Sammy Mellor

Samuel Alexander "Sammy" Mellor, Jr. (December 19, 1879 – November 5, 1948) was an American long-distance runner who won the 1902 Boston Marathon and competed in the marathon at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mellor was born in Yonkers, New York. He attended School Two and trained in Dunwoodie at Buckwheat Track. His first race was a 6-mile event on January 22, 1898, in Mount Vernon, New York, which he won.

On July 4, 1901, Mellor won the 25-mile marathon at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. His 3:16:39.4 performance in temperatures reaching 104 °F earned him an unofficial national championship and his first national victory.

Mellor has been described as "one of the early stars" of the Boston Marathon. He finished in the top 10 six out of nine years between 1901 and 1909.

In the 1901 Boston Marathon, Mellor finished third behind Canadians John Caffery and William "Bill" Davis. One year later, he was victorious in the event's sixth edition with a time of 2:43:15.4 in race conditions that featured strong winds and blowing dust. In 1903, Mellor would finish nearly six minutes behind John Lorden, the 1902 runner-up, after losing the lead and walking down Heartbreak Hill. During the 1904 Boston Marathon, he would lose the lead at mile 20 and go on to finish in sixth place.

Mellor dropped out of the race at Chestnut Hill in 1905 after setting a record pace early on. Mellor was among the leaders in 1906 prior to being overtaken by David Kneeland and falling back. The next year he dropped out at Wellesley after colliding with a bicycle. He finished in 8th-place in 1908, 5th in 1909 ("the Inferno"), and 34th in the 1910 race. Ten years after he won the event, Mellor was slated to compete in the 1912 Boston Marathon, which served as the United States Olympic Trials for the 1912 Summer Olympics in , but he did not enter the race.

...
Wikipedia