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Dave Sime running with stands in the background

On This Day: May 1, 1956

Duke’s “World’s Fastest Human”

Dave Sime gave up careers in football and baseball to become the world’s fastest sprinter. While a 19-year-old Blue Devil, Sime set one world record and barely missed two others during a dual meet with North Carolina. In 1960, Sime won a silver medal at the Rome Olympics while a 24-year-old second-year Duke medical school student. He went on to become a distinguished eye surgeon in Miami, Fl. He died in 2016 at the age of 79.