Arthur Wint

Arthur Wint
Full name	Arthur Stanley Wint
nation	Jamaica
birthday	March 25, 1920
place of birth	Plowds
date of death	October 19, 1992
Place of death	Linstead
Career
discipline	Sprint , middle distance run
Best performance	46.2 s ( 400 m ) 1: 48.9 min ( 800 m )
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 2 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold London 1948 400 m silver London 1948 800 m gold Helsinki 1952 4 × 400 m silver Helsinki 1952 800 m

Arthur Stanley Wint (born March 25, 1920 in Plowden , Manchester Parish , Jamaica , † October 19, 1992 in Linstead , Saint Catherine Parish ) was a Jamaican athlete and the country's first Olympic champion .

Life

Arthur Wint on his Olympic victory

In 1937, Wint was voted Youth Athlete of the Year in Jamaica and in 1938 he won the gold medal in the 800-meter run at the Central American Games in Panama . In 1942 he went to the Canadian Royal Air Force , where he set a new Canadian record in the 400-meter run during training . He was then transferred to Great Britain and fought as a pilot in World War II . In 1947 he left the Air Force and began studying medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital in Smithfield , London .

At the XIV Olympic Games in London in 1948 , he won the first Olympic gold medal in history for Jamaica over 400 meters with 46.2 s, ahead of the other Jamaican Herb McKenley and the American Mal Whitfield . In the 800-meter run, he won the silver medal, this time behind Whitfield and in front of the Frenchman Marcel Hansenne . At the XV. At the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki he again won the silver medal, again behind Mal Whitfield and ahead of the German Heinz Ulzheimer , as well as the team gold medal in the 4 x 400 meter relay race , together with his teammates Leslie Laing , Herb McKenley and George Rhoden , in front of the teams from the USA and Germany . The Jamaican team also set a new world record in this run.

He ran his last race in 1953 at Wembley Stadium and ended his sporting career. In 1954 he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II . In 1955, after completing his medical training at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, he returned to Jamaica and lived in Hanover . At first he worked as the only resident doctor in the area; from 1978 Wint worked at Linstead Hospital. He worked as a medic in Linstead until his death in 1992.

In 1974 Arthur Wint became Jamaican High Commissioner in Great Britain, and later his country's ambassador to Denmark and Sweden . In 1977 he was inducted into the "Black Athlete's Hall of Fame " in the USA and in 1989 into the "Jamaica Sports Hall of Fame".

Web links

• Detailed biography
• Arthur Wint in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )