WICHITA, Kansas, Aug. 23, 2008 -- Jim Ryun's track career wasn't always filled with success.

"When I went to junior high, Curtis Junior High, I did not make the track team," said Ryun. "And I remember many a night going to sleep, putting my head on my pillow and saying, 'Dear God, if you've got a plan for my life, and I hope it's in sports, I'd appreciate it if you'd show up sooner than later because it's not going very well right now.'"

His prayers were eventually answered. During a sophomore orientation at Wichita East High School, cross country coach Bob Timmons, was looking for runners.

"And my thought was, 'why not try cross-country?' I'd never run before. So I went out for the cross-country team, made my first athletic team, got a great big 'E' for East High School, thought I'd get a girlfriend right behind that. Success came. I finished sixth in the state meet."

In the spring, he began running the mile for the track team. After running just four mile events, Coach Timmons had a thought.

"He said, 'You know, I think you can be the first high school boy to run the mile in four minutes.' And at that point I was totally numbed by the thought of trying to run under four minutes, because at 4:21, when I finished, everything hurt -- my head, my legs, my lungs."

"I don't know why I thought he could be the first four-minute miler," said Timmons. "He had the sprinter's ability to run, but then he had endurance that was really exceptional."

In 1964, as a high school junior, Ryun did something that was simply amazing. At an elite track meet in Compton, California he became the first high school athlete to run a sub four-minute mile, crossing the finish line with a time of 3:59.

"He was terribly humble," said Timmons. "Here is a guy who broke the four-minute mile and didn't talk about it. If that had been me, I'd have told the world."

But Ryun's success didn't stop there. He qualified for the Olympics after his junior year. The following season, Ryun set a U.S. Open and high school record with a 3:55.3 mile -- a record that stood for 36 years.

And his 3:58.3 mile in the Kansas high school state meet in 1965 set a record for the fastest time ever in a race with only high-schoolers, a record still standing today.

In college, Ryun went on to KU and set numerous more records, along with earning awards like Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year award in 1966 and the James A. Sullivan award as well as competing in two more Olympics.

"When I look at all of the things that God has blessed me with -- the awards, the honors, the covers of Sports Illustrated, the Sportsman of the Year -- all those different things, it seems like so long ago, and it was, that I truly sometimes have to sit down and think 'did those things really happen to me?'"

Indeed it did.

Jim Ryun will go down in history as one of the U.S.A.'s greatest track stars, and thanks to your votes he will go down in Kansas History as your Silver Medal Moment.