A Historic 1948 London Olympics Gold Medal Is Up For Sale. There Is A Fascinating Story Behind It
It was by sheer chance that Harrison Dillard became part of the US team for 1948 London Olympics, where he won a historic gold, that too in an event he did not specialise in.
New Delhi: Nearly 75 years after Harrison Dillard won his 100 metres gold at Wembley Stadium during the 1948 London Olympics, the medal is up for auction.
It is rare to see Olympic gold medals getting auctioned, and this could be the first time when a men’s 100m gold medal is coming up for public sale.
Harrison Dillard, who died in 2019, was a legendary athlete who holds the unbroken-so-far record of winning an Olympic gold in both 100 metre sprint and 110 metre hurdles (1952) categories.
The Ingrid O’Neil auction will see his 100m gold and some other London Olympics medals go under the hammer this weekend. According to the website, the starting bid is $120,000 (over Rs 90 lakh).
While Dillard won four Olympic gold medals in all in 1948 and 1952, the other three remain with the family, The Guardian reported.
“It was a tough call to make…,” Dillard’s daughter Terri said about the decision to sell the medal.
“...I’m hoping it will go to someone who will appreciate and honour it. Hopefully a museum where it can be on display,” she was quoted as saying in the report. “My dad never kept the medals on display at home, but he’d always get them out if anyone asked. My mother actually put one of them on a gold chain for him and he’d wear it sometimes.”
The Story Behind Harrison Dillard’s 1948 Sprint Gold
Dillard, then 25, might not even have been in London for the Games in 1948, let alone winning gold, that too in an event he did not specialise in.
At that time, Dillard was one of the greatest sprint hurdlers of all time, with a world record to his name. But he could not even qualify for hurdles, which was his specialist event, during the American trials for the Games.
In The Guardian article mentioned above, Neil Duncanson, the author of The Fastest Men on Earth – The Inside Stories of the Men’s 100 Metres Champions, shared the fascinating story of how Dillard made it to London and how he won the first of his four Olympic golds.
According to Duncanson, Dillard had entered the 100m event at the American trials for the 1948 Olympics only “to sharpen his speed work for the high hurdles”.
The champion hurdler had come to the trials after 82 consecutive wins, besides the world record of 13.6 seconds in 120 yards. He only had to finish third to be part of the US team going to London. But while it seemed it was unbeatable in the event, the trials proved to be a disaster.
“...I finished dead last. I hit the first hurdle, got over the second and then hit every other hurdle in succession, stopping completely at the eighth. I had totally lost the rhythm of the race and my timing was so completely destroyed I just stopped and didn’t even finish,” Duncanson quoted Dillard as saying.
But the hurdler did manage to secure third spot in the 100m, and hence was able to join the US team bound for London.
The 100m finals that Dillard ran in London was a story in itself.
It was one of the closest 100m finals in the history of the Olympics. And even Dillard didn’t immediately know for sure if he finished first. In fact, as Duncanson wrote in the article, Barney Ewell, the US No. 1 running in Lane 2, was fully convinced that he had won.
But it was a new feature introduced in the Games that decided the winner.
The 1948 Games was the first time the Omega photo finish camera was used, and it dutifully captured the distance that separated Ewell from the gold.
Dillard, running on the outside lane, posted a time of 10.3 seconds and was declared the winner. Ewell with 10.4 seconds finished second, and Panama’s Lloyd LaBeach was third.
Dillard went on to win another gold, in a relay event that also proved to be quite eventful, Duncanson noted. While the US team won the sprint relay event, they were disqualified and then reinstated after a protest.
Dillard was part of the US team that went to the 1952 Helsinki Games too. This time, he did not run the 100m race and instead chose to redeem himself in hurdles. He won gold in the event, making an Olympic record of 13.7 seconds, and then picked another gold in the hurdles relay.
Seventy years later, Dillard returned to London when the city hosted the 2012 Olympics, and watched Usain Bolt claim his second Olympic sprint title.
The veteran died in November 2019, at the age of 96.
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