Jimmy Carter's First Road Race

Try it again, Jimmy!

3. While most accounts treated the president as a hapless loser, even the more sympathetic accounts depicted him as simply a foolish beginner. And these stories also suggested that his motives for running were basically opportunistic. We heard several people comment, "The reason he ran is political, just like everything else he does is political."

But in conveying the impression that Jimmy Carter had only started running with the approach of an election campaign, the media did him a disservice. As it turns out, the man who is now President started distance-running a long time ago --- 36 years ago, to be exact. In the fall of 1943, Jimmy Carter joined the plebe (freshman) cross-country team at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. According to Capt. Ellery Clark, Jr., USN (retired), who was his coach in 1943, Carter was an "excellent cross-country runner as a plebe." That year, he tied for first in one race and finished fourth and seventh in two others.

     Evidently, Jimmy Carter's interest in running predates his current political motives by many years. That is not to say that running in a road race couldn't have a political side. But a more probable interpretation would be that Jimmy Carter doesn't want to practice politics 24 hours a day. As his doctor pointed out, running is one of the few things Carter can do to get him away from all that. Chances are, when Jimmy Carter is jogging, he feels better, perhaps a bit closer to himself, than when he is sitting in the hot seat, carrying out the world's most impossible job. If that's the case, it's reason enough to explain why he was running at Catoctin. And all the more reason why he should be encouraged to try it again.

(Excerpted from an article that originally appeared in the December, 1979 Running Times)

For  further information on the Carter photos, please contact  jdarman@kennett.net.