Andrew Sockalexis

Andrew Sockalexis
nation	United States
birthday	January 11, 1891
place of birth	Old Town ,  USA
size	175 cm
Weight	66 kg
date of death	August 16, 1919
Place of death	Oxford , USA
Career
discipline	Long distance running
Best performance	Marathon: 2:21:53 h
society	Carlisle Indian Industrial School

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School marathon team:
Andrew Sockalexis standing with # 10; seated on the left with the No. 1 Lewis Tewanima , with the No. 2 Gaston Strobino

Andrew Sockalexis (born January 11, 1891 in Old Town , Maine , † August 16, 1919 in Oxford , Maine) was an American long-distance runner .

Andrew Sockalexis grew up in the US state of Maine. He was of Indian descent from the Penobscot tribe . In 1911 he moved to Boston and attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School there . Here he became a member of the athletics team and was a teammate of Lewis Tewanima .

Sockalexis had specialized in long-distance running. He completed his first marathon in 1911 when he finished 17th in the Boston Marathon . Here his racing tactics became clear. Sockalexis preferred to take the race slowly and finish with a strong finish. At the 1912 Boston Marathon , he finished second with his personal best of 2:21:53 h. For him, this meant qualifying for the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm .

At the Olympic marathon in Stockholm he finished fourth, more than five minutes behind the winner Ken McArthur from South Africa . He was almost three and a half minutes behind the bronze medal won by his teammate Gaston Strobino .

At the Boston Marathon in 1913 he was second again. Shortly afterwards he married Pauline Shay, also of the Penobscot tribe. Sockalexis completed several road races in the following years, but never entered the Boston Marathon again. After a 15-mile race in Maine, he contracted tuberculosis . He died on August 16, 1919 at the age of 27 as a result of the disease.

In 1984, Andrew Sockalexis was inducted into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame .

Web links

• Andrew Sockalexis in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )