Marathons
Segal was an accomplished competitive runner dating back to when he was a sprinter at Midwood High School. He was introduced to marathon running during his freshman year at Harvard College when track and field head coach Bill McCurdy was impressed with how fast he had run ten miles. Segal ran in the Boston Marathon almost every year from 1955 to 1975. His time of 3 hours, 43 minutes earned him 79th place in his first attempt at this particular event. His best Boston performance was in 1964 when he finished 63rd with a time of 2:56:30.
He covered the marathon as a color commentator for telecasts of both the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). His most notable broadcast was in 1972 when he and Jim McKay called Frank Shorter's gold-medal-winning performance. When an impostor, West German student Norbert Sudhaus, ran into Olympic Stadium ahead of Shorter, an emotionally upset Segal screamed, "That is an impostor! Get him off the track!...This happens in bush league marathons!...Throw the bum out!...Get rid of that guy!" He later personalized his on‑air remarks by saying, "Come on, Frank! You won it!...It's a fake, Frank!" Amby Burfoot eventually called Segal's account "one of the most unprofessional, unbridled, and totally appropriate outbursts in the history of Olympic TV commentary", taking into consideration the fact that Shorter had taken two undergraduate courses taught by Segal at Yale University.
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