recipient of the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. Jenner was also the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1976. He was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, the Connecticut Sports Hall of Fame in 1994 and the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1980. He was inducted into the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.

San Jose City College hosted the "Bruce Jenner Invitational" (frequently shortened to "Jenner") as a televised, annual stop on the United States Track and Field Circuit (a meet equivalent in stature to the Prefontaine Classic) for the better part of two decades. Records were set at the meet, with Jenner frequently hosting the telecasts.

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hello I'm Chris Fowler and welcome to
sports century when Bruce Jenner was

dubbed the world's greatest athlete a
generation ago he flashed that magnetic

championship smile and took his
celebrity to the bank but in time the

skin of his impossibly wholesome image
were away and a real life emerged makes

with success regret and human frailty as
we'll see over the next half hour

it all began in the summer of nineteen
seventy-six in Montreal 76 was a very

important olympics the Cold War still
its height

Soviet Union which was known as the evil
empire still existed

olympic games were a moral equivalent
war at that time this was our country's

bicentennial year 1976

three weeks after the biggest fourth of
July and birthday celebration this

country's ever celebrated 200 years

patriotism is high

it was a low point in the decathlon for
Americans at that point and I think

there was a mood to look for someone to
come back to to be Bob Matthias to be

rafer johnson

the United States brightest hope to
regain decathlon glory was 26 year old

Bruce Jenner tall and arresting Lee
handsome he was the ideal male athlete

for millions of Americans but beneath
the image lay the potential for more

than just a gold medal in 1972

I made the decision that I would go for
years totally dedicate myself to what i

was doing and then I'll move on what was
over with so I went into that

competition knowing that that would be
the last time I would ever do this

what was it state was the difference
between

one lifestyle is supposed to another all
of the payoff terms of what he wanted to

accomplish in his heart and whatever was
going to go into the wallet was riding

on how we perform them two days

you did not have to be immediate genius
to realize that this was somebody that

you wanted to put on camera with his
wife and his dog

Bruce and Christy they were milk and
cookies and apple pie is our faces

lucky socks I think they understood the
whole picture

I'm not going to say that they packaged
and sold it but they were very

intelligent about what they had to bring
to the table and and how to get it

across at the end of the first day it is
entirely possible you will be a little

should we be worried second day has all
my good events and

bit behind

everything works out all right we should
go ahead after it's all over

standing between Jenner and his goal the
1976 montreal games with Nikolai Avila

the Soviet decathlete who want to look
at gold four years earlier

Jenner exploded off the blocks of the
100 meters

the first of the 10 events

I run the greatest hundred meters of my
life

I thought right there I just want two
games

I always would be Bruce in the 400
meters not only beat him but beat him by

a substantial margin

we all were keeping pace through the
first 200 and then Bruce just absolutely

worked around the turn and as I was
running out that way you know he's gonna

die

he never died

yeah

he was on a high he's walking by Avila
in the tunnel after the 400 pre-selected

I've likes it

get a good night's sleep boosted by free
personal best

gender finish the first day of
competition 35 points behind on the

second day after running six in the
110-meter hurdles Jenner won the discus

and pole vault before cruising through
the javelin then they finished with an

exclamation point in the 1500 meters hit
me that it's seven o'clock will be the

final - 1500 meters and I started crying
because in 20 minutes it's gonna be over

