A Record-breaking Track Career Begins Under the Eyes of the Nazi Invaders

European middle-distance running during the World War II years

Swedish runners, benefiting hugely from their country’s neutrality, dominated the middle-distance track events during the years of World War II, as is well known, and the great duo of Hägg and Andersson set 21 World records between them from 1500 to 5000 metres. Neither of them, though, was fast enough to add the 800 metres to their accomplishments. The World record for that event of 1:46.6 would, in any case, remain out of reach to all and sundry for another decade after peace was declared, and the fastest man in the event in the latter war years came, surprisingly, from another country with a much less well-established athletics tradition than its Scandinavian neighbour across the straits that led into the Baltic Sea..

Denmark had produced only a single World record-holder, Holger Henry Nielsen at 3000 metres in 1934, and two Olympic medallists, Emil (or Ernst) Schultz, with bronze at 400 metres in 1900, and Henry Petersen, with silver in the 1920 pole vault. Their fastest pre-World War II 800 metres man ran 1:54.2. Yet in 1943 they had two of the top three places in the understandably curtailed World rankings, as in a race in Stockholm on 28 August Niels Holst Sørensen won in 1:48.9, with Hans Liljekvist, of Sweden, 2^nd in 1:49.2, and another Dane, Gunnar Bergsten, 3^rd in 1:49.7.

Of course, competition was limited in the midst of wartime, but even so there were still others from Finland, France, Hungary, Italy and the USA in the top 20 in the World that year; Of utmost significance, Holst Sørensen’s time was the 4^th fastest ever. Only Rudolf Harbig, Germany’s World record-holder, and John Woodruff, the USA’s Olympic champion, had run faster than Holst Sørensen since Sydney Wooderson had set his World records at 800 metres and 880 yards in 1938. The Danish record would stand until 1954 and Liljekvist’s Swedish record until 1953.

Holst Sørensen’s progress as an athlete came about in unusual circumstances, to say the least. The German army had attacked his homeland on 9 April 1940 in violation of a non-agression treaty between the two countries, and within two hours the Danes had surrendered, hopelessly outnumbered. The King remained in residence and a Government was in office for the next three years in a situation of uneasy alliance with the invaders. Compared with other countries under Nazi rule, Denmark suffered lightly as only some 3,000 of its citizens died during the occupation, though in 1943 the Germans dissolved the Government, imposing martial law in retaliation for increasing resistance and acts of sabotage among the population. Yet when the Germans then attempted to round up the country’s Jewish population of 7,800 the obstructiveness and subterfuge of the general public was so effective that 7,220 were  kept in hiding or smuggled out of the country across the sea to safety in Sweden..

The Danish army had been allowed to maintain a token presence until then, and the previous year Holst Sørensen had begun military training at the age of 18, having been born on 19 December 1922, the son of a dairyman. He was already an athlete of great promise as Danish record-holder at 400 metres, with 48.6 in Copenhagen on 24 September 1941. Athletics competition had continued more or less as normal as Gunnar Bergsten had run 1:53.9 for 800 metres at the same meeting and there were respectable performances across the full range of events during the year, as would be the case for the remainder of the war. This did not involve the prewar World record-holder, Holger Henry Nielsen, who had gone on to take the bronze medal for 10,000 metres behind two Finns at the inaugural 1934 European Championships, as he had later been suspended for infringing the amateur rules.  

In 1942 Holst Sørensen beat Bergsten in an 800 meres race in Copenhagen on 23 August, 1:52.3 to 1:52.5, and there were other noteworthy marks from Harry Siefert at 10,000 metres (30:55.4, and 30:26.8 the next year), and Svend-Aage Thomsen at 110 metres hurdles (14.5). Despite the war there was still plenty of track activity in Europe, with major races at 800 metres, for example, in Basle, Bologna, Budapest, Frankfurt-am-Main, Helsinki, Milan, Paris and, of course, throughout neutral Sweden. Standards in the event were, of course,  depressed – but not by much. The leader was an American, Bill Lyda, from Oklahoma, who had won the NCAA 880 yards in 1:50.8, which was a time only ever beaten in the meeting’s history by John Woodruff, and Campbell Kane, of Indiana University, was a close 2^nd to Lyda in 1:51.1. Mario Lanzi, of Italy, who had been a valiant rival of Harbig’s, ran 1:50.4 for 800 metres that year, and Harbig himself was timed in 1:51.9 in one of his last races before being killed in action in 1944.

