| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Lynn Alice Jennings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | July 1, 1960 (1960-07) (age 65) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lynn Alice Jennings (born July 1, 1960) is a retired Americanlong-distance runner. She is one of the best female American runners of all time, with a range from1500 meters to themarathon. She excelled at all three of the sport's major disciplines:track,road, andcross country. She won the bronze in the Women's 10,000 metres at the1992 Barcelona Olympics. She set aworld indoor record in the5000 meter run in 1990.
She is a nine-time champion of theUSA Cross Country Championships and won theIAAF World Cross Country Championships three times consecutively from 1990 to 1992. Only two other women (Norway'sGrete Waitz and Kenya'sEdith Masai) have achieved this feat.
Born inPrinceton, New Jersey, Jennings attended theBromfield school inHarvard, Massachusetts. She ran on the boys' cross country team, as there was no girls' team at the time. Jennings won the U.S. National Cross Country Championship nine times. She ran the Boston Marathon unofficially in 1978 and finished in 2:46, a time which would have placed third in the open women's division and a record for her age group[1]'. Graduating in Harvard, MA, in 1978, she left behind countless records, including the national high school indoor 1500-meters run.[1]
Jennings attendedPrinceton University and graduated with an A.B. in history in 1983 after completing a 93-page long senior thesis titled "The Harvard Shakers: A Study of the Rise and Decline of a Community."[2] Despite numerous college running titles, she left the university "unsatisified" with her performance. She failed to qualify for the 1984 Olympics,[1] but was the bronze medalist at 10,000 meters in the1992 Summer Olympics, held inBarcelona, Spain. Her time of 31:19.89 was a new American record, and it lasted until May 3, 2002, when it was broken byDeena Kastor inPalo Alto,California.
She won theWorld Cross Country Championships in 1990, 1991, and 1992. The 1992 race was held atFranklin Park inBoston, on some of the same trails where she had won several Massachusetts state high school championships. She won consecutive 3000 m medals at theIAAF World Indoor Championships, taking bronze in 1993 then silver in 1995. Outdoors she had fifth-place finishes over10,000 metres in both the 1991 and 1993World Championships. She was also a nine-time U.S. Outdoor champion.
In 1999, approaching age 39, she ran officially in the Boston Marathon in 2:38.
Jennings currently lives inPortland, Oregon. She has become an accomplished masters rower (sculler), winning a gold medal in 2012[3] and bronze medal in 2011,[4] in the women's grand master single scull event at theHead of the Charles Regatta, one of the most competitive and prestigious long-distance rowing races in the world.
In 2023, Jennings revealed that she had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her longtime coach John Babington starting from when she was 15 years old. Babington, who was accused of abusing two other girls, confessed to the majority of accusations when questioned byThe Boston Globe but cannot be charged due to the statute of limitations.[5][6]
