Wayne Collett, a runner who won a silver medal for the United States in the 1972 Munich Olympics and who was then judged to have acted so disrespectfully during the medal ceremony that the International Olympic Committee barred him as a competitor for life, died Wednesday. He was 60 and lived in Los Angeles.

His death, at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, was caused by cancer, said Marc Dellins, the sports information director for U.C.L.A., where Collett had been a track and field star.

In 1972, Collett and his U.C.L.A. teammate John Smith were favored in the Olympic 400-meter dash. They advanced to the final along with Vince Matthews, another American. Matthews won the gold medal in 44.66 seconds, Collett finished second in 44.80 and Smith was injured early in the race and did not finish.

In the previous Olympics, in 1968 in Mexico City, the runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, both African-Americans, had staged a demonstration during a medal ceremony to protest treatment of blacks in the United States. Olympic officials feared a repetition in Munich.