Frank Gagliano, 'Godfather' on track, has had long run to Beijing

[GTF]

EUGENE, Ore. - Nearly five decades ago, a thick-bodied former quarterback from E. 238th St. in the Bronx took a job in the Roselle (N.J.) Catholic High School athletic department.

He was asked to coach the track team for a season. He didn't know a hurdle from a girdle, and thought a split was something that happened to your pants, but he said okay, because he was promised that he would take over the football program when it was launched the following year.

"Forty-seven years later, they still don't have a football team and I'm still coaching track," Frank Gagliano says, laughing.

Gagliano is sitting on a bench beside the practice track at Hayward Field, a fabled green track-and-field mecca ensconced in pines, the emotional hub of a place that calls itself Track Town, USA. He is 71 and has a stout body and a full head of gray hair and a stopwatch around his neck. Hardly a minute goes by without a fellow coach, an athlete, a track and field official, approaching Gagliano - known to almost everybody as "Gags" - to offer congratulations, to extend greetings

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