Where coming in second is better than nothing!
John Landy of Australia became the second person to run a mile in under 4 minutes on June 21, 1954, at an international track meet in Turku, Finland. His recorded time was 3 minutes 57.9 seconds, beating the mark Roger Bannister had set only a little over 7 weeks before on May 6, with a recorded time of 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.
Landy later went on to have a distinguished political career in the Australian government.
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The silver medal won by German athlete Luz Long in the long jump at the 1936 Munich Olympics fetched $488,435 at auction on October 16, 2022, a record for an Olympic silver medal sold at public auction. In all, 20 bids were made for the medal, which had attracted a significant amount of worldwide media attention. Many other pieces of…read more
The world got a little smaller over the weekend, especially for those who live in the greater London and Perth areas. Qantas, the Australian airline once made popular by the character Raymond Babbitt1 in the movie Rain Man, just added a new nonstop route to its commercial route offerings. Passengers can now travel from Perth, Australia, to London, U.K., nonstop,…read more
German athlete Luz Long is quite possibly the ultimate Silver Medalist. He is the athlete who finished second to American Jesse Owens in the long jump competition at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but more than that, he made sports history with a gesture that stunned many who witnessed it. After their competition, Long, a white man, enthusiastically embraced Owens, a black…read more
Thomas William Burgess got up on the morning of September 5, 1911, ready to make history. Having already tried and failed 15 times before, he knew what he was up against. He wanted to become the second person to swim across the English Channel, and the first to do so since 1875 when Captain Matthew Webb breast-stroked his way across the…read more
