Jack Daniels, the Olympic medalist turned exercise physiologist whose training formulas reshaped modern distance running, died September 12 at the age of 92.
His wife, Nancy, said he “died happy after watching the Green Bay Packers win last night,” a fitting end for a man who once tested the Packers as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and remained a lifelong fan.
Daniels’ career stretched more than six decades and touched nearly every corner of the sport. He was best known for Daniels’ Running Formula, the 1998 book that distilled his decades of research into a practical system of VDOT training paces that runners at any level could apply.
But his influence went far beyond a single text. As both a scientist and a coach, he bridged the gap between laboratory research and the messy, unpredictable reality of competitive running.
Born in Detroit in 1932 and raised in California, Daniels was a swimmer before he ever became known in track circles. His path to endurance sports was almost accidental, he discovered running only after taking up the modern pentathlon, a five-discipline Olympic event that included a 3,200-meter cross-country run.
Though he admitted he was “a terrible runner” at first, he immersed himself in the science of training, eventually improving enough to compete in two Olympic Games. He won a team silver medal in Melbourne in 1956 and a bronze in Rome in 1960.
Those experiences fed his curiosity about physiology. After military service in Korea and training stints in Sweden, Daniels pursued graduate study in exercise science, earning his Ph.D. in 1969.
At a time when American distance running was searching for answers on how to close the gap with Europeans, Daniels began testing athletes at altitude and advising coaches on how to prepare for the 1968 Mexico City Games, where the thin air shaped performances across the board.
By the 1980s, his reputation as both a coach and scientist had made him one of Nike’s first exercise physiologists. At the company’s Athletics West lab in Eugene, Oregon, Daniels studied everything from wind resistance to differences in running economy between men and women.
One of his most famous interventions came in 1984, when Joan Benoit Samuelson, just days removed from knee surgery, came to him desperate to train for the inaugural women’s Olympic Marathon Trials. Daniels rigged a bicycle to the ceiling so she could “ride” with her arms while keeping weight off her injured leg. Two weeks later, Samuelson won the Trials and went on to capture Olympic gold in Los Angeles.
Despite working with elites, Daniels often insisted he got the most satisfaction from coaching regular athletes.
At SUNY Cortland, where he spent 17 years beginning in 1986, his cross-country teams became a Division III powerhouse, with seven women’s national titles and numerous All-American runners.
Later stints took him to Northern Arizona University’s Center for High Altitude Training, Brevard College in North Carolina, and Wells College in upstate New York, where he relished coaching on a small scale.
Today, Daniels’ imprint is everywhere. His VDOT charts are built into running apps, threshold training is a staple of nearly every serious program, and countless high school and college coaches still lean on his formulas.
Flagstaff, Arizona, where Daniels lived for much of his later life, has become a global hub for altitude training, populated by athletes and coaches who in one way or another trace their methods back to him.
Jack Daniels lived long enough to see his research become part of the everyday vocabulary of running. For a man who started out trying to solve his own weakness in the pentathlon, the legacy is immense, an entire sport trained to think more clearly, more scientifically, and ultimately more humanly about how far it can go.
