John Landy, a legendary Australian middle-distance runner, has died at 91.
Landy on Thursday died at his home in Castlemaine, Victoria, surrounded by his family after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.
He was the second man to break the sub-four-minute mile, doing so a month after Englishman Sir Roger Bannister, and he was a two-time Olympian who won bronze in the men’s 1500m at the Melbourne Games of 1956.
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Landy also has ‘legendary’ status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
But perhaps what he’s most remembered for is a remarkable act of sportsmanship during the 1956 Australian mile championship, at Melbourne Olympic Park in 2002.
He was trailing Ron Clarke, who died in 2015 as a legend of Australian distance running, early on the third of four laps.
Then Clarke fell.
Landy leapt over Clarke and caught him with his spikes, cutting the right side of his upper body, and once he regained his balance he scurried back to check on his rival.
That was an incredible show of respect – and then came an incredible show of athleticism.
Landy had given away a lead of about 40 metres, but he’d mow down his opponents to win the race.
Towering praise poured in for Landy’s act of sportsmanship, but the response of the man himself gave a glimpse into his great humility.
In Len Johnson’s The John Landy Era: From Nowhere to the Top of the World, Landy is quoted as describing what he did as “a much ballyhooed event”.
“I get quite embarrassed because it shouldn’t have happened,” Landy adds in Johnson’s book.
“I didn’t contribute to it directly in the sense that I didn’t trip Ron Clarke up, but I should have been leading the race.”
That wasn’t a comment of arrogance. By the time of the 1956 Australian mile championship, Landy had competed at one Olympics and was a sub-four-minute miler. More than 20,000 people had also flocked to the track in the hope of seeing Landy break the mile world record that he owned.
“Clarke fell out in front of me,” Landy is quoted in Johnson’s book.
“It all happened pretty quickly and I had to get into long-jumping mode. My spikes tore down his shoulder and arm. He had a tetanus shot after the race. People thought I went back because he fell, but I spiked him pretty seriously in the arm. He yelled out. Instinctively I stopped.”
In 1999, the Sport Australia Hall of Fame deemed Landy’s act the nation’s finest sporting moment of the 20th century.
It’s also been commemorated by a sculpture called Sportsmanship, established at Melbourne Olympic Park in 2002.
Former Australian Olympic marathon runner Lee Troop is among the many people to have paid tribute to Landy following his death.
“R.I.P. to one of our greatest,” Troop wrote on Twitter.
Decorated Canadian triathlon coach Barrie Shepley wrote: “What an incredible life this iconic runner has lived”.
And sports broadcaster Glenn Mitchell posted: “An iconic athlete who holds a special place in Australia’s sporting history”.
Landy, Bannister and American Wes Santee spearheaded the pursuit of the first sub-four-minute mile.
Bannister was the first to crack the barrier in a run at Oxford University on May 6, 1954, although his 3:59.4 was helped by controversial pacing by countrymen Chris Chattaway and Chris Brasher.
When Landy achieved the feat in the Finnish city of Turku on June 21, 1954, clocking 3:57.9 to snatch the world record, he didn’t have the luxury of pacing.
The circumstances in which Bannister achieved his historic sub-four-minute mile are still debated today, but Landy wasn’t fazed by the assistance the Briton had.
“They went after it,” Landy is quoted in The John Landy Era: From Nowhere to the Top of the World.
“They saw it as a British achievement. People thought I was going to be eating my heart out, but I thought if he can do that, the logic was that, since I’d been much more consistent, why wouldn’t I be able to do that?
“It wasn’t very good conditions when they ran, but the point was (Bannister) did it and that got it out of the road. He was the immortal, and I wasn’t.
“But that freed me up to run whatever I could. To some extent it was a relief. It didn’t have to worry because (it’d) been done.
“So, what’s next?”
In an indication of the esteem Landy is held in, some of the others with ‘legendary’ status in the Sport Australia Hall of fame are Sir Donald Bradman, Herb Elliott, Cathy Freeman, Betty Cuthbert, Dawn Fraser, Ian Thorpe, Wally Lewis and Ron Barassi.
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