Ron Hill

Ron Hill
Ron Hill, 1975
Full name	Ronald J. Hill
nation	Great Britain
birthday	September 25, 1938
place of birth	Accrington ,  UK
size	167 cm
Weight	61 kg
date of death	May 23, 2021
Career
discipline	Long distance running
Best performance	10,000 m: 28: 39.0 min (1969) Marathon: 2:09:28 h (1970)
society	Bolton Harriers
Medal table
Universiade 0 × 0 × 1 × European championships 1 × 0 × 1 × British Commonwealth Games 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Universiade bronze 1963 Porto Alegre 5000 m  European championships gold 1969 Athens marathon bronze 1971 Helsinki marathon  British Commonwealth Games Participant for England  gold 1970 Edinburgh marathon

Ronald J. "Ron" Hill MBE (born September 25, 1938 in Accrington , Lancashire , † May 23, 2021 ) was a British long-distance runner . The 1.67 m tall and 61 kg in his competition time Hill became European marathon champion in 1969 .

Athletic career

Hill made his first international start at the 1962 European Championships in Belgrade when he gave up in the marathon. At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 , Hill finished 18th in the 10,000-meter run after 29: 53.0 minutes , and in the marathon he was 19th in 2: 25: 34.4 hours. Hill reached 5th place in the 6-mile run at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston in 1966 . A month later at the European Championships in Budapest he finished 12th in the marathon in 2: 26: 04.8 hours.

At the 1968 Olympic Games Hill only competed over 10,000 meters at the height of Mexico City and finished seventh in 29: 53.2 minutes.In the heat of Athens , he won the European Championships in Athens in 1969 in 2:16, 47.8 hours ahead of the Belgian Gaston Roelants and the Scot Jim Alder . He was the third British marathon European champion of the 1960s after Brian Kilby and Jim Hogan .

Hill had broken the world records over 15 miles and over 25 kilometers in 1965. In 1968 he broke the world record in the 10-mile run twice. In 1970 he improved the British marathon record when he won the Boston Marathon in 2:10:30 h and improved the course record by three minutes. At the British Commonwealth Games he won on July 23, 1970 in Edinburgh in 2:09:28 h with almost three minutes ahead of Jim Alder. Until then, only the Australian Derek Clayton had run a faster marathon; Clayton also competed in Edinburgh but gave up.

At the European Championships in Helsinki in 1971 , the Belgian Karel Lismont won ahead of the Briton Trevor Wright , Hill was third in 2: 14: 34.8 hours. A year later, Hill finished sixth in the Olympic marathon in Munich . At the British Commonwealth Games in 1974 he was again 18th with 21 minutes behind the winner Ian Thompson .

Life after competitive sport

Ron Hill studied chemistry at Manchester University and later received his PhD. He specialized in textiles and built a sportswear company under the name Ronhill and Hilly Clothing Company .

In 1971 he was awarded the Order of MBE . In 1981 he wrote his autobiography A long Hard Road. In two volumes he describes in detail his daily training since 1964, which he never gave up even after his career. In 1996 he ran his last marathon race at the hundredth Boston Marathon. Of 115 marathons in 55 countries, he ran 112 under 2:50 hours and 29 under 2:20 hours.

literature

• Peter Matthews & Ian Buchanan: All-Time Greats of British and Irish Sport. Enfield 1995, ISBN 0-85112-678-2

Web links

• Ron Hill on sporting-heroes.net
• Athletes of the marathon - Ron Hill in Time-to-Run
• Athletics: After 15,696 daily jogs, Ron Hill can give Alf Tupper a run for his money , article by Simon Turnbull in The Independent , December 16, 2007
• Ron Hill in the database of Olympedia.org (English)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Runner's World : Always Up For A Run , April 1, 2006 ( Memento of August 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive )