Tom Courtney, a Fordham College graduate who with a homestretch surge and a lunge on the tape received a livid 800-meter run by inches within the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, capturing the gold medal for the USA, 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 Military personal on the time, was not the favourite going into the 1956 Video games; that distinction belonged to a fellow American, Arnie Sowell, a College of Pittsburgh senior who had repeatedly defeated Courtney all through their faculty careers, regardless that Courtney had a string of triumphs of his personal at Fordham.
But when Sowell was faster, Courtney, at 6 ft 2 inches and 179 kilos, was acknowledged because the stronger of the 2. Each made the USA Olympic workforce and superior to the eight-man 800-meter last.
When the second arrived, nevertheless, on a slender and spongy grime monitor, Courtney was overwhelmed.
“As I stepped onto the monitor,” he as soon as wrote, “I felt my legs go rubbery. I noticed over 100 thousand folks within the stands, and earlier than I knew it I had collapsed onto the infield grass. ‘Can or not it’s,’ I keep in mind pondering, as I lay there gazing up on the sky, ‘that I’m so nervous I’m not going to have the ability to run?’
“Then I spotted how ridiculous I’d look, flat on my again on the grass as they began the race. I assume the humor of that picture made me lose my nervousness. I used to be in a position to get well, stand up and jog to the beginning line.”
On the last flip of the two-lap race, Sowell led and Courtney was second. Then Sowell began to dash, and Courtney adopted go well with, swinging to the skin. He caught Sowell on the flip and handed him. However arising from behind, Derek Johnson of Britain was additionally surging, and with solely 40 meters to go he sneaked between the 2 People and appeared about to win.
“It was a brand new type of agony for me,” Courtney stated of the second in an interview with Runner’s World journal in 2001. “My head was exploding, my abdomen ripping. Even the guidelines of my fingers ached. The one thought in my thoughts was, ‘If I reside, I’ll by no means run once more.’ I felt all of it slipping away, however then I regarded on the tape and realized that this was the one likelihood I’d ever have.”
Courtney caught Johnson within the last strides and threw himself on the tape, profitable the gold medal by one-tenth of a second, in 1 minute 47.7 seconds. (The report on the time, set in 1955, was 1:46.6. The report immediately, 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 received?”
“You probably did,” the Englishman stated.
Courtney and Johnson had been so exhausted that the medal ceremony was delayed for an hour. Courtney remembered it properly. “As I listened to the nationwide anthem,’ he stated, “all I may consider was how grateful I used to be that the yr was proper and the day was proper and I used to be proper.”
5 days after that race, Courtney received a second gold medal by anchoring the USA to victory within the 4×400-meter relay.
Thomas William Courtney was born on Aug. 17, 1933, in South Orange, N.J., and he grew up close by in Livingston. His father, Jim, performed baseball for the Newark Bears, the highest minor league workforce 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 Excessive College, 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 yr later.
Getting into Fordham, he anchored its workforce to a world report within the two-mile relay in 1954. In faculty and after, he received nationwide titles yearly from 1954 to 1958. In 1957 alone, he set a world report of 1:46.8 for half of 1 mile outside and equaled the world report of 1:09.5 for 600 yards indoors. In Might 1955, he appeared on the quilt of Sports activities 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 house of Rudolf Harbig, a German monitor athlete of the Thirties who was killed throughout World Conflict II. He discovered Harbig’s mom there and requested to see her son’s coaching notebooks. Capable of learn in German due to his personal mom, Courtney gleaned an important tip: Harbig had skilled working downhill to extend his tempo.
Courtney adopted the method. He later thought of it one essential consider his capability to beat Sowell and win the Olympic gold.
Drafted into the Military after his faculty 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.
Along with 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 way of his fiftieth birthday, when he ran a 4:36 mile in opposition to excessive schoolers in Sewickley. Then he give up, saying, “I’ve completed sufficient.”
In an interview for this obituary in 2013, he recalled that final mile:
“After the primary lap, the coach stated to his children, ‘Don’t let that outdated man beat you.’ After the second lap, he stated, ‘Don’t let that outdated man catch you.’ After the third lap, the coach screamed, ‘Catch that outdated man!’”
Frank Litsky, a longtime Occasions sportswriter, died in 2018. Alex Traub contributed reporting.
