In honour of this year’s summer Olympic games in London, we’re bringing you a couple of posts on famous dyslexic athletes who fly the torch high for learning challenges.
One of the United States’ star athletes in the 1970s was Bruce Jenner. He had dyslexia and always struggled with his reading and writing in school. He turned to sports and discovered he was a very talented athlete with a flair for many sports: water skiing, American football, basketball and track, to name a few. Football was always his favourite and he decided to try to pursue a professional career after a difficult four years academically in high school.
However, after sustaining a football injury at university, he turned to track and trained hard to be the best he could be. His coach encouraged him to try to realize his full potential at the 1972 Olympics in an extremely challenging event which capitalized on all of his skills – the decathlon.
Dec is the word root meaning ‘ten’, so there are ten parts to the decathlon:
1) 100 meter sprint
2) Long jump
3) Shot put
4) High jump
5) 400 meter sprint
6) 110 meter hurdle
7) Discus throw
8) Pole vault
9) Javelin throw
10) 1500 meter run
It is widely consider to be the crowning glory of all track and field competitions, and our man Jenner took number 10 in the world at the 1972 Olympics, followed by the gold medal at the 1976 Olympics. In 1976, he also set a world record for the decathlon.
From struggling student to star athlete…Bruce Jenner encourages all of us to reach for our dreams and become the best that we can be!