Gaston Roelants

Gaston Roelant's medal table
Gaston Roelants 1967
athletics
Belgium
Olympic games
gold	1964 Tokyo	Obstacle course
European championships
gold	1962 Belgrade	Obstacle course
bronze	1966 Budapest	Obstacle course
silver	1969 Athens	Marathon run
bronze	1974 Rome	Marathon run

Gaston Roelants (born February 5, 1937 in Opvelp , Belgium , since 2002 Gaston baron Roelants ) is a former Belgian athlete . In his special discipline, the 3000-meter obstacle course , he became European champion in 1962 and Olympic champion in 1964, and he also set two world records. From August 1961 to the European Championships in 1966, he did not lose an obstacle course final for five years. Roelants twice improved the world record in the hour run , as a four-time winner in the Cross of Nations , he was the most successful cross-country runner of his generation.

Career

Roelants was 1.74 meters tall and had a competition weight of 67 kilograms. He started his career for the Daring Club Leuven Atletiek in Leuven . From 1960 he trained with Edmond Vanden Eynde , André De Hertoghe had been part of the training group since the early 1960s , and later Emiel Puttemans , Willy Polleunis and Erik De Beck also trained in the group with Edmond Vanden Eynde. The training was characterized by large volumes and pure driving play and tempo runs in the form of races, whereby Roelants was able to contest forty races of great intensity a year.

As his hourly world records show, Roelants was a runner who could keep up a high pace for a long time, but he never had great sprinting power. This forced him to run his races from the front. Usually he had his biggest lead one lap before the end, which could only be shortened by the pursuers who were racing for places. This running style was very attractive to the audience, as Roelants could always be seen and never hid in the field. Roelants himself said: “I love to run ahead. That is a risk, of course, but I have confidence to weather the dry spell. "

Roelants competed at a time when athletes in Olympic sports had to follow amateur status . Officially, they were not allowed to collect entry fees or bonuses. Due to his running style, Roelants was a crowd favorite and box office magnet, about which rumors were constantly circulating that he was getting paid for his athletic achievements. On the other hand, after his defeat by Roy Fowler in the Cross of Nations in 1963 , Roelants is said to have offered the Englishman a well-paid revenge. Roelants could never be proven a violation of the amateur conditions.

Until the Olympic victory in 1964

Roelants started cross-country skiing as a teenager . In 1955 he ran the 3,000-meter obstacle course under ten minutes for the first time and improved over the next few years. After not completing an obstacle course in 1956, in 1957, 1958 and 1959 he improved his best time in the obstacle course by about twenty seconds each year. In 1957 he won his first Belgian title when he won the junior cross-country championships. In 1959 he won his first Belgian championship title in the adult class in both cross-country and the obstacle course. With a time of 8: 56.6 minutes, he was placed in the world's best list for the first time in 1959, and at the end of the year he was 42nd. In 1960 he had his international breakthrough. At the Cross of Nations in Hamilton , Scotland , he finished second behind the Moroccan Rhadi Ben Abdesselam , and in the team standings, the Belgians were second behind the English team.

Shortly before the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, the Pole Zdzisław Krzyszkowiak had lowered the world record in the obstacle course to 8: 31.4 minutes, and behind him Nikolai Sokolow had improved the Soviet national record to 8: 32.4 minutes. In the Olympics, won Sokolow and Krzyszkowiak the first two heats, in the third forward won the Soviet Exweltrekordler Semyon Rschischtschin before the Americans Deacon Jones . The real surprise of the third heat, however, was that the German record holder Hermann Buhl failed in the fight for the final because of the internationally still largely unknown Gaston Roelants, because only the first three of each heat made it to the final. In the finals, the Soviet runners ensured the pace work and ran the first kilometer in 2:45 minutes, this was followed by a second kilometer of about three minutes and at this pace the field was divided. Roelants ran the third kilometer at the same pace and finished fourth behind Krzyszkowiak, Sokolow and Rschishchin in 8: 47.6 minutes. At the end of the season, Roelants' best time was 8: 45.8 minutes, which put him in 19th place in the world's best list of the year.

At the Berlin ISTAF on August 5, 1961, Roelants lost to Deacon Jones, which would be his last defeat for a few years. In the world annual best list in 1961, Roelants, who had improved his best time by a further seven seconds, was in seventh place with 8: 38.2 minutes. Krzyszkowiak topped the list with his new world record of 8: 30.4 minutes. The year 1962 began with a victory at Roelants Cross of Nations in Sheffield , in the team competition, the Belgian finished third behind the English and the Spanish. At the European Championships in Belgrade in 1962 , the first four obstacle runners from each preliminary run reached the final. Hermann Buhl won the first run, and the ailing world record holder Krzyszkowiak was eliminated as fifth of this run; in the second run, Roelants won ahead of Sokolow. In the final, Gaston Roelants took the lead from the start; when Buhl and the Romanian Zoltan Vamoş caught up after a thousand meters , he increased his pace and shortly afterwards had a clear lead again. Two laps before the end, Vamoş closed again to Roelants; Only at the last moat did Roelants finally break away and cross the finish line in a new national record of 8: 32.6 minutes. In the last 150 meters he ran out of five seconds ahead of Vamoş. Vamoş received the silver medal with a new Romanian national record ahead of Sokolow and Buhl. With his winning time in Belgrade at the end of 1962, Roelants also led the world's best list of the year.

In 1963 Roelants finished second behind the Englishman Roy Fowler at the Cross of Nations in San Sebastián , but won the team championship with the Belgian team. The highlight of the 1963 season was September 7th for Roelants. At an international sports festival in his hometown of Leuven , he was the first obstacle runner to achieve a time of less than 8:30 minutes: in 8: 29.6 minutes he improved Krzyszkowiak's world record and at the finish was more than ten seconds ahead of the two Soviet runners Nikolai Sokolow and Adolfas Aleksejūnas . At the end of the year Roelants was not only in first place in the world's best of the year in the obstacle course, but also in second place in the 5000 meter run behind New Zealander Murray Halberg with 13: 45.6 min .

Since the ISTAF 1961 Roelants had won 25 obstacle race (no heats) when he at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo took. The first three runners from three heats and the fourth fastest qualified for the final. The Portuguese Manuel de Oliveira won the first heat in 8: 40.8 minutes ahead of Ivan Bjeljajew from the Soviet Union. In the second run, the Briton Maurice Herriott set a new Olympic record with 8: 33.0 minutes, which Adolfas Aleksejūnas improved to 8: 31.8 minutes in the third run. Behind Aleksejūnas, Roelants crossed the finish line in second. After Roelants had the fastest time as a world record holder, but not the best time for the third kilometer, he ran right in front of the field in the finale. To the 1000-meter meantime Aleksejūnas, Oliveira and the Frenchman followed Guy Texereau , then Roelants also sparked by these pursuers. With a lead of over 50 meters, Roelants ran into the final lap while the others sprinted for places. At the finish, Roelants had a lead of 8: 30.8 minutes over Herriott, who crossed the finish line ahead of Beljajew and Oliveira. With his winning time in Tokyo, Roelants also topped the world annual best list in 1964. On the last day of the year he won the Corrida Internacional de São Silvestre in São Paulo for the first time . After Emil Zátopek , he was the second Olympic champion to win in São Paulo.

1965 to 1968

Gaston Roelants set his second world record on the obstacle course on August 7, 1965. He won the Belgian championships in Brussels in 8: 26.4 minutes, three seconds below his almost two-year-old world record and almost a minute at the finish Clearance over runner-up Julien Laureyns. In addition to first place over the obstacles, Roelants took second place in the world's best list of the year in the 10,000 meter run in 28: 10.6 min, only Ron Clarke was ahead of him. At the end of the year Roelants was able to repeat his victory in São Paulo.

Before the European Championships in 1966 , which took place in Budapest from August 30 to September 4, Roelants had been unbeaten over the obstacles for five years at sports festivals and championship runs. He started first in the 10,000 meter run and finished eighth. In the obstacle course, the first four of each heat qualified for the final. Roelants won the first heat in 8: 33.8 minutes, the fifth of this heat Jouko Kuha ran a new Finnish national record and was considerably faster than the winners of the other two heats, but did not qualify for the final. In the final, Roelants did not run away from the front as usual, but let others do the leading work on the first kilometer. On the second kilometer he maintained his pace, while the other runners gradually fell behind. At the beginning of the last lap Roelants still had a large lead, but Viktor Kudinski overtook him at the last obstacle and with Anatoli Kurjan a second runner from the Soviet Union was also able to still pass him. In 8: 28.8 minutes, Roelants ran into third place in a race in which five of the top seven winners were able to undercut their national record, only Kurjan and Roelants failed to set a national record. In the world annual best list of 1966 Roelants was in the obstacle course with 8: 27.2 min from the sports festival in Stockholm in second place behind Kudinski, over 10,000 meters he was in third place. On October 28, 1966, however, Roelants set two more world records in Leuven: single-handedly , he improved Ron Clarke's one-year-old record of 20,000 meters to 58: 06.2 minutes and the one- hour run of 20,664 meters, he stayed over 20,000 meters almost eighty seconds below Clarke's time, the hourly increase was 432 meters.

