Bob Richards

RICHARDS: BREAKFAST OF WORMS

The DDP isn’t exactly replete with pole vaulter obits, yet this February has delivered a second. Bob Richards was the first to win two Olympic gold medals in the sport, becoming a 50s American hero in the process. “The Vaulting Vicar” took up the cloth while he was still pole vaulting, and in 1958 he became the first athlete to be depicted on a Wheaties cereal box. The obits have largely sidestepped around his 1984 third-party presidential campaign on a white supremacist ticket. He struggled to gain traction when his target audience could vote for LaRouche or Reagan instead. As Richards heads in a different direction from where the pole vault took him, days after his 97th birthday, ZZ Topped: Heaven, Hell or Houston avoids the wooden spoon early this year.

Bob Richards
20 February 1926 – 26 February 2023, aged 88
💀💀💀💀💀 + 👻 = 9 POINTS