William Holland (athlete)

William Holland
William Holland in his victory in the 200 m heat
nation	United States
birthday	March 3, 1874
place of birth	Boston, USA
date of death	November 20, 1930
Place of death	Malden, USA
Career
discipline	sprint
Medal table
Olympic games bronze Paris 1900 400 m

William Holland ( William Joseph Holland ; born March 3, 1874 in Boston , † November 20, 1930 in Malden , Middlesex County, Massachusetts ) was an American sprinter who won the 1900 Olympic silver.

Holland studied medicine at Georgetown University . He was one of the best sprinters in America at the time. Although his focus was on the longest sprint route, the 440  yards , he was not a specialist here. His talent was the consistency on all running distances between 100 and 440 yards. So it was not surprising that before 1900 Holland was unable to win a title at any championship in which he participated. His best finish was a runner-up over 440 yards in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships, equivalent to the US national championships, behind his eternal competitor Maxie Long .

Nevertheless, Holland was part of the team of American athletes who traveled to Paris for the 1900 Olympic Games . To finance it, he had to bear part of the costs himself and therefore worked as a night watchman while studying.

Holland had his first start with a 400 meter run, in which he qualified for the final in second behind Dixon Boardman . However, Boardman and two other strong American runners, Harry Lee and William Moloney , did not compete in the final, which was held on a Sunday , because their beliefs forbade them to do any sport on a Sunday. With that Holland only had one serious opponent, Maxie Long, to whom he had to admit defeat. His participation in the 60-meter run on the same day was not crowned with success, he was eliminated in the preliminary run.

A week later, Holland started over 200 meters. He finished his preliminary run as the winner and fastest of all preliminary runs. His time was thus the first Olympic record over this running route, which was not on the program at the 1896 in Athens. In the final, in which Walter Tewksbury immediately improved the record, Holland was defeated by Stan Rowley by half a foot in the battle for third place.

The rankings at the Olympic Games for William Holland:

• II. Olympic Games 1900, Paris
  • 400 m - silver with 49.6 s (gold to Maxie Long with 49.4 s; bronze to Ernst Schultz from Denmark with an unknown time)
  • 200 m - fourth with 22.9 s (gold to Walter Tewksbury from the USA with 22.2 s)
  • 60 m - eliminated in the preliminary run (gold to Alvin Kraenzlein from the USA with 7.0 s)

After the Games, William Holland stayed involved in running for several years. His opponent Long, however, had withdrawn from the competition from 1901, which opened the way for Holland to the hoped-for championship honors. At the championships of the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A), which corresponded to the student championships in the USA, he won the title over 440 yards in 1901 and 1902 respectively.

There are no usable biographical data on the further life of William Holland.

Web links

• William Holland in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )