St. Cloud Times — Van Nelson didn’t even start running until he was a junior at Minneapolis Washburn.
“I went out for football, but I didn’t like it because I was so small,” Nelson said. “I figured I had to get into a sport I was going to survive in.
“So I went out for cross country in 1962 and I did well. Then I started breaking school records in track in the spring of 1963 and things kept going from there.”
All the way to the Olympics, eventually.
Read more: http://www.sctimes.com/story/sports/2016/01/24/first-many-titles-nelson-scsu-66/79247166/