with no job but I really don't know what
I'm gonna do tomorrow

I started crying to be the 15 or is that
knew it was so there

was no more hoping because we derived
this Soviet soldier a lead that lifted

echo was known as the best 1500 meter
runner in the cath lon history

Bruce has the gold medal sewn up I think
he decided i think i'd like to test

myself against this time

I didn't train for years of my life on
this last 300 slop and man I took it

yeah

yeah

seconds after breaking his own decathlon
world record with 8600 18 points

Jenner's curtain call created a lasting
image somebody right on cable American

flag

I can tell you is for faggots that
pretty plant and I remember him saying

what do I do with this I can't put it
down and look on patriotic and I don't

want to run around waving it because
it's going to look a little may be

staged or something

he saw me over there just struggling
with these guys and he immediately

crossed over and came over and push them
out of the way in the tunnel piece set

it's over i'm never gonna do this again

yeah

I'm tired of all the struggling the plan
worked

for a long time the idea of the world's
greatest all-around athlete being the

Catholic champion was something that
most Americans grasped Bruce Jenner

became a major celebrity off 1976 every
newspaper for a week had vs face on the

cover

I realize life was different wait a
second everybody knows my name all of a

sudden it's still remember cab driver
putting the brakes on this cab and

getting out and running across fifth
avenue to come over and no shake his

hand when you get this charisma and he
had

natural for not necessarily bruise
moving out into the different meanings

of advertising with advertising moving
and his wheaties was looking for someone

to be the definitive champion and there
he was grabbing that flag

I put in twelve years of training
getting ready for that day and down a

lot of wheaties Jenner was the first
celebrity athlete of this more modern

era and carried that whole thing forward

I think we started era of athletes
almost wanting to be an obese box

Bruce and Bruce is deal-making was part
of the opening of a new frontier in a

new way of doing things commercially in
sports

yeah

piece of wood have been called the
serene olympics was shattered just

before dawn this morning about five
o'clock when Arab terrorists killed one

man

they've been holding 14 others hostage
since then four years before his triumph

in Montreal 22 year old Bruce Jenner was
set to compete in the decathlon

when the games were struck by tragedy
Bruce at the time resented the fact that

his competition was threatened by this
you felt very personally

shipped out of his olympics it was a
tunnel vision

the Bruce as

continue to take him throughout the
years and years of athletics after the

games resumed Jenner finished 10th in
the decathlon

but as he watched Nikolai Khabibulin to
win the gold medal

the dream was born for the first time I
knew what I wanted out of life and that

was it this guy has it literally started
training that night at midnight i'm

running through the streets munich
germany training for the games

I train from that day on through the
games six to eight hours a day every day

365 days out of the year

born in October 28 1949 Jenner was
raised in westchester county suburb of

New York City

you showed early signs of athletic
talent sports was kind of my little

Savior but something that I love that I
was a dyslexic kid in a funk second

grade and terrible low self-esteem is
young it

so for me sports was my place to prove
myself

played football basketball track coach
from Wilton Connecticut said when I look

at Bruce

he is such an all-around athlete this is
all i can think of it

to cap in 1968 veteran track coach

LD weldon of tiny Graceland college in
Iowa convince Jenner that he could be a

decathlete there were only fourteen
fifteen hundred students when we were

broke

we would just take long walks and go to
the dump

shoot rats with this 22 he went

Drake Relays he came away from that
track meet and said coach

this is for me I don't have to rely on
teammates

I only have to rely on myself generous
hard work at Graceland paid off in july

of 1972

he surprised the track and field world
by making the Olympic team

later in the wake of the games Jenner's
soft what he considered to be the best

training environment to chase his
obsession

I said you know you need to come to San
Jose at san jose city college we are

very unique situation

many of the world's greatest athletes
train on a daily basis when they looked

up with Bruce Jenner and he said I'm
here

yeah

crews three to four days a week would go
to san jose y and do a weight training

program that he himself put together

you walk in there and there was a fear
bach and mac welcomes Bruce Jenner and

several Olympic weightlifters let me was
just a tremendous atmosphere

I couldn't afford a membership so I
would sneak in the back door so i didn't

have to go by the front desk in the
nineteen seventies the tenets of

amateurism were still honored in America

not so in the Eastern Bloc countries the
Soviets were just basically

state-supported apple

they have to worry about some kind of
job some kind of support of setting up

their situation like Bruce ultimately
had to do

going up against the big machine they
