Coe Completed Triple With Record in 1,500

Sebastian Coe won track’s triple crown 20 years ago today.

When the British runner ran the 1,500 meters in 3 minutes 32.1 seconds at Zurich, Switzerland, he became the first man to hold the mile, 1,500- and 800-meter world records simultaneously.

That, he said, was “a great achievement--even though I say it myself.”

In an Oslo meet the previous month, Coe, 22, had run a 1:42.4 800 to set his first world mark, then added a 3:49 mile in the same meet.

At Zurich, before 26,000 in Letzigrund Stadium, Coe was second after a 54-second first lap. Looking impatient, he swept past Kenyan Kipsubay Koskei before the 800-meter mark. He pulled away from the pack, completing the final lap in 57 seconds to break the record.

He finished half a straightaway ahead of runner- up Ulrich Brosy of Switzerland, then collapsed into the arms of his father-trainer, Peter Coe.

Also on this date: In 1980, Notre Dame football coach Dan Devine, 55, announced that season would be his last. He was facing mounting criticism after a 7-4 1979 season--the worst at Notre Dame in 16 years--but said he was resigning for “family reasons” only. The Irish finished 9-2-1 in his final season, losing their last two games, to USC, then to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. . . . In 1987, at the Pan American Games in Indianapolis, Ty Griffin hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to lift the U.S. baseball team to a 6-4 win, ending Cuba’s 33-game Pan Am Games winning streak. In 1970, Patricia Palinkas became the first woman to play in a pro football game when she held the ball for her kicker husband, Steve, who played for the Orlando Panthers of the Atlantic Coast League. After a bad snap, the 122-pound Palinkas was tackled when she ran with the ball. . . . In 1926, Babe Herman of the Brooklyn Dodgers doubled with the bases loaded against the Boston Braves. The hit drove in the winning run, but Herman and two other baserunners wound up on third base simultaneously. Two were called out, meaning Herman had doubled into a double play. . . . In 1955, pitcher Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves hit a home run at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, giving him at least one in every National League park.