Jim Knaub
American wheelchair racer
James William Knaub (January 5, 1956 – November 17, 2024) was an American professional wheelchair marathon athlete.
Background
Knaub was born in Corona, California on January 5, 1956. He died in Long Beach, California on November 17, 2024, at the age of 68.
Sport
Knaub was a pole vault competitor at Long Beach State and a semifinalist for the 1976 Olympics before a 1978 traffic accident left him paralyzed. He went through rehabilitation at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, but did not regain the use of his legs. After setting a wheelchair marathon world record at the 1982 Boston Marathon, he went on to win four more times for a total of four world records, and, along with female champion Candace Cable, "gave the 'wheelies' a personality in the 1980s and early 1990s". In the 1990s he held "the world record in every race distance from 5,000 meters to the marathon."
Other ventures
Knaub joined Cannondale Bicycle Corporation in 1998 as production manager for the company's competition wheelchairs.
Jim Knaub appeared as an actor in television (The A Team, The Fall Guy, The Love Boat S6 E7 as Arthur (1982), and others) and movies.
In 2013, it was reported that a film about Knaub's life, titled Hell on Wheels, was in development by Walt Disney Pictures.
“Jim Knaub” enters the record as american wheelchair racer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Knaub, American and wheelchair can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6196158. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 2024, 1976 and 1978.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jim Knaub” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.