Stanislav Jungwirth
| Personal information | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality |
 Czechoslovakia
|
|||||||||
| Born |
15 August 1930 Prachatice, Czechoslovakia |
|||||||||
| Died | 11 April 1986 Prague, Czechoslovakia |
|||||||||
|
Medal record
|
||||||||||
Stanislav Jungwirth (15 August 1930 - 11 April 1986) was a Czechoslovakian middle-distance runner. Jungwirth placed third in the 1500 metres at the 1954 European Championships and set a world record for the same distance in 1957.
Jungwirth started training seriously in 1949. By 1951 he was already a quality runner, clocking 3:48.8 for 1500 metres;Track and Field News ranked him No. 8 in the world that year. In 1952 he won the Czechoslovakian championship at both 800 and 1500 metres and was selected to run the latter distance at the Olympics in Helsinki, where he survived the heats but went out in the semi-finals. Late in October 1952, he set a new world record at 1000 metres in Stará Boleslav, running 2:21.2 to improve Olle Åberg's time by 0.1 seconds. This record was broken less than ten months later by the United States' Mal Whitfield.
Jungwirth continued improving and won his only international medal at the 1954 European Championships in Bern, where he placed third behind Roger Bannister and Gunnar Nielsen with a time of 3:45.4. At the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne he finished 6th in 3:42.6.
On 12 July 1957 - again in Stará Boleslav - Jungwirth ran 1500 metres in 3:38.1, breaking the world record of 3:40.2 set just the previous day by Finland's Olavi Salsola and Olavi Salonen. A week later in London, he became the first Czechoslovakian to run a four-minute mile; however, his clocking of 3:59.1 was only good enough for third place while the winner, Derek Ibbotson, ran a new world record 3:57.2.
...
Wikipedia