John Parlett

John Parlett ( Harold John Parlett ; born April 19, 1925 in Bromley ) is a former British middle-distance runner .

Career

Parlett finished eighth in the 800-meter run at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, over six seconds behind third-placed Frenchman Marcel Hansenne .

In early 1950, Parlett, starting for England , won the British Empire Games in Auckland over 880 yards and was second in the English 4 x 440 yards relay with the English team. At the end of August of the same year, the Norwegian Audun Boysen , Marcel Hansenne and Parlett's compatriot Roger Bannister won their preliminary runs at the European Athletics Championships in Brussels . Parlett qualified third in the second run for the final. In the final, Boysen started at a high pace and on the first lap set himself several meters away from the other runners. After six hundred meters, Boysen lost their strength and the two Brits passed him on the final corner. On the home stretch Hansenne stormed up from behind, but only reached Bannister. Parlett won with a championship record of 1: 50.5 minutes and 0.2 seconds ahead of Hansenne and Bannister. Boysen ultimately came in fifth. While Hansenne and Boysen went down in track and field history as world record holders over 1000 meters and Bannister as the first mile runner under four minutes, Parlett's two victories in 1950 remained the high point of career.

John Parlett is 1.80 m tall and weighed 62 kg when he was active. In 1979 he married his former teammate Dorothy Manley-Hall .

First name problem

Parlett is referred to as Harry John Parlett in the German special edition from 1950. In the list of results of the Olympic Games according to zur Megede (1999) and in the manual published on the occasion of the European Championships in 2002, he is referred to as Harold Parlett. Bob Phillips calls him John Parlett in his monograph. In his standard work on the Olympic Games, Volker Kluge leads him as HJ Parlett.

literature

• European Athletic Association (Ed.): Statistics Manual. Munich 2002
• Ekkehard zur Megede: The Modern Olympic Century 1896-1996 Track and Field Athletics. Berlin 1999 (published by the German Society for Athletics Documentation eV )
• Ekkehard zur Megede: Special report in the professional journal Leichtathletik from 1950; Reprinted in Klaus Amrhein / Axel Schäfer: 60 years of the European Athletics Championships. Groß-Zimmer / Bochum 1998
• Bob Phillips: Honor of Empire, Glory of Sport. The History of Athletics at The Commonwealth Games. Manchester 2000, ISBN 1-903158-09-5

Web links

• Parletts are living proof of romance of the Games , Times article by John Goodbody , May 16, 2003
• John Parlett in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )