BIOGRAPHY
The saying “those whom the gods love die young”, comes from the
ancient Greek culture, where the gods and goddesses were
supposed to live on Mount Olympus in Greece. Lennox “Billy” Miller
–the second of Jamaica’s five greatest male Olympians to leave
us, (the first Arthur Wint also having gone in an Olympic year
1992 with Herb McKenley, George Rhoden and the youngest of them
happily still with us in the person of Lennox’s friend, college
mate and rival, Donald Quarrie) fell a dozen years short of the
biblical “three score years and ten”.
Lennox did not fall
short in his two Olympic Games, however, having a record that he
certainly would have hoped will not be surpassed or equaled as the
only Jamaican medallist at two consecutive Olympic Games, 1968 and
1972. His greater distinction with his 100 metres silver and
bronze medals was that the was only the second man, in the over 75
years of the Games up to that point, to win two medals in the 100
metres event. 24 years later, Inger Miller, one of two daughters
of his wife Avril and himself, with a sprint relay gold medal for
the USA at the 1996 Games made the pair the first, and still the
only, father-daughter combination to win Olympic medals in our
sport.
Lennox also made relay
history in four ways. Firstly, as member of the University of
Southern California’s (USC) 4x110 yards team (including the
controversial O.J. Simpson) which set the last world records
accepted by the IAAF linear distances, and from teams with mixed
nationality in 1967 and 1968. In the latter year Lennox, as the
anchor runner of the Jamaican Olympic sprint relay team, then led
the way to the team’s first equaling and then setting, World
Records on the same day. A record at the Olympics and equaling
feat accomplished only once before by a German team. More
significantly Jamaica thus became, and remains, the only other
country besides the USA to set world records in both Olympic relay
events for men.
Those relay world
records were, like Lennox 1968 100 metres time of 1968 10.0 (h)
and 10.04 (e) -CAC records– Lennox having been prevented from
performing at the 1966 CAC Games because of injury.
Lennox Miller graduated
from USC with a B.S. and also as a Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.)
and practiced successfully in Los Angeles. Among other things he
managed the Jamaica athletics team at the 1987 Pan American Games
and in 1984, after running one of the later legs of the torch
relay for the 1984 L.A. Olympics, he served as the liaison officer
for the Jamaican Olympic team of that year. In 1976 he was made an
Officer of the Order of Distinction in Jamaica.
