1976 Summer Olympics / Athletics - Marathon (Men)
sport | athletics | ||||||||
discipline | Marathon run | ||||||||
gender | Men | ||||||||
Attendees | 67 athletes from 36 countries | ||||||||
Competition location |
Olympic Stadium Montreal (start and finish) |
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Competition phase | July 31, 1976 | ||||||||
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The men's marathon at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal was held on July 31, 1976. The start and finish was the Montreal Olympic Stadium . 67 athletes took part, 60 of whom made it to the finish.
Olympic champion was Waldemar Cierpinski , who won before the 1972 Olympic champion , Frank Shorter from the USA. Bronze went to the Belgian Karel Lismont .
Günter Mielke started for the Federal Republic of Germany and finished the run in 54th place.
Runners from Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein did not take part.
Existing records
World record | 2:08:33.6 h | Derek Clayton ( Australia ) | Antwerp , Belgium | May 30, 1969 |
Olympic record | 2: 12: 11.2 h | Abebe Bikila ( Ethiopia ) | Tokyo Marathon , Japan | October 21, 1964 |
Note: World records were not set in the marathon because of the different track conditions.
Routing
The race was started in the Montreal Olympic Stadium . After a lap and a half, the track led out of the stadium towards the northeast on Rue Sherbrooke . At Rue Dickson , the route turned left towards the northwest and then led with a few curves and arcs through the Arrondissement of Saint-Léonard to the Rivière des Prairies . In the Arrondissement of Montréal-Nord , we continued southwest along the course of the river through the Arrondissement of Ahuntsic-Cartierville . On the Boulevard de l'Acadie , the course turned again to the east, crossed the Trans-Canada Highway and reached the Parc du Mont-Royal in the Arrondissement of Outremont . The route now led around McGill University and thus reached Rue Sherbrooke again , on which it went north-east back to the Olympic Stadium. There was the finish line after one last lap.
Race course
Date: July 31, 1976, 5:30 p.m. local time ( UTC − 5 )
The race took place in wet and rainy weather, and the conditions were not very pleasant for the runners. For a long time, the field around the 1972 Olympic champion Frank Shorter from the USA and the Finn Lasse Virén remained together in rainy weather. It was only halfway through the route that a top group of almost 20 runners formed, including Shorter and Virén, GDR athlete Waldemar Cierpinski, Belgian Karel Lismont and Don Kardong from the USA. At 28 km Shorter picked up the pace. Cierpinski could call, the rest of the field lost connection. Almost ten kilometers from the finish, Cierpinski increased the pace, his opponent could no longer follow. Cierpinski's gap to Shorter continued to grow. Waldemar Cierpinski reached the stadium with a lead of around 50 seconds and was Olympic champion ahead of Frank Shorter, who secured silver here after the gold medal in Munich . Just under half a minute behind Shorter, Karel Lismont crossed the finish line and won the bronze medal three seconds ahead of Don Kardong. Lasse Virén came in fifth. Thus his plan to win three gold medals in the long distances over 5000 and 10,000 meters as well as in the marathon at the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 , like the Czechoslovak Emil Zátopek , had failed. However, Virén's result with two gold medals and the fifth place achieved here is without a doubt a great achievement.
Waldemar Cierpinski became the first Olympic champion and at the same time the first medal winner for the GDR in the marathon .
Bottom line
literature
- Ernst Huberty / Willy B. Wange, The Olympic Games Montreal Innsbruck 1976, Lingen-Verlag, Cologne 1976, p. 223f
Video
- 26 Times in a Row - Mens Marathon, Olympic Games, Montreal 1976 , published December 13, 2012 on youtube.com, accessed December 13, 2017
Web links
- Athletics at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games: Men's Marathon in the Sports-Reference database (archived from the original ), accessed April 2, 2020.
- Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 63, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 13, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009 Page 565 (Engl.) ( Memento of 29 June 2011 at the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 13, 2017
- ↑ Route map in the Official Report , p. 162 (PDF), accessed on December 13, 2017
- ↑ Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 63, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 13, 2017
- ↑ Athletics at the 1976 Montreal Summer Games: Men's Marathon in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original ), accessed on April 2, 2020.