LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) _ Billy Mills says that having the Kansas Relays 10,000-meter run named for him is an important honor.
"It's very meaningful," Mills said. "I hold the Kansas Relays in very high esteem. For me there were the Relays, the Olympics and the national championships."
Mills, 58, won the 1964 Olympic 10,000 in record time in one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history. He is the only American ever to win that event.
He ran the distance-medley relay and the 4-mile relay at the Kansas Relays, and Mills said he especially treasures a Kansas Relays watch that he won.
Mills had given it to his younger brother, Chet, a student at what was then called Haskell Indian Institution.
"He kept it all these years and gave it back to me as a present this past Christmas," Mills said. "It was in the original box. It looked brand new."
Mills is a Lakota Indian who grew up in poverty on a reservation at Pine Ridge, S.D. He was orphaned at 12 and took up running at Haskell, which was then a high school.
Records at the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame show that Mills was a three-time state cross-country champion and led Haskell to the team championship in 1956.
He also was a two-time state mile champion and ran the high school mile in the Kansas Relays.
"There was a large crowd, and the competition was like a national championship in high school," Mills recalled.
Mills was the Big Eight Conference cross-country champion in 1960 and was a three-time NCAA All-American at Kansas.
He has mixed feelings about his time at Kansas.
"As a student at KU, I was in conflict, half Indian and half white," he said. "The Indian world rejected me as mixed blood. The white world accepted me as an athlete but rejected me as a friend."
His greatest competitive success came after graduation.
In the Tokyo Olympics, Mills beat world record holder Ron Clarke in a race that saw the first four runners all break the Olympic record. Track & Field News headlined the race, "Mills Stunner of Games," and said "Mills smashed the greatest field in history."
Kansas track coach Bill Easton called it the greatest thrill of his life. Mills had not been picked by a panel of track experts to finish even in the top six.
In 1965 he ran 27:11 to set a world record in the 6-mile run and retired later than year.
Today, Mills lives in Fair Oaks, Calif., and is a motivational speaker. As a national spokesman for Christian Relief Services, he has helped raise more than $200 million during the past 10 years.
This year's Kansas Relays, sponsored by Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., opens Wednesday with decathlon and pentathlon competition and continues through Saturday.
The Billy Mills men's 10,000-meter run is scheduled for 4:25 p.m. Thursday at Memorial Stadium.
Copyright 1997, The Associated Press