can have their system

this is about me this is not about
anybody else there was a certain

positive side to it

we go out and train based on a schedule
that we had set up

the East Germans could never do that
they were told what to do

the state of training for track and
field in those days was simply one of

struggling or finding a way to survive
there was no support whatsoever from the

Federation everyone had to find their
own way to support themselves

we would do things like go to World War
II qantas i would get up there and say I

want to do is to you I think it's gonna
be the next Olympic champion

here's what we need we need money for
food we need money for tape I mean kind

of the basic necessities now that's how
ridiculous it was surviving largely on

the nine hundred dollar monthly salary
of his wife kristen a flight attendant

Jenner broke

ah the lobs record at a meet in eugene
oregon in august of 1975 when he crossed

the finish line

Christie ran out to embrace him and he
turned and made a big deal out of it we

did it we broke the world

record not I its we and she kind of
looked at him and he said remember him

saying say it Christy

we did it she bought into the dream as
thoroughly as he did

sublimating yourself to such an extent
that about several months before the

Olympics she actually went into therapy
and joined a women's group wondering if

she had lost her identity

I live my life for him but it became my
goal to it became what I wanted more

than anything

if Christie had an equal share in his
dream

general Vision to prise more tangible
the sports immortality

you saw green beyond the goal this idea
of you know what I may be able to

capitalize eyes on success that he kept
on financially post-career with

something to just began to emerge
incremental e as i recall him saying my

future is secure

in other words i will be the fabled
world's greatest athlete and that should

bring me

corporate endorsements it just so
happens that the games are up with that

kind of happened to be the right guy at
the right place the right done

Bruce Jenner young ladies all over the
world of the gotta say wow there's the

decathlon champ and my wife and I are
very close together and it's made it a

little bit difficult on her sometimes

all of a sudden the immediate change in
our lives

early and generous new life as a world
celebrity he was blindsided by the death

of his younger brother bird in a car
wreck you go from a nation

I was elated for Bruce to the depths of
despair

my brother fooling around and Portia
Donald too fast

lost it you know kind of puts life right
back in perspective

Bruce handle it in a way similar to the
way he handled a lot of negative things

came in his life he just didn't deal
with it

within an hour to after the funeral we
were back on an airplane going back to

Los Angeles

I was at the super bowl of motocross at
the los angeles coliseum it happened

that week prior and the funeral was
already taken place and his Bruce

showing up at my race have a bruise what
are you doing here - Jim you have to

keep moving

yeah

after the games I put all my energy into
have a good time doing all the things i

didn't have the opportunity to do but a
motorcycle dirt bikes

he's racing cars and flying airplanes
and he was just really have an old

fantasy life a lot of people wish they
could have I went to this tennis

tournament

farrah fawcett she came over and said I
know what about three or four months ago

I never would've been able to reduce to
her that first year was a blur of

Hollywood stopped there was a
wholesomeness to us that I liked and I

didn't want to change that there was
something on a gut level that told me

that our souls were risk and I used to
tell bruce that i thought i was crazy

I think he was sort of caught up in what
was going on and the allure of what the

next step could be what they had was
beautiful because it was so innocent and

I think a lot of that was gone in 1979
with their second child on the way the

generals were legally separated after
seven years it was reported that Jenner

was linked romantically with actress
Linda Thompson

that was her painful for him personally
and professionally

it took its toll I think it contributed

- the ending of the relationship with
Wheaties took a couple shots of the

he was this all-american guy with the
all-american family and now that was

press

breaking up in january of nineteen
eighty-one Jenner married

Thompson with whom he had two more
children meanwhile his post Olympian

professional life was producing mixed
results

well he made some headway and sports
broadcasting Jenner sputtered as an

actor bruce ended up on chips

the showdown on the air for several
years and Erik Estrada was asking for a

big raise

and they said okay don't come back and
the heart Bruce Jenner

can he did a few episodes and Eric was
back at work

I think people wanted him to be
something that maybe he wasn't and he

didn't know he wasn't at the time

Clyde I didn't kill Kruger the idea was
to get him into movies and to make him a

big movie star and so he went along with
it but i don't think that was his drive

I don't think you didn't really have a
plan i think he had worked really hard

all of his life and he was now ready to
see where this same token you can't take

that coat celebrity lifestyle whatever
designer what they caught you just can't

