Spartan Olympians: David Lean

DAVID LEAN, Member, men’s track team, Australia, Silver Medal, 4x400-meter relay, 1956 Summer Games, Melbourne

            David Lean, ’58, M.A. ’59, teamed up with fellow Spartan and Aussie Kevan Gosper at the 1956 Summer Games in Melbourne to win a silver medal in the 4x400-meter relay.

             A native of Tasmania, Australia, Lean became an overnight sensation at the 1953 Australian championships in Sydney.

            “I was still in high school,” he recalls.  “They asked me to run in the 440-yard hurdles.  I said, ‘What’s that?’  The next thing you know, I won the heat, won the finals, beat the champion, and tied the record.  That’s when I rocketed in track fame.”

            In 1954, he represented Australia at the British Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Canada—where famed sub-four minute milers Roger Bannister and John Landry would face each other in the “Mile of the Century.”

            “Every track nut in the world was there,” recalls Lean.  “(Legendary MSU track coach Karl) Schlademan was there with Kevan Gosper.  I won the 440 hurdles and after the race Schlademan said, ‘I’ve got to get that boy.’”

            Schlademan and Gosper convinced Lean to run at MSU. In the next four years, Lean won Big Ten titles in the 440-yard indoor (1957), the 880-yard outdoor (1957 and 1958), and the 600-yard indoor (1957).  In 1958 Lean was a member of MSU’s NCAA championship cross country team and won the Chester Brewer Award as MSU’s top senior athlete and scholar.

            Lean earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 1969, taught economics at both MSU and at Franklin Pierce College, PA, and then worked 25 years at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC.  He retired in 1995, and he and his wife Jane live on Platte Lake in northern Michigan.