Jim Hartung's story does not begin with his heart attack, but with the extraordinary moment that defined his life—a summer's evening in 1984 when he helped deliver America's most improbable Olympic triumph. It ends, forty-two years later, with a man who lost his voice yet never stopped coaching, who faced cancer's brutality with a resolve that astonished everyone who knew him.
Hartung, the gymnast who powered the United States to its only men's team gold medal in Olympic gymnastics, died on 10 January at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, at the age of 65. The cause was a heart attack.
