Ian Thompson (marathon runner)

Ian Reginald Thompson (born October 16, 1949 in Birkenhead ) is a retired British marathon runner . Thompson, who is 1.67 m tall and weighed 60 kg during his competitive time, became European champion in 1974.

Thompson was your average track runner when he ran the AAA in the marathon on October 27, 1973 so his club Luton United could bring a full team to the start. Thompson won the run and the championship in 2:12:40 hours, the fastest time of a marathon debutant to date. He had thus qualified for the English team at the British Commonwealth Games 1974 , which took place in Christchurch at the end of January . In the fastest marathon ever run at the Commonwealth Games, Thompson won in 2:09:12 hours with a British record and two minutes ahead of second-placed Jack Foster from New Zealand.

After he had also won the Athens Marathon in the spring of 1974, the European Championship marathon taking place in Rome on September 8th was his fourth run over the classic distance and he also won this run. Already in the first split times he was in the lead and at the finish he had a one-and-a-half minute lead over Eckhard Lesse from the GDR in 2: 13: 18.8 hours .

In 1976 Thompson, tormented by cramps, could not qualify for the Olympic Games in Montreal. By winning the AAA championship in 1980, Thompson qualified for his only international championship after 1974, but had to give up at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Thompson was one of the best British marathoners from 1973 to 1982. In 1982 he won the Paris Marathon .

His wife Margaret was one of the first successful British marathon runners. In 1975 in Korso , Finland, she set a British record of 3:07:47 minutes, so that the Thompson couple held the British record for men and women for a few months.

literature

• Peter Matthews & Ian Buchanan: All-Time Greats of British and Irish Sport. Enfield 1995, ISBN 0-85112-678-2