Evans, Lee E.
Track and field
b. Feb. 25, 1947, Madera, CA
Undefeated in high school, Evans won his first AAU championship in 1966, shortly after graduating. He was the national 440-yard champion that year and in 1967 and he won the 400-meter title in 1968. Representing San Jose State, he was also the 1968 NCAA 400-meter champion.
Evans won the 1968 Olympic trials with a world record 44.0 seconds, but found himself in a dilemma at the Mexico City Games. He was one of the militant black athletes who had threatened to boycott the Olympics, behind the leadership of Harry Edwards, a sociologist at San Jose State. Tommie Smith, gold medal winner in the 200-meter dash, and John Carlos, the bronze medalist, had been banished from the Olympic village for staging a "Black Power" protest during their medal ceremony. They were friends and San Jose State teammates.
Evans agonized for hours about whether he should run in the 400-meter final or pull out in protest. Carlos persuaded him to run. Evans responded with a new world record of 43.86 seconds, a record that still stands, more than twenty years later, with the notation that it was achieved at an altitude higher than 1,000 meters.
Evans won a second gold as the anchorman on the 1600-meter relay team, setting another world record of 2:56.1.
After winning the AAU 400-meter run in 1969 and 1972, Evans finished only fourth in the 1972 Olympic trials, but was named a member of the 1600-meter relay team once more. However, the U. S. couldn't field a team because Vince Matthews and Wayne Collet were suspended, also for a demonstration at a medal ceremony.
Evans became a professional after the 1972 season. He was reinstated as an amateur in 1980 and ran a 46.5 in one of his few appearances that year, at the age of thirty-three.