Denmark and Sweden even held two international matches during 1943 – in Copenhagen on 17-18 July and Stockholm 28-29 August. At the first of these Holst Sørensen broke his national record for the 800 by almost two seconds, winning in 1:50.4 from Sweden’s Hans Liljekvist, 1:51.2, and it was in the return encounter in Stockholm that these two and Gunnar Bergsten all beat 1:50. The two Danes also figured in a 4 x 400 metres relay team which won an intensely exciting race, 3:15.6 to 3:15.8. Arne Andersson took the 1500 metres at that meeting in 3:50.8, with a Dane, Aage Poulsen, a close 2^nd in 3:51.0. The previous weekend Sydney Wooderson had won a mile race for the Amateur Athletic Association  against the Royal Air Force and a combined Police/Civil Defence team at Imber Court, in Surrey, in 4:14.8, and had shown excellent form throughout the summer, with a best time of 4:11.5, but he would have to wait another two years before he was at liberty to meet up with Andersson.

On the very same day that Holst Sørensen was contributing to that relay win over the Swedes, his country’s government was being thrown out of office by the Nazi authorities. Yet despite the tyrannical restrictions imposed on the Danish populace during 1944 he still set national records of 48.4 and then 47.6 for 400 metres (the latter time was to stand for 27 years) and ran 1:51.2 for 800 metres. Seven of the top 10 at 800 metres in the World that year were from Sweden, plus Marcel Hansenne, of France, also at 1:51.2, and Bob Kelley, the AAU and NCAA winner in the USA with a best of 1:51.8. Wooderson managed only three track races but still ran a 4:12.8 mile in June in Manchester, which had suffered bombing throughout the war. The following month, in unthreatened Malmö, Arne Andersson improved the World record to 4:01.6.

Another fast 800 metres against an old rival

In July of 1945, two months after the end of the war in Europe, Holst Sørensen had yet another rousing encounter with his close rival, Liljekvist, at Hälsingborg, in Sweden, and won again as both ran 1:49.4. With many athletes still in uniform, this was a transition year in international athletics and the only faster time than in the Halsingborg race was a 1:49.3 by a Finn, Bertel Storskrubb, who also, incidentally, led the 400 metres hurdles rankings. Andersson and Wooderson met at a packed and enthralled White City Stadium in London in August, and Andersson won their mile race, 4:08.8 to 4:09.2. A month later the two renewed acquaintanceship in Gothenburg and the margin was exactly the same but the times far faster – Andersson 4:03.8, Wooderson his best ever 4:04.2. Hägg had improved the record to 4:01.3 in July.

Holst Sørensen was able to resume his military career in peacetime and graduated from the army academy in 1946. It was obviously a privileged time for him because when he was interviewed over 60 years later he was to recall that “I was a state employee athlete”, and he benefited from the generosity of his army superiors by winning the 400 metres in 47.9 at the European Championships in Oslo and placing 2^nd at 800 metres in a thrilling mass finish – 1^st  Rune Gustafsson (Sweden) 1:51.0, 2^nd Holst Sørensen 1:51.1, 3^rd Marcel Hansenne (France) 1:51.2, 4^th Olle Ljungren (Sweden) 1:51.4, 5^th Tom White (GB) 1:51.5.

Gustafsson had lingered in the shadows of Hägg and Andersson during the war years, placing an almost unnoticed 2^nd in Andersson’s World-record mile of 1943, 4:02.6 to 4:04.2, but further proved his quality a week after earning his European title by equaling Harbig’s World 1000 metres record of 2:21.4. The previous leading Swede at 800 metres, Hans Liljekvist, was briefly out of the picture as he was one of a dozen or so athletes alongside Hägg and Andersson disqualified by the Swedish Federation for receiving illegal payments.

