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Coaching legend looks back on competitive running career
By Lena Price
Along with millions of other viewers around the world, Max Goldsmith plans on tuning into the Olympic track and field events this week. But he'll have a slightly different perspective on the games.
Goldsmith, a former LISD athletic director and the namesake behind Lewisville High School's Max Goldsmith Stadium, has done his fair share of running. Between the ages of 55 and 72, he competed in five World Masters Athletic Championships -- a worldwide, biannual competition for athletes more than 35 years old. The events took him everywhere from Turku, Finland to Melbourne, Australia.
After a career as a high school track and field coach that spanned more than two decades, Goldsmith started racing competitively again at the age of 54. He trained every day by running in the morning, taking a short rest and lifting weights in the afternoon.
His training paid off at the San Juan, Puerto Rico championship in 1983. Goldsmith and three other men on his team set a world record for their age group in the one-mile relay. The four runners, all more than 60 years old, ran the mile in four minutes and 10 seconds. Goldsmith said it was one of the most memorable moments during his time in the World Masters Athletic Championships.
"We were a bunch of old men, nothing like the kids in the Olympics today," Goldsmith said. "We weren't jumping around and high fiving or anything like that. But we knew it was quite an honor. We were proud of that."
Competitions took Goldsmith and his wife Elaine "almost everywhere except Antarctica," he said. After almost every event, the two would take several days to explore the country they were visiting. Goldsmith said travelling was one of his favorite parts of competitive racing.
"We traveled to Athens once," Goldsmith said. "I actually worked out two days in the original Olympic stadium, where they held the first modern games in 1896."
Goldsmith's interest in track and field started in 1936, when Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the Berlin Olympics. He said he remembers rushing home from school every day to listen to the results on his family's radio.
"At that age, I wasn't that good of an athlete," Goldsmith said. "I was just a kid who liked to run. But I had high hopes. I used to go out and pretend I was one of them."
Goldsmith lived on a farm near what's now Vista Ridge Mall. He didn't have access to the same type of equipment his track and field heroes used. Instead, Goldsmith improvised -- an old broomstick with a nail in it was his makeshift javelin, and the top of his mother's butter churn worked as a discus.
After he graduated from LHS in 1940, Goldsmith became a fulltime coach and teacher after a stint in the Navy. As a coach at Andrews High School in West Texas, he led his teams to 11 district and five state meets, while breaking three national high school track records.
Now 89-years-old, Goldsmith has permanently retired from track and field. But his time as a coach and athlete left him with a room covered almost floor to ceiling with plaques, medals and certificates of achievement.
"I don't know where I would be if I never started running," he said. "But I know I wouldn't have been near as lucky."
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