In March 1967 Roelants won the Cross of Nations in Barry ( Wales ), the Belgian team finished sixth. At the pre-Olympic competitions in Mexico City , Roelants won over the obstacles, six days later he won the pre-Olympic marathon in 2:19:37 h . Roelants ran over the obstacles in 1967 at 8: 28.6 min and over 10,000 meters at 28: 26.6 min. With these achievements, he led the world annual best list in 1967 on both routes. At the end of the year he crossed the finish line first for the third time in São Paulo.

On July 17, 1968, Jouho Kuha beat the world record over the obstacles in Stockholm with 8: 24.2 minutes, four days later Roelants ran his fastest time of the year in Brescia with 8: 29.2 minutes. At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, however, Kuha did not start after an infection. Viktor Kudinski set the fastest time of the obstacle runners competing in Mexico in 1968. In the heats, from which the first four runners made it to the final, only the two Kenyans Benjamin Kogo and Amos Biwott ran under nine minutes, Roelants qualified third in the third heat behind Biwott and the Bulgarian Mikhail Schelew . In the final, Roelants took the lead about halfway through the race and tried to outrun the other runners by increasing their pace, but he did not succeed. While Biwott won the race ahead of Kogo, Roelants finished seventh in 8: 59.4 minutes. Four days after the final in the obstacle course, he also competed in the Olympic marathon. Up to kilometer 20 he belonged to the leading group and ran in front in this group, but at kilometer 25 he was already one minute behind the now leading Naftali Temu and Mamo Wolde . Wolde won the race in 2:20:26 hours, with Roelants taking eleventh place, over eight minutes behind. On New Year's Eve 1968 he won again in São Paulo.

1969 until the end of his career

After his third Olympic obstacle final, Roelants did not compete in this discipline for four years, and it was not until the mid-1970s that he returned to his special course a few times. Until then he continued his career mainly as a cross-country runner and as a road runner. In 1969 he won the Cross of Nations again in Clydebank , Scotland , and took third place with the team. At the European Championships in Athens in 1969 , Roelants competed in the 10,000 meter run on September 16. After 9000 meters he tried to break away, but the defending champion Jürgen Haase was able to go and a few more runners caught up again before the final lap. In the end, Haase won ahead of the Briton Mike Tagg , with Roelants taking fifth place four seconds behind bronze. The marathon took place five days later. In the heat of Athens Roelants took the sole lead from kilometer 10, at kilometer 35 he had 55 seconds ahead of Briton Ron Hill , who was able to steadily reduce the gap afterwards. With 900 meters to go, Hill ran past Roelants and was already more than half a minute ahead of the finish line. Roelants won the silver medal in 2: 17: 22.2 hours.

At the Cross of Nations in Vichy in 1970 , Roelants crossed the finish line two seconds behind Mike Tagg and won silver, the Belgian team finished third behind England and France. In 1971 at the European Championships in Helsinki , Roelants gave up the 10,000 meter run, five days later he started the marathon. After twenty kilometers a leading group formed from the Briton Trevor Wright and the two Belgians Gaston Roelants and Karel Lismont . The 22-year-old Lismont then shaped the course of the race on the second half of the track and won ahead of Wright and Ron Hill, while Roelants fell back and finished fifth in 2: 17: 48.8 hours.

In 1972 Roelants won the Cross of Nations for the fourth time in Cambridge and took third place in the team classification with the Belgian team. During the track season he improved his personal best in the 10,000 meter run to 28: 03.8 min at the Belgian championships. In 1972 he took part in the Olympic Games for the fourth time , but did not finish in the marathon. Ten days after the Olympic marathon, Roelants started a world record attempt in an hour run in Brussels. In contrast to his world record run in 1966, it wasn't going it alone, as his training colleague Willy Polleunis in particular was able to keep up for a long time. Shortly before the intermediate time over 10 miles (= 16.093 meters) Polleunis sprinted off and set a new world record with 46: 04.2 minutes, Roelants overcame this intermediate time in 46: 06.4 minutes. After that, Roelants was able to gradually break away from Polleunis. With 57: 44.4 min he improved his 20,000 meter world record by over 20 seconds; the new hour record of 20,784 meters meant an increase of 120 meters. Roelants' two records lasted until 1975, when they were beaten by Jos Hermens from the Netherlands .

