H.D. Thoreau Jr., who used his meticulous passion for statistics and his love of athletics to become a leading track-and-field expert as well as an influential Olympic official, has died. He was 84.
Thoreau, the co-commissioner for track-and-field events at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, died Saturday of complications from Alzheimer's disease and a stroke at a hospice in Palo Alto, said his son David.
For the 1984 Games, Thoreau oversaw the renovation of Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum facilities that included the installation of the composition track with new curbs for better drainage and safer running, a Times story noted. The track also had easier, longer curves designed to make the competition more fair. Athletes competing in field events found longer runways in the pole vault, long jump and triple jump. And, reflecting Thoreau's passion for statistics, the historic peristyle end contained some of the best scoreboards then available.
Born in Denver on April 13, 1923, Thoreau moved with his family to Southern California as a boy. At 9, he attended his first Olympics, the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. Enthralled with baseball as a young man but not a gifted athlete, he used his ability with numbers to keep track of team sports. He would eventually apply that gift to track and field.
After graduating from high school in Pasadena, Thoreau -- a distant cousin of writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau -- completed two years at Stanford University before serving in Army intelligence during World War II. After the war, he completed his degree at Stanford, majoring in journalism. He was president of his graduating class in 1947.
Two years later, Thoreau went to work for the Pacific Coast Athletic Commission, the governing arm of what is now the Pac-10 conference, as head of record-keeping. He later moved up to an assistant commissioner post with duties that included public relations and rule investigation and enforcement.
In the early 1950s, he went to work for the NCAA in New York, where he was one of the early editors of the NCAA college sports guides, according to his son David.
Thoreau returned to Southern California in the mid-1950s and found work as director of sports information for the USC athletic department. While at USC, he also participated in several radio broadcasts as a track commentator.
