Who Is Jim Ryun? Trump Awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to Olympian, Former Congressman

Jim Ryun, a former congressman and Olympic athlete, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday during a ceremony at the White House.

Ryun, 73, will be the 17th person to receive the award, which is the highest honor bestowed upon a civilian, during President Donald Trump's time in office. Trump selected Ryun as an award recipient because of the accomplishments he had as a runner, author, congressman and motivational speaker.

"Jim Ryun is one of the most accomplished American runners in history and a former United States Representative from Kansas," the White House said in a statement. "Among many other accolades, he was named ABC Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year and earned the James E. Sullivan Amateur Athlete Award."

Ryun broke the world record for a high school athlete running a mile in under four minutes when he was a 17-year-old student at Wichita East High School in Kansas. It earned him a spot on the cover of Sports Illustrated and to prompt awe from Dyrol Burleson, who came in first place during the race when Ryun broke the record, although he placed eighth.

"There was nothing unusual about my victory. The entire story was back in eighth place," Burleson told Sports Illustrated at the time. "There is simply no way to imagine how good Jim Ryun is or how far he will go after he becomes an adult. What he did was more significant than Roger Bannister's first mile under four minutes."

His success with athletics was paved with lots of failures. Before finding his spot in the running world, Ryun didn't make any of the junior high school's sports teams and was cut from his church basketball team.

But, just two years into cross-crountry he was a known name in the sport of running and the same year he broke the mile record, he participated in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo. He returned to the Olympics in 1968 in Mexico City, where he won a silver medal and made his final showing in 1972 in Munich, where a group of Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes.

Having reached a level of success that's rare for a teenager, Ryun wrote in an op-ed for Vox that it made him feel "easy to feel like the center of the universe." However, that changed during the 1972 Olympics, which literally brought him "down to earth."

With a lap and a half to go in the opening qualifying round for the 1,500 meter-race, Ryun tripped and fell. He petitioned to be reinstated on the basis that he was fouled, but was told to come back in four years and try again.

Munich was destined to be his last Olympics. To Ryun, who was then 25-year-old with a wife, daughter and twins on the way, supporting a family meant he had to have a day job.

"Along with the lessons in forgiveness and moving on from disappointment, Munich taught me that the world does not, in fact, revolve around me," Ryun wrote. "I learned that there are lots of other people out there and I'm only one of them."

Having set the male high school mile record, the world record in the mile, 1,500-meter and 880-yard events, Ryun entered politics and won a seat to represent Kansas in the House of Representatives in 1996. He served five terms until he was defeated by Nancy Boyda and left Congress in 2006.

On Monday, Ryun told NBC Sports that he was "very humble" to even be considered for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"One of the things that's really special about it, too, is that I'm getting it while I'm alive," Ryun said. "Sometimes these are awarded after you're dead."