The Cross of Nations would have turned 70 in 1973 and would have taken place for the 60th time. On this occasion, the World Athletics Federation IAAF upgraded cross-country running in Waregem, Belgium , and replaced the Cross of Nations with the World Cross-Country Championships . In the men's individual competition, the Finn Pekka Päivärinta won , Roelants took eighth place. In the team classification, the Belgians won with Willy Polleunis, Gaston Roelants, Erik De Beck , Erik Gyselinck , Karel Lismont and Marc Smet . A year later at the second World Cross Country Championships in Monza , the Belgians were even more successful, Erik De Beck won the individual title and the team defended their title, with Frank Grillaert taking the place of Willy Polleunis and Gaston Roelants 14th in the individual ranking. At the European Championships in Rome in 1974 , Gaston Roelants ran again in the marathon. Briton Ian Thompson took over the lead early and had a one and a half minute lead over Eckhard Lesse from the GDR at the finish line , another one and a half minutes behind Gaston Roelants won his fourth medal in 2: 16: 29.6 h at his fifth European championships.

In 1975 Roelants won bronze with the Belgian team at the World Cross Country Championships, and in 1976 the silver medal. However, he was denied the attempted fifth Olympic start in 1976. In 1977 Roelants celebrated his 40th birthday and was officially a senior among the athletes. At the Senior World Championships in Gothenburg he returned to his regular course, with a new senior world record of 8: 41.5 min he won the world title in the 3000 meter obstacle course. Then he ended his sporting career.

After a career in athletics

Gaston Roelants 2012

Roelants was a trained elevator fitter, but then switched to the Belgian criminal police. He later worked as a representative for a wine company, after which he represented the sporting goods manufacturer Puma . In 2002 King Albert II raised Gaston Roelants to the nobility. 2004 was Boudewijn Stadium in Louvain neighborhood Kessel-Lo in Atletiek Arena Gaston Roelants renamed. Roelants was chairman of his association for five years in the 1990s and is now honorary chairman. Gaston Roelants is married with one daughter and has been a grandfather since 2005.

classification

Belgium produced three Olympic champions in track and field up to and including 2008: Gaston Reiff in 1948 , Gaston Roelants in 1964 and Tia Hellebaut in 2008 . Four Belgians won European championships up to and including 2006: Gaston Roelants in 1962, Karel Lismont in 1971 and Kim Gevaert and Tia Hellebaut in 2006 . Of these athletes, only Roelants was able to set world records, which is why he can be considered the most successful athlete in Belgium.

In 2005, Roelants was ranked 87th in a Flemish television poll for the greatest Belgians , and he was the only athlete among the first 111 Belgians. In the French language version , there was no athlete in the top 100.

Roelants was unbeaten on the 3000 meter obstacle course from 1961 to 1966 in 45 finals, his winning streak broke in the final of the European Championships. He led the world annual best list from 1962 to 1965 and 1967.

In 1999, the professional journal Leichtathletik asked the five experts Rolf von der Laage , Ekkehard zur Megede, Karl Adolf Scherer , Klaus Sigl and Otto Verhoeven for a list of the athletes of the century in each discipline. In the obstacle course, the experts decided on Moses Kiptanui . Behind Volmari Iso-Hollo , Gaston Roelants and Anders Gärderud took third place.

As a cross-country runner, Roelants was the third runner, after Jack Holden and Alain Mimoun , to win the Cross of Nations four times. It was not until 1992 that John Ngugi managed to achieve a fifth individual world title. The team championship in the Cross of Nations won Roelants in 1963; In 1973 and 1974 he was one of the first two teams to win the world championship.

At the Corrida Internacional de São Silvestre in São Paulo, Roelants was the first runner to win this road race four times. It was not until 2000 that the Kenyan Paul Tergat surpassed this last existing record by Gaston Roelants with his fifth win.

