Wilt Chamberlain is best known to sports fans as one of the most dominant basketball players of all time. For people less familiar with sports and basketball specifically, the name Wilt Chamberlain may sound familiar due to his highly publicized personal life. What many people don’t realize is that before basketball became the center of his life, the first sport Wilt fell in love with was track and field.
Chamberlain was born on August 21, 1936, and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he had eight brothers and sisters who came from the same parents as father William and mother Olivia. As a young man growing up in eastern Pennsylvania, Wilt said his first reaction to the game of basketball was that he considered it “a game for sissies.” The sport that young Wilt Chamberlain was most passionate about was athletics.
It is reported that, even before he reached high school age, the oddly athletic Wilt Chamberlain jumped 6’6″, which is a mark he would win most high school varsity track meet. At the same time, Wilt was also putting up ridiculously impressive long jump numbers that are understood to be as long as 22 feet. For comparison purposes, almost all high school track athletes can’t reach 22 feet in a running long jump. and Wit is reported to have reached that length from a stationary long jump position.Wide jumping talents are perhaps to be expected considering what the public now knows about his success on the basketball court, however the athletic prowess he Wilt showed was not limited to jumping events.
Thanks to the long strides and powerful running style that Chamberlain employed, he was a miraculous middle-distance runner such as his preteen times of 49 seconds in the 440-yard dash (once around a standard track) and under two minutes. at the 880-yard distance (twice around a standard track) these are exceptional numbers even for a collegiate athlete. Chamberlain excelled in all aspects of athletics, including running, jumping, and throwing. It is reported that he threw a shot put over 53 feet in his youth.
Chamberlain matured very quickly and continued to grow at a rapid rate. At the age of 10, the youngster was already 6′ tall and when he started high school he was a staggering 6’11”. As a 7’2″ college freshman playing basketball at the University of Kansas ( commonly known as KU) the 240-pound Chamberlain could reach 9’6″ in the air simply standing flat-footed (no balls of the feet).
Wilt took his first love of athletics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, while also playing basketball there. The 7’2″ goliath ran a 100-yard dash in under 11 seconds and also threw the shot put 56 feet. Despite competing and excelling in both sprinting and throwing, his best events were surprisingly not those jumping events, as Chamberlain triple jumped over 50 ft. and successfully won the Big 8 Conference high jump competition three years in a row.In the world of track and field, he is an extraordinarily rare athlete who can compete at the most high level in the shorter sprints, all jumping events and throwing events.In fact, this dynamic collection of talent is so rare that Wilt might be the only man to possess this unique skill set.
