Caitlyn Marie Jenner was born William Bruce Jenner on October 28, 1949, in Mount Kisco, New York, to Esther Ruth (nee McGuire) and William Hugh Jenner. Her father was an arborist. She has two sisters, Lisa and Pam. Her younger brother, Burt, was killed in a car accident in Canton, Connecticut on November 30, 1976, shortly after Jenner's success at the Olympic Games.

After the event, Jenner took an American flag from a spectator and carried it during the victory lap, starting a tradition that is now common among winning athletes. Abandoning vaulting poles in the stadium, with no intention of ever competing again, Jenner stated that: "In 1972, I made the decision that I would go four years and totally dedicate myself to what I was doing, and then I would move on after it was over with. I went into that competition knowing that would be the last time I would ever do this." Jenner explained, "It hurts every day when you practice hard. Plus, when this decathlon is over, I got the rest of my life to recuperate. Who cares how bad it hurts?"  As a result of winning the Olympic decathlon, Jenner became a national hero and received the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States and was also named the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1976.  Jenner's 1976 world and Olympic record was broken by four points by Daley Thompson at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow; Thompson's victory was perhaps tainted by the U.S. led boycott of the Moscow Olympics, though the top American at the time, Bobby Coffman, was not expected to push Thompson or challenge Jenner's record. In 1985, Jenner's Olympic decathlon score was reevaluated against the IAAF's updated decathlon scoring table and was reported as 8,634 for comparative purposes. This converted mark stood as the American record until 1991, when it was surpassed by eventual gold medalist, and world record holder, Dan O'Brien of Dan & Dave fame. As of 2011, Jenner was ranked twenty-fifth on the world all-time list and ninth on the American all-time list. Including the 2012 emergence of a new world record holder Ashton Eaton, Jenner's mark has moved to No. 27 worldwide and No. 10 U.S.  Jenner was inducted into the United States National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1980, the Olympic Hall of Fame in 1986, the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame and the Connecticut Sports Hall of Fame in 1994, and the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame in 2010. For almost 20 years, San Jose City College hosted an annual Bruce Jenner Invitational competition.

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