Belgian championship title

Roelants won a total of 26 Belgian championship titles in five different disciplines in the adult age group, from 1959 to 1967 he won nine times in a row on the obstacle course, with eleven titles he was even more successful in cross.

• 1500 meter run: 1963
• 5000 meter run: 1969
• 10,000 meter run: 1965, 1966, 1969, 1972
• 3000 meter obstacle course: 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967
• Cross-country run: 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1972

In addition, Roelants won three Belgian championship titles as a junior and two as a senior. In addition, he was four times Belgian champion with the 4 x 1500 meter relay from 1963 to 1966.

Best times

• 3000 meter obstacle course: 8: 26.4 min 1965 in Brussels
• 3000 meter run: 7: 48.6 min 1965
• 5000 meter run: 13: 34.6 min 1969
• 10,000 meter run: 28: 03.8 min 1972 in Brussels
• 20,000-meter run: 57.44.4 min 1972 in Brussels
• Hourly run: 20,784 m 1972 in Brussels
• Marathon: 2: 16: 29.6 h 1974 in Rome

literature

• Klaus Amrhein / Axel Schäfer: 60 years of the European Athletics Championships . Self-published, Groß-Zimmer / Bochum 1998
• Manfred Holzhausen: world records and world record holder. Hour run / 20 km run / 3,000 m obstacle course . Self-published, Grevenbroich 2001
• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle II. London 1948 - Tokyo 1964. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-328-00740-7 .
• Volker Kluge: Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle III. Mexico City 1968 - Los Angeles 1984. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00741-5 .
• Ekkehard zur Megede: The History of Olympic Athletics. 2nd volume 1948-1968. Bartels & Wernitz Berlin 1969
• Wolfgang Wünsche: athletes, duels, records. Illustrated history of athletics . Südwest-Verlag Munich 1971 ISBN 3-517-00353-0

Web links

• Tex Maule: Fleming with a Flair , Sports Illustrated July 17, 1967 (English)
• Gaston Roelants in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• International Cross Country Championships
• Belgian championships from 1960

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eternal student list of the DCLA, in the 2000 meter run there is a performance by Roelants from 1955 ( memento of the original from May 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ^ Arnd Krüger (1998). Many roads lead to Olympia. The changes in the training systems for middle and long distance runners (1850-1997), in: N. GISSEL (Hrsg.): Sportliche achievement im Wandel . Hamburg: Czwalina, pp. 41 - 56. ISBN 978-3-88020-322-8 .
3. ↑ Wishes, page 140
4. ↑ Wishes, page 140
5. ^ Obituary for Roy Fowler
6. ↑ Champion title of athletes of the DCLA since 1957 ( Memento from December 22nd, 2015 in the web archive archive.today )
7. ↑ Holzhausen, page 42
8. ↑ to Megede, Volume 2, page 199f
9. ↑ Holzhausen, page 42
10. ↑ to Megede, Volume 2, page 269; According to Amrhein, Schäfer, page 174, the defeat of Roelants in the 1961 six-country match against Wilhelm-Rüdiger Böhme was his last defeat, but the six-country match took place on July 8th and 9th, 1961, one month before the ISTAF
11. ↑ Top ten obstacle runners each year
12. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 140
13. ↑ to Megede, Volume 2, page 269f
14. ↑ List of winners of the New Years Eve run
15. ↑ Holzhausen, page 75
16. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 174
17. ↑ EAA (Ed.): Statistics Manual, published for the European Championships 2002 in Munich, page 65
18. ↑ The Athlete, No. 43/67, page 7
19. ↑ to Megede, page 353ff
20. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 210f
21. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 219
22. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 250f
23. ↑ Holzhausen, page 41
24. ↑ Der Leichtathlet, Heft 13/73, page 12
25. ↑ Der Leichtathlet, Heft 12/74, page 3
26. ↑ Amrhein, Schäfer, page 306
27. ↑ Homepage of his association ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Flemish) (accessed September 6, 2009) 
28. ↑ Volker Kluge, Chronicle II, page 791, note 92
29. ↑ The Daring Club about the arena and its namesake ( memento of the original from March 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Flemish) 
30. ↑ The greatest Belgians. (Flemish) (accessed September 1, 2009)
31. ↑ Athletics Volume 44/1999, page 16
32. ↑ Athletics, Volume 46/1999, page 16
33. ↑ Holzhausen, page 43
34. ↑ Championship title of athletes of the DCLA ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.