Ellery Clark

Ellery Clark

Ellery Harding Clark (born March 13, 1874 in East Roxbury , Massachusetts , † February 17, 1949 in Boston ) was an American athlete .

At the 1st Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 , he won the competition in the long jump and high jump. To date, he is the only athlete to have won these two disciplines during an Olympiad. He also took part in the shot put competition. In the long jump competition, Clark used a hat to mark the approach. His first two attempts were invalid. Before he could make his third attempt, a judge (probably the later King of Greece, Constantine I ) took his hat away on the grounds that it was a professional practice. The third attempt was valid without a hat and was enough to win the competition.

From 1893 to 1912, Clark was one of the top national athletes. Although Olympic champion in the long jump, he never won a national championship in this discipline. However, he was very successful in the all-around, a forerunner of today's decathlon . In 1896 and 1897 he was all-around champion of New England . In 1897 he won the all-around competition at the American athletics championships, the AAU championships (Amateur Athletic Union, USA). In the same year he sustained a serious knee injury that kept him away from competitions for two years. In 1903, as a 29-year-old, he came back and won the all-round AAU championships again. The second Olympic games in which he participated were the Olympic Games in 1904 in St. Louis . However, bronchitis paralyzed him, so that he only finished sixth in the all-around competition. Up to the age of 56 he took part in walking competitions.

In 1991 Clark was inducted into the USATF (US Athletics Federation) Hall of Fame.

In 1897 Ellery Clark graduated from Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He worked as the author of 19 books ( The Corsair's Lover - original title Caribbean - was made into a film in 1952), as a lawyer, athletics trainer and teacher, and sat on the city council of Boston.

Results / placements at the Olympic Games

discipline	1896	1904
Long jump	1.	-
high jump	1.	-
Shot put	5th-7th	-
Decathlon	-	6th

Publications

• The first americans at the olympic games , in: The Boston Chronicle, March 9, 1911.

Web links

• Ellery Clark in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )