Career
Taylor won the AAU championships in the 100-meter dash in 1972.
At the Munich Olympics, Taylor was second in the 100 m.
On the way to the final, Taylor was unwittingly a participant in the first athletics controversy of his career. Unlike his teammates Eddie Hart and Rey Robinson, Taylor was narrowly able to reach the start of his quarter-final race, when their coach Stan Wright unknowingly used an outdated Olympic schedule and failed to deliver his athletes to the track in time. As Taylor told it in a 2000 interview with the Tyler Morning Telegraph., the three athletes and Wright had left the Olympic village for the stadium in time for their quarter-final runs. Whilst waiting for the bus to transport them, they wandered into the ABC-TV headquarters where they saw to their utter horror the athletes lining-up for the first heat, Robinson's heat. A frantic dash to the stadium ensued in a car driven by the ABC-TV employee Bill Norris. Both Robinson and Hart, who was scheduled to run in heat 2, were too late to run. Taylor, who was scheduled to run in heat 3, only had time to rip-off his sweats, put on his running shoes, and do a couple of knee bends before running
Taylor also ran the second leg in the American 4x100 m relay team, which won a gold medal and equalled the United States' own world record of 38.19.
His coach at Texas Southern University, Porter Robinson, has stated that Taylor had tried out for the National Football League's Kansas City Chiefs as a wide receiver, but did not make it because "he had the speed but couldn't catch the ball"..
Read more about this topic: Robert Taylor (athlete)
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