Miller Sinks His Teeth Into Decathlon : Glendale Dentist Caps Track Comeback as a World Beater in Age 50-55 Masters Competition

The world’s greatest athlete? Perhaps Bo Jackson, before his hip ailment. Or ex-Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, who trained 10 hours a day for more than two years.

Possibly it is the rippling-muscled Christian Schenk, the 1988 Olympic decathlon champion who spent endless hours in the high-tech training labs of East Germany.

Or maybe it’s Gary Miller, 53, of Glendale, who spends just a few hours a week training on the rutted fields of Occidental College and the rest of his time dealing in the business of attaching handfuls of fake teeth to people’s gums.

Ridiculous? Of course. But Miller is, without question, the best athlete in the world older than 50.

He earned that honor with a remarkable performance in Eugene, Ore., in the 1989 World Masters track and field meet, sweeping to victory in the decathlon in the 50-55 division with 8,210 points in an age-adjusted scoring system, a stunning 1,210 points more than his nearest competitor.

“Going in, I wanted to win,” said Miller, an associate professor of prosthodontics at USC with a dental practice in North Hollywood.

“But in a world competition like that, you just don’t know who your competition might be. People can just come out of the woodwork and rout everybody.”

Which is roughly what Miller did. On July 18 in Turku, Finland, Miller will try to defend his decathlon championship. There is no chance that he will surprise anyone this time.

“I’m sure they’ll know who I am,” he said, smiling.

So, who is he?

Miller ran track at Van Nuys High in the mid-1950s and then at Occidental College. He was fast, winning more than a few 440- and 880-yard races.

But he harbored, by no stretch of the imagination, world-class speed. After graduating from Occidental he was accepted at the USC School of Dentistry, and he hung his track spikes up forever. Or so he thought.

More than 15 years later, with a thriving dental practice and a teaching career at USC under way, the desire returned.

With the urging of his wife, a former high school track coach and now an assistant coach at Occidental, he put the spikes back on and returned to the track.

And nearly killed himself.

“I thought it would all come back, just like that,” Miller said. “But the first time around a real track it was horrible. I couldn’t stay in a lane and kept stumbling against the inside curb. It was dangerous.”

Gradually, though, the rhythm and timing returned. And, in 1976, at age 37, he entered his first organized meet since the early ‘60s.

The meet, held at Valley College, was called The Grandfather Games.

So much for ego.

Miller did not do very well, running the 440 in 56 seconds and finishing sixth. But he began training more seriously, and quickly his times began to drop.

Within a year, he was running the 440 in 51 seconds. His lifetime best in the event, accomplished at Occidental when he was a 21-year-old college senior, was 48.7 seconds.

“It occurred to me that after 20 years, I wasn’t really that far off my best times,” Miller said.

So the training became ever more serious. In 1978, he became the first man older than 40 to run faster than 50 seconds for 440 yards in a sanctioned event. The race took place at Mt. Hood, Ore., in the midst of a thunder and lightning storm.

“As I ran, the lightning flashed overhead and I said to myself, ‘Maybe this means something,’ ” Miller said.

What it meant was that Miller had trained his way back onto the road of legitimate track accomplishments.

But it was just the start. In 1980, his wife suggested the decathlon. He laughed. She kept mentioning it. He kept laughing.

“I always saw those guys as the outcasts of track and field,” Miller said. “They were the guys who were Jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. If you wanted to watch a pole vaulter, go watch a pole vaulter. If you want to watch a great discus thrower, go watch a great discus thrower. Not these guys who do everything at 70 percent.”

But just a few months after laughing at his wife’s suggestion, Miller was checking out--with great trepidation--the murky waters of the decathlon.

The discus came first and, in his first few attempts, Miller nearly threw himself out of the ring. “It was sick,” Miller said.

“The best I could do was make it go a few feet like a wounded duck.”

But within a few weeks, he was making respectable throws and soon became proficient at heaving the discus.

The shotput was about the same, and even the javelin throw was soon conquered. The high jump was a bit more difficult, but after a while Miller was getting the knack of that too.

Then came the pole vault.

It was, Miller said, the only track and field event that frightened him. Hard to imagine why. Perhaps that little detail of being upside-down 10 or 15 feet above a hard track.

“You have never seen anything as ridiculous as my first vault,” Miller said. “I ran down the track, planted the pole and got rejected. Just came straight back and slammed onto my back on the track. Wow! Was it embarrassing.”

The vault is considered the most difficult of all track and field events to master.

For some, it takes years of study and practice. Months are consumed just in understanding the basics of how to plant the pole in the small box under the bar and how to use your body to get the pole to bend and catapult you skyward.

Miller, as he did with the other events he tried, learned quickly. But for a few months, the vault was, he claimed, just plain dangerous. “Some of the good vaults in the first weeks consisted of being launched sideways, far from the landing pit and into the grass,” he said.

“Once, at the height of six feet, I soared so far over the bar, I cleared the landing pit by about 10 feet. Not even close. Got scraped up pretty badly.”

Potentially the most debilitating vault, however, came a few months after he began the learning process. On this particular vault, Miller planted the pole perfectly and it bent magnificently and propelled him toward the heavens. Everything was perfect.

Except that upon takeoff, Miller’s legs had somehow straddled the pole instead of being on the same side of it.

It was shortly after takeoff that he realized a very bad thing might be about to happen.

“At the top of a vault, at the moment you release your hands from the pole, the pole snaps back. Violently,” Miller explained. “The problem I faced--and all of this was going through my mind very quickly--is that the instant that pole snapped back with my legs straddling it, certain anatomical parts were going to be right in the way.

“I was frightened.”

Miller did the only rational thing. He did not release his grip on the pole, choosing instead of eye-watering pain a bizarre ride on top of the fiberglass pole, a ride that carried him through the crossbar and down into the soft pit where he landed still clutching the pole.

“I was very thankful,” Miller said.

Shortly after that memorable vault, the 10 events of the decathlon began to fall into place for Miller.

In 1987, at Melbourne, Australia, he won both the intermediate hurdles event and the pentathlon (five events) in the International Masters and then, two years ago, ran, jumped and threw his way into the Masters record book with his overpowering performance in Oregon. It was the first year of the decathlon in International Masters competition.

Today, as he trains to defend the title in Finland, Miller has improved all of his marks.

He has run the 100 meters in 11.5 seconds and the 400 in 53.3. He has run the 110 high hurdles in 15.6 and the 1,500 in 4:38.9. Miller has long-jumped 20 feet 6 inches and put the 16-pound shot 38-3. He has high jumped 5-6, thrown the discus 140 feet and the javelin 170 feet.

And, the dentist who spent months being propelled sideways and even backward--during the dreaded pole vault--has since soared 13-5 in competition.

Let George Foreman try that.