Dan Pfaff

Life and work

The story behind the role.

Track-and-field coach known for sprint, jump and integrated performance systems.

Dan Pfaff is a track and field coach, who has coached national, world, and Olympic championship athletes. Pfaff started as a high school coach, and moved up to the college ranks starting at Wichita State University. He then served as a graduate assistant at the University of Houston from 1980-81 under Tom Tellez. Pfaff was then Women's Head Track and Field coach at UTEP from 1982-84. From 1985-94, he was the head field events coach at LSU, during which time the program won multiple national championships, including back to back men's and women's national titles from 1989-90. He then had assistant coaching stints at the University of Texas and the University of Florida.. Pfaff was hired to run the United States Olympic Training Center. In summer 2009, he was made head of the Lee Valley Athletics Centre by United Kingdom Athletics (UKA), to organise the coaching and training of the UK's athletes in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. He also coached and trained 10 athletes within the UKA programme. Pfaff is currently one of the coaches for Altis, which is a professional track and field coaching staff as well as educational company. They are now based in Phoenix, Arizona. While Dan is listed as a coach, he is not involved in day-to-day coaching and currently resides in Austin, Texas.

Encyclopaedic excerpts from Dan Pfaff; shortened for length and available under CC BY-SA 4.0.