take it seriously because it's not real
life

it's just kind of a game you play here
in Hollywood I think after the Olympics

all of a sudden everything changed and
he basically got everything he wanted

and I think that that's for anyone

a really hard thing to do it's almost
like be careful what you wish for

yeah

and the spring of nineteen eighty-six
Bruce Jenner separated from his second

wife Linda giving her as part of the
settlement is Malibu home after the

divorce with alimony and child support
payments going to his first wife

Christine he wrote ever deeper into
financial shadows

it's kind of mythic it away and think
about this fallen hero gold medal

sitting in his sock drawer

he was living in a one-room apartment in
LA he had two hundred dollars in the

bank and substantial amount of debt and
wondering what to do where to go

you think it was a period of transition
for him the glow would come off a little

bit of the commercial opportunities
because he was kind of yesterday's news

weren't there really wasn't that
motivated professionally when you're

growing up you think okay you're gonna
be married forever your family's gonna

be there forever

and then all of a sudden all that was
taken away is not the way I thought like

would turn out

obviously I had lost a lot through two
divorces you know I'd lost basically

everything I had a loss . there were
after the two marriages people calling

me and saying hey bruce is the done this
with his hair now you don't look the

same and what he did with his nose

you've always been a great looking guy
and a lot of people are sitting at home

going what did he need to have his nose
fixed

I just didn't like the nose and I'm so .
my life I was a single guy and no other

responses going to let myself I said you
know what I do something different I was

shocked he did look like a different
person all of a sudden and i never knew

whether it was because of an accident
that i gave him such good looks

and

I just wish she hadn't done that I was a
little bit bewildered

I thought it was a pretty handsome guy I
think we all look at ourselves in the

mirror and find some features that we
don't like

in 1991 gender merry Chris kardashian
divorce say with four children after

fathering two more kids with Kris Jenner
has struggled to keep ties with the four

children from his previous marriages

when you go through a divorce there's
obviously it's not the same as if you

grew up with the kids every day in the
house and that's pretty much the

relationship that we have

you know I talked to him I see him here
and there but we're not you know as

tight as we would be if I was in the
house every day

I know him well from my childhood we get
together and as much as we can but I

probably know my step-brother love
better than one

I think he's very concerned with what
he's doing you know please call for lot

now and he's got two beautiful daughters
right now that he's just trying to reach

the sudden started

pol purrs away from his family

the celebrity status seems too

be very important to him I often wonder
what it would be like if if he hadn't

come in first

what he would have done perhaps he would
have coached college track team

maybe he would

still be close to the family

I'm sure he doesn't like the fact he's
been married three times

I just think that there are some things
that are painful to him and hopefully as

he gets older he can crack those things

Bruce doesn't look back Bruce is always
focused on the future and about how to

make his life better

Bruce's life now is like the Catholic
means a race car driver

he's a pilot he's a motivational speaker

chris has changed my life around she is
a phenomenal businesswoman the

infomercial world speaking business

she was directly responsible and you
know helping me and getting those things

going

in addition to his busy motivational
speaking business

Jenner's exercise equipment infomercials
have generated over 450 million dollars

in sales

although the decathlon champion is again
spinning gold it is a far cry from his

past Olympic glory always felt that
Bruce really had his life set out up

through montreal because he knew what he
wanted all of a sudden he is thrown into

the deep end of the celebrity pool that
was a whole culture shock to go from

being great in one area to being boffo
is a celebrity and it doesn't certainly

work that way because he turned his life
into one of a celebrity more people

probably remember or know him as a
celebrity and they have this vague

notion of what he did as an athlete

what most people know Bruce sense

Montreal is not who I like to remember
those being because that was just such a

fine achievement

those other things that he has done and
endeavor to do since then has made it

all a lot more cloudy when I die on the
news they will say Bruce Jenner 1976

olympic decathlon champion died today

no matter what ever done after that you
know what that's just fine with me

after Bruce Jenner won the gold medal in
Montreal

he walked out of olympic stadium leaving
behind his vaulting poles and the

Spartan life of self-denial is the
choice of the decathlete but after his

quarter century run toward celebrities
false light we can only wonder whether

we ever reached a goal to compare with
that moment 1976

he stood on top of the world
SportsCentury and Chris failed