Racing Past

The History of Middle and Long Distance Running

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  Preparing for the 1948 Olympic Games was a hurried business for the great majority of athletes who had served in military forces during World War II, which had only finally come to an end in August 1945, and even then more time had elapsed before the combatants were released from uniform. Others, more fortunate, had maintained their competitive activity either under enemy occupation or in privileged neutrality. Regaining the highest level was more difficult in some events than others, and a prime example was the 800 metres, in which the World record had been set at a daunting 1:46.6 by Rudolf Harbig, of Germany, 50 days before the war had broken out in 1939.

LENNART STRAND: “A Swedish Swiftie on the Cinders”

   It’s a competitive record of which any athlete would be justly proud – a European title, an Olympic silver medal, a World record – but Lennart Strand’s track career is invariably depicted in rather different terms. “Before a race, every race, any race, he is as nervous as a debutante before her first ball, even if his opponents are second-raters”, once wrote a journalist from Strand’s native Sweden. “He has come out to start a race without a vest. His friends are afraid that he may one day appear without anything”. 

The Wanamaker Mile: More than 50 years of History

America’s top two milers pirouetting down the home straight. No wilder race had ever been seen on the boardsMore than 90 years of the Wanamaker Mile  For much of my youth in England indoor track athletics was a source of wonder and mystery. It was almost unknown until the early 1960s. A few meetings had been held in cavernous and bone-chilling aircraft hangars generously loaned out by the Royal Air Force for an afternoon, and at one of those makeshift venues the sprinters and hurdlers perforce disappeared through open double doors out into the raw winter air to complete their 60-yard events. When a first attempt was made to hold some races on a 128-yard track shoe-horned into a concert hall in Manchester in 1957, the inexperience of the officials regarding such exotic forms of competition was obvious for all to see. The mile was won in 3 minutes 37.4 seconds, and even when the huddle of bemused officials broke up and announced that the distance was 70 yards short such a time still seemed somewhat unlikely even for Derek Ibbotson, who had finished a close 2nd and would set a legitimate outdoor World record of 3:57.2 before the summer was out.

Gaston Reiff: Olympic Champion--in His "Once in a While" Event

  Emil Zátopek had won the 10,000 metres three days before. There were now half-a dozen Scandinavians hopeful of re-living the glories of Nurmi. A “Flying Dutchman” was lining up, having already also qualified for the 1500 metres final. One of his neighbouring Belgians was even faster at that shorter distance. A second Belgian, an American, a Norwegian might surprise everyone, however unlikely it seemed. The Olympic 5000 metres final of 1948 had every promise of being a dramatic event, and it duly lived up to all expectations.

Josy Barthel: A “Fiery Little Man” from the Grand Duchy

                                Finish of the 1952 Olympic Final in Helsinki Germany returned to the Olympics in Helsinki seven years after the end of World War II, and in athletics three silver medals and three bronze medals, including those for the 800, 1500 and 5000 metres, were won. Writing in the British Olympic Association’s Official Report, Harold Abrahams – happily, as he admitted, “wallowing” in statistics – made the valid point that top six placings, of which the USA had 34, the USSR (competing for the first time at the Games) 20, Great Britain 15 and Germany 11. were as significant as medals in judging a country’s strength. However, such a favourable outcome might still have been a cause of some embarrassment to the then president of the German athletics federation, Max Danz.

Profile


“A bit of a novelty in those days”. Who was the first Afro-American to break  four minutes for the mile?There are now more than 1,500 sub-four-minute milers, and so the names of Reggie McAfee and Tommy Fulton are just a couple among many which don’t immediately strike a chord. Yet within a lapse of time of only a few weeks 45 years ago they made a significant contribution to miling history. McAfee and Fulton were both Afro-Americans, and McAfee is the first US-born Afro-American to have broken four minutes for the mile, with 3:59.3 on 21 April 1973, which he improved to 3:57.8 three weeks later, and this latter time was equaled by Fulton in the most unlikely circumstances on 25 May.

A century Ago in War-time: How Athletics Survived and a Swedish Runner Prospered

“You Can’t Out-run a Bullet”. A Century Ago in War-time: How Athletics  Survived and a Swedish Runner Prospered “Don’t you know, there’s a war on ?” It would be natural to assume that athletics was on hold a century ago. The battle-fronts had been set remorselessly in Flanders fields since 1914, and in April of 1917 President Woodrow Wilson won a 74-to-nil vote of confidence from Congress to bring the USA into the conflict. Mere sport was bound to suffer when hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men in uniform were being slaughtered, but the story is rather more complicated than that.

A Re-evaluation of the Career of Sin Kim Dan

A Re-evaluation of the Career of Sin Kim DanSuddenly there is a sound. “Ooosh ! Ooosh !” The “superwoman” can be beaten  Mysterious. The same description has been used by both the pre-eminent writers, Robert Parienté and Roberto Quercetani, in their comprehensive histories of athletics regarding the exploits of an athlete known to them as Sin Kim Dan but now referred to, presumably in the light of heightened linguistic awareness, as Shin Gheum Dan. She ran 51.2 for 400 metres and 1:58.0 for 800 metres during September and October of 1964 in her home town of Pyongyang, in North Korea (more correctly, the People’s Republic of Korea), and neither performance was ever ratified. The official World records then stood at 51.9 and 2:01.2.

