National Track & Field Hall of Fame inductee Greg Bell, the 1956 Olympic long jump gold medalist, died Jan. 25 at his home. He was 94, and at the time of his death he was the oldest living U.S. track and field Olympic gold medalist.
Bell was born Nov. 7, 1930, in Terre Haute, Indiana, into extreme poverty, and was a standout athlete at the city's Garfield High School, finishing second at the Indiana state meet in the long jump in 1948. Drafted into the Army after high school, Bell again tried his hand at the long jump and was successful in meets in Europe.
After leaving the Army, Bell returned to Terre Haute and worked in manufacturing until he was encouraged by his family doctor, William Bannon, to enroll at Indiana University. Bell told Michael Tank of TV station WTWO-WAWV that Bannon changed his life. “He was the most important person in my life,” Bell said of Bannon.
Success came quickly for Bell at the Bloomington school, and he won the first of three AAU national titles in 1955 with a leap of 26-0.5. As a sophomore in 1956, Bell won the NCAA crown at 25-9.25 and went on to tie with John Bennett for the Olympic Trials title at 25-8.5. Interestingly, the officials at the '56 Trials did not use international tiebreaking rules, which would have made Bennett the outright winner.
At the Melbourne Olympic Games in late November, Bell eased into the final with a middling 7.35/24-1.5 in the qualifying round, the seventh-best mark overall, before exploding to a 7.83/25-8.25 in round two of the final to take gold by six inches and set an Olympic record.
Building on his Olympic success, Bell won another NCAA title in 1957, spanning a meet-record 26-7, and he went on to capture an AAU indoor crown in 1958 and another outdoor AAU gold in 1959. He earned Pan American Games silver that year and also set his lifetime best of 26-7 in winning against the Soviet Union. Bell retired from the sport after a fourth-place finish at the 1960 Olympic Trials, missing out on a second Olympic trip by just over an inch with a wind-aided 25-4 effort.
Earning a dental degree from Indiana, Bell worked as a teacher at Howard University before returning to Indiana to practice dentistry at the Logansport state psychiatric hospital. He was the director of dentistry at the hospital for 50 years before retiring in 2020 at age 89.
Inducted into the National Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1988, Bell was more than an athlete and dentist, and his donation to be displayed in the Hall was a set of three poems he had composed. He was a carpenter and an artist, and his legacy lives on through his unique creations. He is also a charter member of the Indiana Track & Field Hall of Fame and IU Athletics Hall of Fame.
Services are pending.
What people are saying:
“At Indiana University in our indoor fieldhouse, we have large portraits on the wall on the backstretch of the track of all IU former Olympians, going back to the early 1900s. When I was a head coach at IU, I would pick one Olympian a year and do a quick presentation before practice about the person, what they did as an athlete, but even more what they did after their career in athletics was over. The year I presented GregBell to the team, it was focused on how he epitomized what a true life of service meant to people in his home community. He was an example to athletes at Indiana University long after his graduation, and for reasons even more important than his gold medal.”
Robert Chapman, PhD Chief, Sport Science & Medicine, USA Track & Field Professor, Human Performance Laboratories, Department of Kinesiology, Indiana University
Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Archives