Reggie Walker

Reggie Walker
Full name	Reginald Edgar Walker
nation	South Africa
birthday	March 16, 1889
place of birth	Durban
size	170 cm
Weight	61 kg
date of death	5th November 1951
Place of death	Durban
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	10.7 s ( 100 m )
Medal table
Olympic games 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold London 1908 100 m

Reggie Walker (actually: Reginald Edgar Walker ; born March 16, 1889 in Durban , † November 5, 1951 ibid) was a South African athlete . At the Olympic Games in London in 1908 , he was Olympic champion over 100 meters.

biography

Walker was from the Natal colony . Although he had become the South African champion in 1907, he was not one of the favorites for the Olympic Games. At first he even had difficulties getting to London because there was not enough money available for his trip. It took a sports journalist to raise enough donations to support Walker. In England, Walker was then trained by Sam Mussabini , who would later lead the British sprinter Harold Abrahams to Olympic victory.

In the Olympic competition, some of the favorite sprinters could not qualify for the final. Walker made it and had to face three North Americans there. One of them, the American James Rector , had set the Olympic record in advance, as did Walker . In the end, Walker won in 10.8 seconds with about half a meter ahead of Rector.

When he won the Olympics, Walker was 19 years and 128 days old. This makes him the youngest athlete to become Olympic champion over 100 meters to this day.

Web links

• Reggie Walker in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )