Forrest Towns

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Forrest Towns ( Forrest Grady "Spec" Towns ; born February 6, 1914 in Fitzgerald , Georgia , † April 9, 1991 in Athens , Georgia) was an American hurdler whose special distance was the 110-meter distance .

Athletic career

Forrest Towns was eleventh in the world's annual best list in 1935, and seventh in 1937 and 1938. His most successful year was the Olympic year 1936: he remained unbeaten, set two world records and had his 20 best times that year.

He set his first world record with 14.1 s in Chicago in June , albeit with an inadmissible tailwind from today's perspective . In August he set this world record at the intermediate run of the 1936 Olympic Games under perfect conditions. He won the final in 14.2 seconds, 0.2 seconds ahead of Brit Don Finlay .

In the same month, on August 27, 1936, it ran a new world record in Oslo with 13.7 seconds. During this time he achieved the greatest improvement on an existing world record in the history of the hurdles sprint. It was fourteen years before Richard Attlesey could beat Towns' time. Towns' world record is the longest-running record ever in the men's hurdles sprint. Colin Jackson's world record time of 12.91 s from 1993 was the second longest at 13 years (until 2006).

After his career, Towns worked as a coach at the University of Georgia until 1975 .

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