James Ronald Ryun (born April 29, 1947) is an American former Republican politician and Olympic track and field athlete, who at his peak was widely considered the world's top middle-distance runner.

He won a silver medal in the 1500 m at the 1968 Summer Olympics, and was the first high school athlete to run a mile in under four minutes.

His time of 3:55.3, set winning the 1965 AAU Championship race ahead of Olympic gold medalist and former WR holder Peter Snell, was a high school record that stood for 36 years.

ESPN.com named him the best high school athlete of all time, beating out people such as Tiger Woods and LeBron James.

His American junior record in the 1,500 meters of 3:36.1 was broken by Hobbs Kessler on May 29, 2021, awaiting ratification by USA Track and Field.

At age 17 years, 137 days in 1964, he remains the second youngest American male track athlete to ever qualify for the Olympics, behind Quincy Wilson.

[5] In 1968, he won the silver medal in the 1,500 meters in Mexico City, losing to Kip Keino from Kenya, whose remarkable race remained the Olympic 1,500-meter record for 16 years.

He ended up running faster than that with a 3:37.8, but half-way through the race Keino had moved into the first position at world record pace.

Ryun continued to move up during the last two laps from eighth to second but was never closer than about 30 yards from Keino, who finished in 3:34.91, an Olympic record that would stand until 1984, despite the altitude.

Ryun met his wife, Anne, when she asked him for an autograph after he broke the world record for the mile in Berkeley.

He and his sons, Ned and Drew, have co-authored three books: Heroes Among Us, The Courage to Run, and In Quest of Gold – The Jim Ryun Story.

After graduating from the University of Kansas in 1970 with a degree in photojournalism, Ryun moved to Eugene, Oregon; looking for a good training situation to continue his track career.

Since 1973, Ryun and his family have hosted running camps every summer for promising high school aged runners.

[citation needed] In the 2006 election, Boyda was again the Democratic nominee, with Roger Tucker of the Reform Party of the United States of America also on the ballot.

[23] In 2003, he voted against the $373 billion end-of-session spending bill because he considered it to be too costly and had come to Congress to support fiscal restraint.

Ryun broke with the President over two major initiatives, No Child Left Behind and Medicare reform legislation that included a prescription drug benefit.

These issues consisted of the drilling of oil and natural gas, Congressman Richard Pombo's bill designed to weaken the Endangered Species Act of 1973, an amendment to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, by Congresswoman Lois Capps to remove section 1502, a provision that would provide liability protection for manufacturers of the gasoline additive MTBE, and the movement to increase fuel economy standards.

The issues in which he voted against the REP were ones involving oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, renewable resource programs, and the movement to end debate and accept the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act.

[28][29][30] The townhouse had been purchased about two years earlier, for $429,000,[31] to house Ed Buckham's consulting firm Alexander Strategy Group and Tom DeLay's ARMPAC.

After questions were raised as to the purchase of Ryun's townhouse, his office released official documents showing that Ryun paid $80,000 more than the tax assessed value of the house, that he put another $50,000 into house repairs and that another home on the same block was sold for $409,000 on the same day he bought his home.

According to property records, the other home does not have a garage or a back patio and is on a land area about half the size of Ryun's.

[32] After Rep. Mark Foley resigned in October 2006, following revelations he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to teenage congressional pages, Ryun contended that he barely knew Foley, had never spent time with him and was unaware that they lived directly across the street from each other in Washington, D.C. "I know that [we were neighbors] only because somebody has mentioned that, too, already," he told reporters at the time.