Titles and Records
Altogether Osborn won 17 national titles and set six world records during his career. He held world indoor records in the standing hop, step, and jump; the 60-yard high hurdles; and the running high jump. His world record in the standing high jump of 5' 5¾" still stands today (and will continue to stand as this event is no longer part of track contests). He achieved that record at the age of 37.
Near the end of his life Osborn enjoyed new honors and a chance to revisit Europe and some of the sites of his earlier competitions. Osborn was enshrined as a charter member of the U.S. Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1974, along with such other track greats as Jessie Owens, Babe Didriksen Zaharias, Bob Mathias, and Wilma Rudolph. In 1974, he was also invited to return to Dublin for the Golden Jubilee commemoration of the Tailteann Games, where he met and reminisced with Larry Stanley.
The coach at Hillsboro High School summed up his career quite aptly at Osborn’s induction into the high school Hall of Fame: “As a world class athlete, Osborn is one of the greatest. As an individual competing for the sheer joy of sport and dedicated to the highest ideals of amateur sport, he has few equals. Osborn died at the age of 75 after a long life of service to his community and inspiration to all who knew him.”
Olympic Athlete Harold Abrahams, who also competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics, and who later wrote and published about the Olympiads of his era, wrote in 1950, “After Nurmi, I think the outstanding performer was the American, Harold Osborn, who won both the high jump and the decathlon.
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