A-Z Of Athletics | Page 2 | Vital Football

A-Z Of Athletics

Q QUALIFYING TIMES - for the premier athletics competitions (Olympics, European and World Championships, etc) runners need to have achieved a good finishing time in their events at local level, in order to to qualify to take part .
 
S - Silver. The medal given to the athlete or team finishing second. At the 1896 Olympics winners' medals were silver and the gold-silver-bronze system was only brought in in 1904.
 
T TESSA Sanderson. British javelin thrower. Competeted in every Olympic athletic tournament from 1976-1996, Won Olympic gold (1984), European Championship silver(1976) and Commonwealth games gold (1978, 1986, 1990). Has also appearead as a tv/radio athletics pundit.
 
mikemiller said:
T TESSA Sanderson. British javelin thrower. Competeted in every Olympic athletic tournament from 1976-1996, Won Olympic gold (1984), European Championship silver(1976) and Commonwealth games gold (1978, 1986, 1990). Has also appearead as a tv/radio athletics pundit.
Click to expand...
Do we have any male or female javelin throwers now? At the Worlds we didn't seem to have any long or triple jumpers and no male high jumpers.
 
V Lasse VIREN - middle/long distance runner who competed in three Olympic tournaments. He was born in Finland in 1949. He won Olympic gold medals in 1972 (5000 and 10000m) and then for both events again in 1976. He also won European bronze for 5000m in 1972.
 
W - White City Stadium was for years one of the largest stadiums in Britain until it got demolished in 1984. It was built for the 1908 Olympic Games and as most of the buildings had whitewashed exteriors it was named White City.
The stadium was hardly used in the years after the Olympics, but was taken over by the Greyhound Racing Association in 1927 and from then on mainly hosted greyhound racing and speedway, though other sports such as rugby, boxing, and athletics also found their way to the stadium.
 
... or... Fatima WHITBREAD - British javelin thrower and rival to Tessa Sanderson (see entry for "T"). Born in London in 1961. She won two Olympic medals -bronze (1984) and silver (1988). Also won gold medals in World Championship (1987), and in European Championship (1986), plus silver and bronze medals in Commonwealth games (1986 and 1982 respectively).
 
X XAVIER Porras - Spanish paralympic runner and jumper. Member of Barcelona FC Athletics Club. Won bronze medal in Paralympic games Triple Jump, in 2008.
Has also has won two gold medals in the IPC World Championship, and one in the IPC European Championship.
 
mikemiller said:
X XAVIER Porras - Spanish paralympic runner and jumper. Member of Barcelona FC Athletics Club. Won bronze medal in Paralympic games Triple Jump, in 2008.
Has also has won two gold medals in the IPC World Championship, and one in the IPC European Championship.
Click to expand...

Brilliant!
 
Z - Emil Zátopek was a Czech long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs, but his final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life. He is still the only person to achieve this.
In 1954, Zátopek was the first runner to break the 29-minute barrier in the 10,000 metres. Three years earlier in 1951 he had broken the hour for running 20 km. He was considered one of the greatest runners of the 20th century. In 2013 Runner's World Magazine selected him as the Greatest Runner of All Time.
 
A name that we missed and could have gone under F or B - Francina "Fanny" Elsje Blankers-Koen a Dutch track and field athlete, best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She competed there as a 30-year-old mother of two, earning her the nickname "the Flying Housewife", and was the most successful athlete at the event. She set several world records in events as diverse as the long jump, the high jump, and sprint and hurdling events.
Apart from her four Olympic titles, she won five European titles and 58 Dutch championships, and set or tied 12 world records – the last, pentathlon, in 1951 aged 33. She retired from athletics in 1955, after which she became captain of the Dutch female track and field team. In 1999, she was voted "Female Athlete of the Century" by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). Her Olympic victories are credited with helping to eliminate the belief that age and motherhood were barriers to success in women's sport.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.