Sport: Pious Miler

For eight seasons, short, bespectacled Gil Dodds has been something of a track oddity. He usually knelt and prayed before each race. On trips, he often carried bread and honey sandwiches in a paper bag. His awkward running style — arms thrashing like windmills — outraged the copybook but set a world's indoor mile record of 4:06.4. Last week, just after his coach predicted that he would soon smash that record by as much as two seconds, Dodds said he was through with track forever — he had received...

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