Wyndham Halswelle
 Wyndham Halswelle |
||
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Men's athletics | ||
Representing  United Kingdom
|
||
| Intercalated Games | ||
 |
1906 Athens | 400 metres |
 |
1906 Athens | 800 metres |
| Olympic Games | ||
 |
1908 London | 400 metres |
Wyndham Halswelle (30 May 1882 – 31 March 1915) was a British athlete. He won the controversial 400 m race at the 1908 Summer Olympics, becoming the only athlete to win an Olympic title by a walkover.
Born in London to London-born, Edinburgh-trained artist Keeley Halswelle and Helen Marianna Elizabeth Gordon, he is nonetheless usually referred to as being Scottish, the nationality of his maternal grandfather, General Nathaniel J. Gordon. Wyndham Halswelle had a notable athletic career at Charterhouse School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before being commissioned into the Highland Light Infantry in 1901. While his regiment was in South Africa in 1902 for the Second Boer War, Halswelle's ability was recognised by Jimmy Curran, a coach and amateur athlete. It was he who persuaded Halswelle to take up athletics seriously when his regiment returned to Edinburgh in 1904.
In 1904 he was army champion for 880 yards, and in 1905 he won the Scottish and AAA 440 yard (402 m) titles. In the 1906 Athens Intercalated Olympics, he achieved a silver medal in the 400 metres and a bronze in the 800 metres. On his return, in a single afternoon in 1906 at the Scottish championships in Powderhall, he won the 100, 220, 440 and 880 yards races (91, 201, 402, 805 m), a feat that has not been matched since. His season was cut short by a leg injury in 1907, but he came back the following year to set a world record of 31.2 s for 300 yards (274 m) and a British record over 440 yards of 48.4 s that lasted over a quarter of a century until it was eventually broken by Godfrey Rampling. In 1908 he set a Scottish 300 yards record that lasted until 1961 when it was beaten by Menzies Campbell, then a Glasgow University student.
...
Wikipedia