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Al Buehler has touched and enriched the lives of thousands of athletes including Olympians Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Carl Lewis, as well as Duke icons Grant Hill, Shane Battier, and Coach K. And the lives of thousands more who have never owned a pair of track shoes.

For 55 years, Al Buehler has inspired countless athletes and met enormous challenges…breaking new ground in women’s athletics, international sport, and race relations. During the height of segregation in the South, Buehler formed a lasting friendship with Dr. LeRoy Walker, the Head Track Coach at the all black North Carolina Central University. Buehler invited Walker’s team to train on Duke’s state-of-the-art track. At the time, Duke’s campus and bleachers above the track were segregated. Few knew of the brotherhood formed by Buehler-Walker and their teams. The two couldn’t change what was happening in the stands, but they could change what was happening on the track.

In 1968, when John Carlos and Tommie Smith were asked to leave the Olympic Village in Mexico City, a familiar face showed up to drive them safely to the airport…Coach Buehler. As John Carlos, Olympic bronze medalist recalled, "When I needed someone to be there, God sent an individual such as Al Buehler."

When Duke’s Ellison Goodall approached Buehler about running at Duke, he took her under his wing, and the Duke women’s track team was born. And it was Buehler who gave up every men’s scholarship he had to help start Title IX at Duke. “Al Buehler had the foresight to realize that women can be athletes too,“ noted Joan Benoit Samuelson, Olympic Gold Medalist, who competed against Goodall.

Buehler’s career spanned four Olympics, but he never let his success get in the way of his deep desire to help athletes become better people. “There are a lot of great men and there are a lot of great coaches, but there are not a lot of great coaches that are great men. And Coach Buehler was definitely one of those," said Carl Lewis,
9-time Olympic Gold Medalist.

Coach Buehler has been thinking about finish lines his entire life. He believes finish lines are something to prepare for; and in his world, they should be a place not of endings but of beginnings…in Coach’s view of life, we really do start at the finish line.

Now at 80 years old, Al Buehler faces his latest challenge – an inoperable benign brain tumor. “Starting at the Finish Line” – the story of Al Buehler, the leader, the inspiration, the man everyone who’s ever known him loves to call simply “Coach.”