Lionel Cox (cyclist)

Lionel Cox

To person
Date of birth	February 26, 1930
date of death	March 9, 2010
nation	Australia
discipline	train
Most important successes
1952: Olympic champion in tandem
Last updated: May 26, 2011

Lionel Cox (born February 26, 1930 in Brisbane , † March 9, 2010 in Sydney ) was an Australian cyclist . Cox was Olympic champion in tandem at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and came second in the track sprint.

Cox started cycling when he was 15, but had no success and so many falls that his mother forbade him to continue racing until he was more mature. Two years later, Cox tried again with a racing bike given by his mother, this time with great success. Cox won every race in his age group, including the junior sprint championship. In 1948, he drove his first season as an adult, winning the New South Wales Sprint Championship and fourth in the Australian Sprint Championship. In 1949 he was beaten by Russell Mockridge in the final of the Australian Sprint Championship , which cost Cox to participate in the British Empire Games in 1950. Cox then skipped the road season in order to prepare for the 1950/51 rail season more specifically. The process paid off, because Cox was state and national champion in the time trial over a mile and third in the national sprint championships. The following year, Cox remained unbeaten in all track races in New South Wales, even beating Mockridge. However, this won the national championships. In the nomination for the 1952 Summer Games, Cox was only in sixth place, with little chance of an appointment or even a mission. However, his success led the New South Wales Cycling Federation to raise funds to cover Cox's travel expenses. Cox's work colleagues from the fruit wholesale market in Sydney gave up, as did the cycling federations of the states of Victoria and Queensland , the rest of the travel expenses came from Cox and his mother.

In Helsinki, Cox was supposed to start in tandem with Mockridge. At that time, Cox had never competed in a tandem race, even a tandem was not available and had to be procured by Cox and Mockridge at short notice. Although the two had only driven three practice laps around the track, they started in the competition and beat the tandems from Hungary, Denmark, Italy and South Africa in the final. Cox also took part in the sprint, where he advanced to the finals. In a three-way run he was beaten by the amateur world champion Enzo Sacchi , but was able to leave the German Werner Potzernheim behind.

Cox remained an amateur. In 1953 and 1955 he was third in the Sprint Grand Prix of the amateurs in Paris.

Web links

• Lionel Cox in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Lionel Cox in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Short biography on bicyclehistory.com.au