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

A Record-breaking Track Career Begins Under the Eyes of the Nazi InvadersEuropean middle-distance running during the World War II yearsSwedish 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..

A Vision that Paved the Way to Vaporfly

A vision that Paved the Way to VaporflyHigh-grade running-shoe technology is no new phenomenon The current controversy over Nike’s Vaporfly road-running shoe is merely a reminder that footwear fussing and feuding have been going on in track & field athletics for much more than a century. The Finnish manufacturers, Karhu, had been founded in 1916, and enterprisingly produced a distinctive all-white pair of running-spikes which Paavo Nurmi effectively displayed in his gold-medal triumphs at the 1924 Olympic Games, but it was during the Melbourne Games of 1956 that the contest between rival companies to persuade the champions in their choice of brands really began to be waged in earnest. The term “marketing” wasn’t in common use in those days, but the concept had nevertheless by then invaded the cinder-tracks of the World.

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History


184 years of talking – Parrot fashion –  about someone running a four-minute mileby Bob Phillips When I was researching a book I wrote to mark the 50th anniversary in 2004 of the first sub-four-minute mile I became intrigued by the ”near-misses” and the “might-have-been” – the performances by athletes who could perhaps have preceded Roger Bannister by a few years, or even more, had they been given the right opportunity. There are a surprisingly large number of them, and I came to the conclusion, for example, that not nearly enough credit had been given to the fastest mile run in the years before World War II. Contrary to what you might suppose, that was not the official World record of 4:06.8 by Great Britain’s Sydney Wooderson in 1937 but the 4:04.4 indoors by the USA’s Glenn Cunningham the following year.

Early marathon running - the British and Irish influence

Los Angeles and Paris will bid on 13 September to stage the 2024 Olympics. The first Games that were held in Paris, in 1900, were prolonged and often chaotic – in particular, the marathon, which was to be highly influenced in its formative years by British & Irish involvement.  Pandemonium in Paris. “Preposterous”, says the perplexed Mr Poolby Bob Phillips The marathon race at the first Modern Olympic Games of 1896 in Athens was a rip-roaring success, and the main reason was that it was won by a Greek, accompanied for the last few yards by royalty, no less, to the immense pleasure of the 40,000 or so onlookers packed into the stadium and many thousands more on the surrounding hill-sides. The home victory was certainly helped by the fact that the only competitors who had any experience of marathon-running were the Greeks themselves, who had qualified via two trial races, and a lone Hungarian, whose athletics administrators had also been sensible enough to stage their own eliminator to see if any of their countrymen could last the distance.

In a "Shell-Shock of Bedlam," Who Steps out of the Shadow of Harbig?

  Preparing for the 1948 Olympic Games was a hurried business for the great majority of athletes who had served in military forces during World War II, which had only finally come to an end in August 1945, and even then more time had elapsed before the combatants were released from uniform. Others, more fortunate, had maintained their competitive activity either under enemy occupation or in privileged neutrality. Regaining the highest level was more difficult in some events than others, and a prime example was the 800 metres, in which the World record had been set at a daunting 1:46.6 by Rudolf Harbig, of Germany, 50 days before the war had broken out in 1939.

Josy Barthel: A “Fiery Little Man” from the Grand Duchy

                                Finish of the 1952 Olympic Final in Helsinki Germany returned to the Olympics in Helsinki seven years after the end of World War II, and in athletics three silver medals and three bronze medals, including those for the 800, 1500 and 5000 metres, were won. Writing in the British Olympic Association’s Official Report, Harold Abrahams – happily, as he admitted, “wallowing” in statistics – made the valid point that top six placings, of which the USA had 34, the USSR (competing for the first time at the Games) 20, Great Britain 15 and Germany 11. were as significant as medals in judging a country’s strength. However, such a favourable outcome might still have been a cause of some embarrassment to the then president of the German athletics federation, Max Danz.

Percy and the Finns Legitimize the Steeplechase

                                                        Iso-Hollo leads “The Last of the Flying Finns” – a turn of phrase which has a seductive ring about it, bringing to mind the adventurous tale of early American Anglo-French conflict, “The Last of the Mohicans”. But like the central characters of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel of 1826 it’s not immediately obvious which individual might be most representative of the end of a line. To be precise, even the identity of the first of the “Flying Finns” – attributed invariably to Paavo Nurmi – can be questioned because Hannes Kolehmainen was by eight years an earlier Olympic champion. 

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History


                                Finish of the 1952 Olympic Final in Helsinki Germany returned to the Olympics in Helsinki seven years after the end of World War II, and in athletics three silver medals and three bronze medals, including those for the 800, 1500 and 5000 metres, were won. Writing in the British Olympic Association’s Official Report, Harold Abrahams – happily, as he admitted, “wallowing” in statistics – made the valid point that top six placings, of which the USA had 34, the USSR (competing for the first time at the Games) 20, Great Britain 15 and Germany 11. were as significant as medals in judging a country’s strength. However, such a favourable outcome might still have been a cause of some embarrassment to the then president of the German athletics federation, Max Danz.

See all History articles