Norman Pritchard

athletics
silver	1900	200 m
silver	1900	200 m hurdles

Norman Pritchard ( Norman Gilbert Pritchard , later stage name Norman Trevor ; born June 23, 1875 in Kolkata , India , † October 31, 1929 in Norwalk ( California ), USA ) was a track and field athlete and medalist at the Olympic Games , which was officially considered for his native India took part. In later years he acted as a film actor under the name Norman Trevor .

Life

Pritchard was of British descent and the son of Helen Maynard Pritchard and George Peterson Pritchard, who was an accountant for commercial companies. Norman Pritchard studied at St. Xavier's College in Kolkata and then worked for some time as an assistant in a trading company for jute goods .

His sporting passion was football . In a game by his college team in 1897, he scored the first hat trick in a soccer tournament in India. His athletic talent, however, was running on the sprint courses . From 1894 to 1900 he was the uninterrupted Bengali champion over 100  yards , with a Bengali record in 1898 with 10.0 seconds.

His achievements also attracted attention in distant England . The exclusive London Athletic Club used a visit by Pritchard in the land of his ancestors shortly before the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris to accept him as a member. In the following days and weeks he took part in various running events of the club, where he won various victories, so over 100 yards and in the hurdles over 120 yards, in which he was able to defeat the British champion of 1897.

Just a week before the start of the athletics competitions at the Games in Paris, the championships of the Amateur Athletics Association (AAA) took place, which could be equated with the British championships. Several athletes from the USA also took part in this, who made a stopover in England on the way to Paris. Pritchard took second place behind Alvin Kraenzlein in the 120 yard hurdles . The championships were used by the AAA officials to name the athletes who should travel to Paris for their association. Pritchard was also chosen.

This sparked a later dispute about Pritchard's national affiliation at the Olympic Games. The background to this is the fact that at the early Olympic Games the athletes were viewed as participants in a club or association, which as a rule represented the country in which the club or association was based in international competitions. The appointment of Pritchard by the AAA , who was also a citizen of the British Empire , led well-known sports historians to believe that he had participated in the 1900 Olympic Games as a Briton.

However, Pritchard was also a member of the Bengal Presidency Athletic Club in his Indian hometown of Kolkata. It is unclear whether his trip to Europe in 1900 was related to a posting to the Olympic Games. In any case, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) leads Norman Pritchard as the first Indian athlete at the Olympic Games and the first medal winner in this country and Asia .

Pritchard took part in 5 competitions at the Olympic Games in Paris, the 60-meter run, the 100-meter run , the 200-meter run , the 110-meter hurdle run and the 200-meter hurdle run. He reached three finals and was able to take second place twice. In the third final over 110 m hurdles he had to give up and did not reach the goal.

Placements at the Olympic Games:

• II. Summer Olympics 1900, Paris
  • 200 m - silver with 22.8 s (gold to Walter Tewksbury from the USA with 22.2 s; bronze to Stan Rowley from Australia with 22.9 s)
  • 200 m hurdles - silver with 22.8 s (gold to Alvin Kraenzlein from the USA with 22.2 s; bronze to Stan Rowley from Australia with 22.9 s)
  • 60 m - eliminated in the preliminary run (gold to Alvin Kraenzlein from the USA with 7.0 s)
  • 100 m - eliminated in the hope run (gold to Frank Jarvis from the USA with 11.0 s)
  • 110 m hurdles - abandoned in the final (gold to Alvin Kraenzlein from the USA with 15.4 s)

Note: With the exception of the times of the respective winner, the running times are estimated, as there was no time measurement for the placed. With them, the gap to the winner or the first place was estimated with a length specification.

Norman Trevor on the Sorrell and Son film set in 1927

Following the Paris Games, he returned to India. Here he devoted himself to football again and held the post of secretary at the Indian Football Association . In 1906 he traveled again to England, where he rejoined the London Athletic Club .

After 1908, Norman Pritchard's name is no longer documented. Research by Indian biographers comes to the conclusion that Pritchard moved to the USA and began a career as a theater artist and film actor there under the name Norman Trevor. Norman Trevor played at the 39th Street Theater in New York City in 1917 and starred in at least 28 films between 1915 and 1929, primarily as a supporting actor . That would make Norman Pritchard the first Olympian in a series of successful athletes who moved from the sports stage to the show stage.

Pritchard aka Norman Trevor died of a brain disease at the age of 54.

Web links

• Norman Trevor in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Norman Pritchard in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• THE STORY OF A CHAMPION FROM THE EAST in The Telegraph India on August 7, 2008