Thomas Burke (athlete)

Thomas Burke
Thomas Burke, 1918
Full name	Thomas Edmund Burke
nation	United States
birthday	January 15, 1875
place of birth	Boston
size	183 cm
Weight	66 kg
date of death	February 14, 1929
Place of death	Boston
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	11.8 s ( 100 m )
society	Boston Athletic Association
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Athens 1896 100 m gold Athens 1896 400 m

Thomas Burke ( Thomas Edmund "Tom" Burke ; born January 15, 1875 in Boston , Massachusetts , USA ; † February 14, 1929 ibid) was a student at Boston University and participated in the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 .

Life

Burke competed for the USA and took first place both in the 100-meter run with a time of 12.0 s and in the 400-meter run with a time of 54.2 s and received two silver medals for this (1896 the winner has not yet received a gold medal). He was one of the first runners to practice the low start . At the third elimination race of the 100 meter competition on the first day of competition on March 25th ^jul. / April 6, 1896 ^greg. he took first place in front of the German Fritz Hofmann in 11.8 s. At the second elimination race over 400 meters on the first day of competition on March 25th ^July. / April 6, 1896 ^greg. he took first place in 58.4 s ahead of the British Charles Gmelin .

Even before the Olympic Games in Athens, Burke was a well-known runner over 400 meters and 440 yards. In 1895 he won the AAU title over 440 yards. After the Olympics, he specialized in longer distances and won over 440 and 880 yards ICAAAA titles. In 1897 he was a co-initiator of the annual Boston Marathon .

From 1899 he studied at Harvard Law School and became a lawyer. He also wrote sporting articles for the Boston Journal and Boston Post .

Web links

Commons : Thomas Burke (athlete)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Thomas Burke in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )