Richards, Bob

Richards, (Robert Eugene) Bob

(1926– ) track and field athlete, Protestant minister; born in Champaign, Ill. A juvenile delinquent as a teenager, he found himself through religion and sports. He was ordained a minister in the Church of the Brethren in 1946, and then became the only two-time Olympic gold medalist in the pole vault (1952, 1956). He accepted the pastorate of a Brethren church in Long Beach, Calif., in 1957, but continued as an advocate of physical fitness in the U.S.A.