Ken Doherty (track) - Two-time Decathlon Champion

Two-time Decathlon Champion

He enrolled in the College of the City of Detroit (later known as Wayne State University) in 1923 but did not try out for the track team until his junior year. He tried out for the track team as a high jumper, but the school's track coach, David L. Holmes, saw Doherty's potential as an all-around athlete in the decathlon, and entered him in competitions in the Penn Relays, the Illinois relays and the Ohio Relays. Doherty won four letters at Detroit City College, and was elected the student body president. He trained indoor on a track built in the 1880s for City College's "Old Main," when that large building served as Detroit's Central High School. He trained for outdoor track on a field maintained by the City of Detroit on an island in the Detroit River, Belle Isle, two miles from City College. As Doherty indicates in his autobiography, the outdoors team had neither dressing room nor showers. Even in his time, these facilities were outdated.

Doherty graduated from Detroit City College in 1927 and enrolled at the University of Michigan where he trained for the Olympics under Wolverines track coaches, Steve Farrell and Charles B. Hoyt. He also earned a Master's Degree at Michigan in 1933.

During the time that Doherty competed in the decathlon, all ten events were run on the same day. In 1928, Doherty won the American Amateur Athletic Union decathlon championship with a score of 7,600.52. At the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, he placed third in the decathlon with a score of 7,706.65 behind Paavo Yrjölä (8,053.29 points) and Akilles Järvinen (7,624.135 points). Doherty was in fifth place for most of the Olympic competition, but moved into third as a result of his performance in the javelin throw and running the 1,500 meters in 4 minutes, 54 seconds.

Doherty capped his career as a decathlete in 1929 when he repeated as the American AAU championship in Denver with an American record score of 7,784.68 points. Sports writer Paul Lowry wrote about Doherty's record-setting performance: "Ken Doherty broke the record in the decathlon -- ten of the most grueling events imaginable, and all run off on the same day." Doherty reported that he felt fresh after the 1929 decathlon championship taking in a banquet and motion-picture show the night after the competition and arising the next day "to make a 350-mile auto trip without a feeling of strain or exhaustion." Doherty's trip to Denver for the 1929 also doubled as a honeymoon tour with his wife of a few weeks.