Tom Courtney, a Fordham University graduate who with a homestretch surge and a lunge at the tape received a livid 800-meter run by inches within the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, capturing the gold medal for the United States, died on Tuesday at an assisted residing facility in Naples, Fla. He was 90.
The trigger was amyloidosis, his son, Tom Jr., stated.
Courtney, a 23-year-old Army non-public at the time, was not the favourite going into the 1956 Games; that distinction belonged to a fellow American, (*90*) Sowell, a University of Pittsburgh senior who had repeatedly defeated Courtney all through their school careers, despite the fact that Courtney had a string of triumphs of his personal at Fordham.
But if Sowell was faster, Courtney, at 6 ft 2 inches and 179 kilos, was acknowledged because the stronger of the 2. Both made the United States Olympic crew and superior to the eight-man 800-meter last.
When the second arrived, nonetheless, on a slim and spongy filth monitor, Courtney was overwhelmed.
“As I stepped onto the track,” he as soon as wrote, “I felt my legs go rubbery. I saw over a hundred thousand people in the stands, and before I knew it I had collapsed onto the infield grass. ‘Can it be,’ I remember thinking, as I lay there gazing up at the sky, ‘that I am so nervous I’m not going to be able to run?’
“Then I realized how ridiculous I would look, flat on my back on the grass as they started the race. I guess the humor of that image made me lose my nervousness. I was able to recover, get up and jog to the starting line.”
At the ultimate flip of the two-lap race, Sowell led and Courtney was second. Then Sowell began to dash, and Courtney adopted swimsuit, swinging to the skin. He caught Sowell on the flip and handed him. But arising from behind, Derek Johnson of Britain was additionally surging, and with solely 40 meters to go he sneaked between the 2 Americans and appeared about to win.
“It was a new kind of agony for me,” Courtney stated of the second in an interview with Runner’s World journal in 2001. “My head was exploding, my stomach ripping. Even the tips of my fingers ached. The only thought in my mind was, ‘If I live, I’ll never run again.’ I felt it all slipping away, but then I looked at the tape and realized that this was the only chance I would ever have.”
Courtney caught Johnson within the last strides and threw himself at the tape, profitable the gold medal by one-tenth of a second, in 1 minute 47.7 seconds. (The file at the time, set in 1955, was 1:46.6. The file at this time, set in 2012 by David Rudisha of Kenya, is 1:40.91.)
Courtney collapsed after the end, and when he got here round, he requested Johnson, “Who won?”
“You did,” the Englishman stated.
Courtney and Johnson have been so exhausted that the medal ceremony was delayed for an hour. Courtney remembered it nicely. “As I listened to the national anthem,” he stated, “all I could think of was how thankful I was that the year was right and the day was right and I was right.”
Five days after that race, Courtney received a second gold medal by anchoring the United States to victory within the 4×400-meter relay.
Thomas William Courtney was born on Aug. 17, 1933, in South Orange, N.J., and grew up close by in Livingston. His father, Jim, performed baseball for the Newark Bears, the highest minor league crew of the New York Yankees, earlier than changing into a railroad employee. His spouse, Dolores (Goerdes) Courtney, was a homemaker who was born right into a German-speaking household.
Tom initially performed baseball at Livingston High School, gave it up for tennis after which took up the pole vault. After the monitor coach had him strive the half-mile, Courtney turned state champion a 12 months later.
Entering Fordham, he anchored its crew to a world file within the two-mile relay in 1954. In school and after, he received nationwide titles yearly from 1954 to 1958. In 1957 alone, he set a world file of 1:46.8 for half a mile open air and equaled the world file of 1:09.5 for 600 yards indoors. In May 1955, he appeared on the quilt of Sports Illustrated working in his Fordham reds.
That spring, Courtney graduated from Fordham with a bachelor’s diploma, and that summer time, he participated in monitor meets in Europe. In Germany, he sought out the household dwelling of Rudolf Harbig, a German monitor athlete of the Nineteen Thirties who was killed throughout World War II. He discovered Harbig’s mom there and requested to see her son’s coaching notebooks. Able to learn in German thanks to his personal mom, Courtney gleaned a vital tip: Harbig had educated working downhill to improve his tempo.
Courtney adopted the method. He later thought-about it a vital think about his capability to beat Sowell and win the Olympic gold.
Drafted into the Army after his school commencement, Courtney was allowed to spend his time on obligation specializing in monitor. He was honorably discharged in 1957.
He earned a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration from Harvard in 1959. In later years he labored as an investor at companies in New York, Boston and Pittsburgh. He married Posy L’Hommedieu in 1963.
In addition to Tom Jr., he’s survived by his spouse; a brother, Kevin; two extra sons, Peter and Frank; and 9 grandchildren. He had a house in Sewickley, Pa., from 1975 till his demise, and in 1993 he started splitting his time between Sewickley and Naples.
When Courtney ended his racing profession at age 25, he promised he would run a sub-5-minute mile yearly. He succeeded by means of his fiftieth birthday, when he ran a 4:36 mile towards excessive schoolers in Sewickley. Then he stop, saying, “I’ve done enough.”
In an interview for this obituary in 2013, he recalled that final mile:
“After the first lap, the coach said to his kids, ‘Don’t let that old guy beat you.’ After the second lap, he said, ‘Don’t let that old guy catch you.’ After the third lap, the coach screamed, ‘Catch that old guy!’”
Frank Litsky, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018. Alex Traub contributed reporting.
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