1932 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 800 m (men)

sport	athletics
discipline	800 meter run
gender	Men
Attendees	21 athletes from 12 countries
Competition location	Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Competition phase	August 1st, 1932 (preliminary) August 2nd, 1932 (final)
Medalist Tommy Hampson ( GBR )   Alex Wilson ( CAN )   Phil Edwards ( CAN )

The men's 800 meter run at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles was held on August 1 and 2, 1932 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum . 21 athletes took part.

Olympic champion was British Tommy Hampson in a new world record time ahead of Canadians Alex Wilson and Phil Edwards .

Existing records

• World record : 1: 50.6 min - Séra Martin ( France ), Colombes , July 14, 1928
• Olympic record : 1: 51.8 min - Douglas Lowe ( Great Britain ), Amsterdam final , July 31, 1928

Conducting the competition

The runners started three heats on August 1st. The three first placed qualified for the final on August 2nd.

Note: The qualified athletes are highlighted in light blue.

Prelims

Date: August 1, 1932

Forward 1

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Edwin Genung	United States	1: 54.8 min
2	Phil Edwards	Canada	1: 55.1 min
3	Jack Powell	Great Britain	1: 55.6 min
4th	Cyril Evans	New Zealand	1: 56.6 min
5	Paul Martin	Switzerland	1: 58.4 min
6th	Nestor Gomes	Brazil	2: 00.5 min
DNF	Jean Keller	France

Forward 2

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Charles Hornbostel	United States	1: 52.4 min
2	Alex Wilson	Canada	1: 52.5 min
3	Otto Peltzer	German Empire	1: 53.6 min
4th	Hjalle Johannesen	Norway	1: 54.3 min
5	Hermenegildo del Rosso	Argentina	1: 54.9 min
6th	René Morel	France	1: 55.2 min
7th	José Lucílo Iturbe	Mexico	1: 55.6 min

Forward 3

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Tommy Hampson	Great Britain	1: 53.0 min
2	Séra Martin	France	1: 53.2 min
3	Edwin Turner	United States	1: 54.0 min
4th	Clyde Edward King	Canada	1: 54.4 min
5	Max Danz	German Empire	1: 58.9 min
6th	Domingos Puglisi	Brazil	1: 59.4 min
7th	Miguel Vasconcelos	Mexico	2: 00.0 min

final

Otto Peltzer (DEU) finished ninth

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Tommy Hampson	Great Britain	1: 49.7 min	WR
2	Alex Wilson	Canada	1: 49.9 min
3	Phil Edwards	Canada	1: 51.5 min
4th	Edwin Genung	United States	1: 51.7 min
5	Edwin Turner	United States	1: 52.5 min
6th	Charles Hornbostel	United States	1: 52.7 min
7th	Jack Powell	Great Britain	1: 53.1 min
8th	Séra Martin	France	1: 53.6 min
9	Otto Peltzer	German Empire	1: 55.0 min

Date: August 1, 1932

The US athlete Ben Eastman would have been the top favorite over these 800 meters . But Eastman decided to only run the 400-meter course in Los Angeles .

The final turned into a race with historic dimensions. For the first time the limit of 1:50 min was undercut. The Canadian Phil Edwards, who won the Olympic Games in 1928 , ran from the front at high speed using his usual tactics and was even able to pull away from the field with a 400 meter run time of 52.4 s. But he had to pay tribute to this hellish pace and at that moment the Briton Thomas Hampson accelerated. Edward's compatriot Alex Wilson followed in Hampson's slipstream and the two of them easily passed Edwards. Hampson won the sprint on the home straight twenty meters from the finish and became Olympic champion with the new world record time of 1: 49.7 minutes ahead of Wilson, who with 1: 49.9 minutes was also below the 1: 50-minute Brand remained. The IAAF recognized world record improvements at that time only in the fifth of a second range and so Hampson's world record was officially 1: 49.8 min.

Thomas Hampson and Alex Wilson were the first runners to break the 1:50 mark.

Hampson had the fourth British success in a row over this distance. Wilson and Edwards won the first Canadian 800 meter medals.

literature

• Ekkehard zur Megede , The History of Olympic Athletics, Volume 1: 1896-1936, Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, p. 228f

Web links

• SportsReference 800m , accessed September 16, 2017
• Official report pp. 414-416, engl. (PDF), accessed on September 16, 2017
• 800m WR: Tommy Hampson-1932 OG, Los Angeles , published February 24, 2016 on youtube.com, accessed September 16, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009 page 548 ( Memento from June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ SportsReference (Eng.)