COLUMBIA, Mo. — You may have walked by one of Larry Young’s sculptures, but it’s a given that you didn’t walk as fast as he can.
Young, now 81, was born in Independence. His family also lived in Orrick and Richmond before settling in Buckner, where he from Fort Osage High School in 1961.
He now lives on several acres south of Columbia with his wife Candy, who he met in college, and their dogs.
In between, he’s led an incredible life — winning multiple Olympic medals, witnessing some of the most iconic and tragic events in Olympic history, and becoming a noted sculptor with installations around the world.
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“It's been quite the life, no doubt about it,” Young said at his house in Columbia. “I have no complaints. I could die tomorrow and I'd be a happy man.”
Growing up in eastern Jackson County, Young wasn’t an avid artist nor an elite athlete, but he became both after learning to cast bronze in the Navy.
“We spent most of our time in San Diego tied up to a dock,” said Young, who was stationed on the USS Prairie, a destroyer tender. “All the destroyers would come tie up alongside of us and we’d take care of them. We had shops. It was just a ship of shops."
The casting process is different than he uses in his art, aside from pouring the bronze or steel, but it honed his skills.
Now, Young has more than 50 sculptures installed across the world — from New York to Tokyo and Australia to Kansas City, including “Hope For Life” outside the Stowers Istitute.
“He created two, sort of, nucleotide-type forms here,” said Candy, as she pointed to a small-scale version of the sculpture on display at their home. “But in the negative space, you once again see the image of a human.”
Larry added, “It captures the head of a human and the body in here, if you just look at the negative shape.”
Young took up modern dance while living in Southern California, which became central to his art.
“Because of my dance background, it was in my mind, it was in my body,” Young said. “Dance has projected in my artwork.”
Racewalking: ‘It’s kind of a weird sport’
Los Angeles also is where he first indulged another passion — racewalking.
“I saw it in the 1960 Olympics,” Young said. “The next day — I was in track then at Fort Osage — I went to school for football practice and I was just screwing around, mimicking what I'd seen on TV the day before.”
Upon seeing Young’s shenanigans, his coach bellowed, “Hey, Larry, you walk pretty fast. Let's see what you walk 100 yards in.”
The coach pulled out his stopwatch.
“I had no idea whether I was walking legally or not — you know, there are rules in race walking — but he says, ‘Larry, you can walk almost as fast as you can run,’” Young recalled, “because I was not a fast runner. That's why I ran the mile and the half-mile in track.”
After four years in the Navy, Young had moved to Los Angeles, where a friend introduced him to all-comer meets that were held at area high school tracks and open to all.
“I never got a chance to try (racewalking) again or anything until after I got out of the Navy, moved to LA and got in the summer all-comer meets,” Young said. “They always had a one-mile walk in those things, so I got in it — finished dead last, but I kept doing it.”
Despite finishing last, Young apparently made an impression.
“All the guys came up to me, ‘Hey, man, you’ve got talent; you need to stick with it,’” Young recalled. “There weren’t many racewalkers. Not too many people want to get into that for some reason. It's kind of a weird sport, so I kept kind of doing it and gradually one thing led to another and I started entering AAU meets.”
Over time, Young started racewalking longer distances.
“You just kind of gradually work into it then you say, ‘Well, I think I can do that’ and you do it and try to get through it,” he said. “One thing leads to another and I saw I thought I probably had a little more talent at the long races than the short ones based on the competitions I'd been in.”
Young said he has never lost a sanctioned long-distance race on U.S. soil, including more than 30 gold medals from national championship and other AAU meets. He keeps all of his trophies, medals and other memorabilia — including the shoes Puma specifically designed with his input for the 1972 Olympics after he was invited to their factory — in a glass trophy case, tucked in a corner of his home.
“Fifteen years of racewalking all in one little cage there,” Young said. “... The one that really stands out in my mind is that 100-mile trophy there. I did it in 18 hours, 7 minutes and 12 seconds. It still stands, I think, as an American record.”
Unmatched Olympic success
Two medals arguably stand out more — one is a bronze medal for the 50-kilometer racewalk at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
“Of course I was shooting for a medal — absolutely,” Young said of whether he expected to nab some hardware. “I can't imagine anybody going in there unless they're going for the gold.”
Young won another bronze in the 50K walk at the 1972 Munich Games. He remains the only U.S. athlete ever to medal in long-distance racewalking.
“One of the racewalkers after the race (in 1968), they were talking about it and he says, ‘Oh, it was a fluke. It was a fluke,’” Young recalled. “I'll never forget it after the ’72 race. I go up to him and say, ‘Well, Tom, there's another fluke for you.’”
Those two Olympics are remembered most for controversy and tragedy.
Young was in the stadium when Tommie Smith and John Carlos each donned a black glove and put a fist in the air — a Black power salute — on the podium during medal ceremony for the 200-meter dash.
“It was a shock to all of us,” said Young, who said he considers Smith and Carlos friends. “I didn’t know that that’s what they were going to do. I had mixed emotions about it at the beginning, because politics are not supposed to enter the Olympics. But they had something to say and that was the way to get it said, and it made a big impact.”
Young also was in the Olympic Village when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and eventually killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches.
It was the day after his race and Young was headed out for a walk to loosen up when he heard the news from a teammate as he headed out the door at their dorm.
“I said, ‘What? Are you kidding me? This is the Olympic Village,’” Young said. “I kind of didn't believe him, you know what I mean? I walked out the door, looked to my right, and there's the guy with a mask over his head with a BAR or whatever it was, a gun in his hand. He could have shot me right there.”
In response, the International Olympic Committee pared down its program for the 1976 Montreal Games, including cutting the 50K racewalk, which ended Young's Olympic journey.
He also won two gold medals at the Pan American Games and was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.
An artist’s life
Young had returned to the Kansas City area and started a foundry in his parents’ garage in the late 1960s.
He started a new adventure in 1971 when Columbia College President W. Merle Hill called and offered him a full-ride scholarship to join the racewalking team.
The small NAIA school in mid-Missouri had gone coed a year earlier and Hill was trying some innovative — and controversial by Columbia College’s standards — things.
“That was the beginning of my art career,” Young said. “I took art classes under Sid Larson, who was the director of the department and he became my mentor.”
Young’s relationship with Larson became the most important in his life aside from his immediate family — including his parents, Candy and their children.
“He kind of took me under his wing,” Young said. “I guess he saw I had a little talent and one thing led to another.”
Young quickly discovered he had more talent for sculpting than drawing, so Columbia hired Bill Williams, who specialized in sculpture, to help teach and nurture Young. Together they built a foundry at the college.
After graduating, Young received a two-year grant to study sculpture in Italy, where he learned about the enlarging process that has allowed him to make some of the grand sculptures on display around the world.
“The Dance” and “The Tango” are among his most commercially successful pieces, but Young also has made gargantuan steel sculptures, including “Synergy” outside the Marriott Headquarters in Maryland and “Hope For Life” outside the Stowers Institute in Kansas City.
His “Cosmic Portal” — a wispy ribbon of steel that stands 22 feet high, 24 feet wide and 10 feet deep — will be installed in downtown Columbia later this year.
Young’s work is noted for its imaginative interpretations of the human form, fluidity, and use of negative space as well as the impeccable attention and effort he puts into the finishes for his sculptures.
“I guess I have that something in my head or in my mind and in my body that — perseverance, whatever it is perseverance — and I know good and well that the racewalking had a lot to do with my perseverance in sculpture,” Young said. “No doubt about it.”
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