Ralph Mann obit

USATF mourns passing of Hall of Famer Ralph Mann

 

He was not on the list.

Olympic silver medalist, National Track & Field Hall of Fame member, and former world record holder Dr. Ralph Mann died Thursday at age 75. Mann captured the silver in the men’s 400-meter hurdles at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich and set world records in the 440-yard hurdles in 1970 and 400H in 1972. In 1971 he grabbed gold at the Pan American Games, and four years later he added a Pan Am silver.

A four-time AAU national champion, Mann also won the Olympic Trials title in 1972. He won three straight NCAA titles from 1969-71 while at Brigham Young University, becoming the first three-time winner and setting a world record of 48.8y in 1970.

Mann graduated from Carson (California) High School in 1967, where he competed in the high hurdles and intermediate hurdles, and he went on to BYU, where he was introduced to the 440yH.  He won three straight Western Athletic Conference (WAC) 440yH golds from 1969-71 and also won the flat 440y in 1970. Mann anchored the Cougars’ mile relay to victory in 1969 and 1971.

As a sophomore in 1969, Mann tied the American record with his 49.6y to win the NCAA title. At Des Moines in 1970, he held off Wayne Collett to take his second straight collegiate crown with a 48.8 that gave him a .4 margin of victory. Sealing his hat trick of NCAA titles as a senior in 1971, Mann took the gold by more than a half-second. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s in physical education at the Provo school.

Heading into the 1972 Olympic Trials in Eugene, Mann was the favorite on paper after being ranked No. 1 in 1971, and his chief competition came from AAU champion Dick Bruggeman and NCAA winner Bruce Collins. Mann made up ground on a tiring Bruggeman over the final 100 meters and won by two-tenths of a second in an American record 48.4.

That set up his run to gold at Munich, where he was co-favorite with Britain’s David Hemery. Those two were surprised by Uganda’s John Akii-Bua, who streaked around the oval in lane one to win in a world record 47.82, with Mann edging Hemery by .01 for the runner-up spot in 48.51.

Mann earned his Ph.D. in biomechanics at Washington State University in 1975. He was a professor and researcher at the University of Kentucky from 1975-82, and he then began a consulting career that specialized in sports performance analysis. In 1982, Dr. Mann was intimately involved in creating a sport science program within the high performance ranks of USA Track & Field, and he was a longtime contributor to the program, focusing on using biomechanical analysis on elite sprinters and hurdlers to evaluate and improve their performances. He was the founder and president of CompuSport, Inc., and president of SwingModel LLC, which specialized in the biomechanical analysis and interactive improvement of golfers of all levels of development, from beginners to Tour players.

Inducted into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame in 2015, Mann was also a BYU Hall of Fame honoree in 1981. He and his wife, Jackie, had a son, Randall, and a daughter, Amber.