Thomas Green
From WikiRun
| Tommy Green | |
| Event | racewalk |
|---|---|
| PR | 20 km. Walk – 1-38:45.3 (1933); 50 km. Walk – 4-35:36.0 (1930) |
| Born | March 30, 1894 at Fareham, Hampshire, England, Great Britain |
| Died | March 29, 1975 at Eastleigh, Hampshire, England, Great Britain |
| Club | Belgrave Harriers, London |
Thomas William Green (1894 – 1975) was a British athlete who competed mainly in the 50 kilometre walk and won an Olympic gold medal.
Because of rickets, Green was unable to walk at all until he was five years old; in 1906 he falsified his age in order to join the Army but was invalided out of the Royal Hussars four years later as a result of injuries received when a horse fell on him. Then after being recalled with the Reserve in 1914, he was wounded three times and badly gassed while serving with the King’s Own Hussars in France during World War I.
Green competed in his first racewalk in 1926 at the age of 32. He competed for Great Britain in the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, United States in the 50 kilometre walk where he won the gold medal in a time of 4 hours 50 minutes and 10.2 seconds. In 1936, he made a great bid to make the Olympic team for a second time, but his fourth place in the RWA 50 km. was not quite good enough to earn him selection for the Berlin Games.
After his checkered early life, Tommy Green held a variety of jobs before being employed at the Eastleigh Railway Works, where he demonstrated that accident-proneness is a continuing condition by losing a thumb in an industrial accident. On retiring from the railways, Green became a publican in Eastleigh and was a prominent figure in the local sporting world.
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