Robert Lee Hayes' Tomb - Jacksonville, FL
N 30° 22.304 W 081° 43.609
17R E 430161 N 3360201
USA Olympian Robert Lee Hayes is interred at Edgewood Cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. On his tomb is a colorful etching of the Olympic rings.
Waymark Code: WMJ71B
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 10/04/2013
Views: 5
"Robert Lee "Bullet Bob" Hayes (December 20, 1942 – September 18, 2002) was an Olympic sprinter turned American football wide receiver in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys. An American track and field athlete, he was a two-sport stand-out in college in both track and football at Florida A&M University. Hayes was enshrined in the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2001 and was selected for induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in January 2009. He was officially inducted in Canton, Ohio on August 8, 2009. Hayes is the second Olympic gold medalist to be inducted to the Hall of Fame, after Jim Thorpe.
Once considered the world's fastest man by virtue of his multiple world records in the 60-yard, 100-yard, 220-yard, and Olympic 100-meter dashes, Hayes is the only man to win both an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl ring.
Olympics
At the 1964 Summer Olympics, in Tokyo, Hayes had his finest hour as a sprinter. First, he won the 100m and broke the then world record in the 100 m with a time of 10.06 seconds, even though he was running in lane 1 which had, the day before, been used for the 20 km racewalk and this badly chewed up the cinder track. He also was running in borrowed spikes because one of his shoes had been kicked under the bed when he was playing with some friends and he didn't realize until he got there. This was followed by a second gold medal in the 4 x 100 meter relay, which also produced a new World Record (39.06 seconds).
His come-from-behind win for the US team in the relay was one of the most memorable Olympic moments. Hand-timed between 8.5 and 8.9 seconds, his relay leg is one of the fastest in history. Jocelyn Delecour, France's anchor leg runner, famously said to Paul Drayton before the relay final that, "You can't win, all you have is Bob Hayes." Drayton was able to reply afterwards, "That's all we need." The race was also Hayes' last as a track and field athlete, as he permanently switched to football after it.
In some of the first meets to be timed with experimental fully automatic timing, Hayes was the first man to break ten seconds for the 100 metres, albeit with a 5.3 m/s wind assistance in the semi-finals of the 1964 Olympics. His time was recorded at 9.91 seconds. Jim Hines officially broke 10 seconds at the high altitude of Mexico City, Mexico in 1968 with a wind legal 9.95 which stood as the world record for almost 15 years. The next to surpass Hayes at a low altitude Olympics was Carl Lewis in 1984 when he won in 9.99, some 20 years later (though Hasely Crawford equalled the time in 1976)."
-- Source
Below are close-ups of the inscriptions on his tomb:
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