Holst Sørensen’s team-mate, Gunnar Bergsten, had retired after a varied career which featured national records at 400 metres (prior to Holst Sørensen), 1500 metres and the mile and six national titles, including the pentathlon in 1942, plus 2^nd place in the long jump in 1945 with a personal best 6.92. He had been born in Sweden, had been taken to Denmark at the age of five, and had only eventually become a Danish citizen as a 19-year-old in 1939.

The happy state of affairs regarding Holst Søreensen’s training régime did not last long because he decided to give priority to his service duty ahead of his track ambitions and transferred to flight school in 1947, where he began learning how to pilot a Spitfire. Even with less time for athletics, he managed a 1:49.8 for 800 metres in September at a Sweden-v-Rest of Scandinavia match in Stockholm, beating yet another Swede, Ingvar Bengtsson. He had also won the Inter-Allies’ title in Berlin the previous month in a modest 1:53.7, which would surely have been much faster if Jamaica’s Arthur Wint, who was serving in the RAF and had run 1:50.0 at the White City four days before, had been competing.

Then in 1948 came a 1:50.8 for Holst Sørensen in Oslo on 4 July, and with the heats of the Olympic 800 metres exactly a month hence this seemed to set him up nicely for his delayed Games debut. Hansenne had by much the fastest pre-Games time of the season, 1:48.3, and Bengtsson had the only other sub-1:50 clocking, at 1:49.4. Then came the reinstated Liljekvist at 1:50.2 (but not selected for the Games) and the Americans, Mal Whitfield and Herb Barten, with 1:50.6 and 1:50.7 respectively at the US Olympic Trials. A medal for Denmark seemed a distinct possibility.

But these Games really came four years too late for Holst Sørensen. He got to the final, but only in 3^rd place in his semi to Barten and the No.2 Frenchman, Robert Chef d’Hotel, just edging out Ljunggren and White, the 4^th- and 5^th placers at the European Championships of two years before. In the final the Dane, like Britain’s John Parlett, was run completely out of it and finished 9^th and last, some seven seconds behind Whitfield’s winning 1:49.2. Wint was 2^nd, Hansenne 3^rd, Barten 4^th, Bengtsson 5^th, Bob Chambers (USA) 6^th and Chef d’Hotel 7^th. Holst Sørensen withdrew with a stomach ailment from the 400 metres heats.

Ironically, these 1948 Games still remain by far Denmark’s most successful ever, with 20 medals (five gold, seven silver and eight bronze) in all sports, but the country’s Olympic Committee was later to admit with commendable candour, that “it should not be forgotten that the Danish athletes were in better physical shape than participants from many other countries which were more severely marked by the war”.

Holst Sørensen’s 800 metres legacy was to be ably maintained in Denmark by Gunnar Nielsen, whose first mark of note was 1:52.4 at the age of 21 in 1949. He would go on to place 4^th in the 1952 Olympic final, missing bronze by only 6/100ths of a second, and would eventually set a national record in 1954, equaling Mal Whitfield’s World 880 yards record of 1:48.6. In much more recent times the Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer, who now lives in Monaco, collected a host of titles and records indoors and out at 800 metres after taking Danish citizenship

Holst Sørensen had joined the Royal Danish Air Force when it was formed in 1950 and progressed through the ranks to become a Major-General and Commander-in-Chief before his retirement in 1987, having also been for four years Denmark’s military adviser to NATO. He had  become a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1977 and served diligently on various committees until he stood down in 2002. Maintaining his fitness with golf, orienteering, ski-ing and tennis as the years passed, he was still cycling beyond his 90^th birthday in 2012, and by the age of 95 in 2018 he was one of the oldest surviving 1948 Olympians.   

What a man! Across a span of 60 years he had been his country’s leading athlete, his country’s most senior air force officer and military spokesman, and his country’s Olympic representative. Few Olympians can have possibly led such a full and rounded sporting and public life.  

The fastest wartime 800 metres runners: 3 September 1939 - 8 May 1945

+ ;intermediate time in 880 yards race.