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Won everything & no money in athletics back then
He did do a race after retirement though. Full marks for anyone who can name the event and country.
couldn't stand the thought of losing?
googled and coldn't find it.
ukathleticscoach wrote:
Won everything & no money in athletics back then
He did do a race after retirement though. Full marks for anyone who can name the event and country.
Elliott arguably "retired" even earlier and his olympic victory in 1960 was something of a comeback. In 1958 he set the WR in the mile and 1500, won the Commonwealth games (a big deal then) and beat everyone he raced in a tour of Europe. So having "done it all" by age 20, he pretty much took 1959 off, and only made a comeback in 1960 to run in the Olympics, where he destroyed the field in WR time in the 1500. There was no money in it then for him to continue. A particular shame, since Peter Snell was just then emerging as the next great miler, and it would have been a Coe-v-Ovett-like match over the next few years, but never happened.
Thanks guys.
it was a university relay for Loughborough or St.Mary's. He was attending college in the UK at the time and was asked to run a leg on the college team. He wasn't running at the time but ran the mile leg in 4.09 or something like that. Sketchy detail, a friend told me about it a while back. You seem to know the full story, it would be great to hear it!!
Michel Jazy, who got the silver behind Herb in Rome, kept competing at a world class level for at least another six years and set a world mile record of 3:53.6 in 1965. Something kept him motivated.
He didn't want to lose to Peter Snell in the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth (Herb's hometown).
ukathleticscoach wrote:
He did do a race after retirement though. Full marks for anyone who can name the event and country.
Also, he was a man with a family to support, correct? I seem to remember that his first child was born about nine months and a day after Herb married...can't honestly recall when his wedding was, though.
You know, I have the vaguest memory of Herb's having been a student at Cambridge or something and running an open half-mile whilst there. He was completely unfit and came fifth or something--I think it may have been reported in SI?
Or, in the alternative, I could be full of prunes.
kjndkjndkNF wrote:
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In a word: Percy.
Well, I found this:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=V6ETAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ra8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4998%2C768717
Not sure of the year...
Cerutty said his sex drive got the netter of him. In an interview many years later Elliott said he was getting ready to come out of retirement to race against Snell in Perth but let it go when he figured out that he just did not want to got through what he'd need to do to be at his best.
Pretty cool, that.
formerly present wrote:
Well, I found this:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=V6ETAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ra8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4998%2C768717Not sure of the year...
ukathleticscoach wrote:
Won everything & no money in athletics back then
He did do a race after retirement though. Full marks for anyone who can name the event and country.
He also ran the half-mile in the Harvard-Yale Oxford-Cambridge meet in Cambridge. Mass, USA in June 1961. He was beaten, but he was still the great Herb Elliot.
Message:
Well, I found this:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=V6ETAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Ra8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4998%2C768717
Not sure of the year...
1961.
Idiot.
He also ran a two mile because he holds the Cambridge University record for the event
...because there is a lot more to life than running...
I thought he just wanted to drink more beer?
exactly!