1904 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 1500 m (men)

sport	athletics
discipline	1500 meter run
gender	Men
Attendees	9 athletes from 3 countries
Competition location	Francis Field
Competition phase	September 3, 1904
Winning time	4: 05.4 min ( WR )
Medalist James Lightbody ( USA )   Frank Verner ( USA )   Lacey Hearn ( USA )

The 1,500-meter race of the men at the Olympic Games 1904 in St. Louis was on September 3, 1904 Francis Field discharged. There were no preliminary runs, all nine participants contested the run together.

Like many other competitions, the race was dominated by the Americans, with only two athletes not from the United States. The first four places went to US runners, James Lightbody became Olympic champion and Frank Verner won the silver medal. Bronze went to Lacey Hearn .

Records

The world records that existed at the time were still unofficial.

World and Olympic records	4: 06.2 min	Great Britain	Charles Bennett	Paris Olympic Final ( FRA ), July 15, 1900

The following records were broken or set at the 1904 Olympic Games in the 1,500 meter run :

WR and OR	4: 05.4 min	United States	James Lightbody

Results

space	athlete	country	Time (min)
1	James Lightbody	United States	4: 05.4 ( WR )
2	Frank Verner	United States	4: 06.8
3	Lacey Hearn	United States	k. A.
4th	David Munson	United States	k. A.
5	Johannes Runge	Germany
6th	Peter Deer	Canada
7th	Howard Valentine	United States
8th	Harvey Cohn	United States
9	Charles Bacon	United States

With the exception of David Munson and Charles Bacon, all participants had already contested the 800-meter run two days earlier . In the 1500 meter final, Harvey Cohn and Peter Deer initially took the lead. Frank Verner was usually third on the first lap. During the second round, Deer fell behind. At the beginning of the final lap, Cohn led in front of Verner, Lightbody and Munson. On the back straight, Lightbody pulled away easily and won by six yards . He won ahead of Verner and Lacey Hearn, who came in third in the final sprint. Lightbody ran a new world record , but the new record time was seen as significantly weaker than the previous record over a mile - at 1,609.34 m a good 100 m longer. Irishman Thomas Conneff held the world record of miles for amateurs in 4: 15.6 minutes.

Three of the sources referred to here consistently list the above result. There are only deviations from seventh place on the IOC side . Bacon and Valentine are named there as participants, but their placements remain open, while Cohn, as in the other sources, is listed as eighth.

James Lightbody started his sporting career as a sprinter in 1899 and switched to the middle distance after two years. He could not achieve his professional goal as a doctor, he had to give up his studies because of an eye problem.

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  James Lightbody as the winner of the 1,500-meter race , in which he became Olympic champion at these games for the third time

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  Lacey Hearn, also a participant over 800 meters , wins the bronze medal

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  Johannes Runge from Germany - fifth over 800 and 1500 meters, participant over 400 meters

• 

  Olympic contestant Charles Bacon, USA, four years later Olympic champion in the
  400 meter hurdles

literature

• Volker Kluge , Olympic Summer Games - The Chronicle I, Berlin 1997 ( ISBN 3-328-00715-6 )
• Ekkehard zur Megede , The history of Olympic athletics, Volume 1: 1896–1936, Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970

Web links

• Sports-Reference, Athletics at the 1904 St. Louis Summer Games: Men's 1,500 meters , English, accessed July 30, 2018
• Olympic Games St. Louis 1904, Athletics, 1500m men , IOC page on athletics at the 1904 Olympic Games at olympic.org, English, accessed July 30, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ekkehard zur Megede , The History of Olympic Athletics, Volume 1: 1896-1936, Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, p. 49