Greatest Kiwi Of All Time: No. 60 - Jack Lovelock (Down 5 from 55 last year)
1936, the Berlin Olympics. The best-of-the-best lines up to compete in the final of the 1500 metres. Four years earlier, a 22-year-old Jack Lovelock had competed in the 1500 metre final at the Los Angeles Olympics. He’d come seventh. He was determined not to make the same mistakes again.
In between Olympics, Lovelock had developed a revolutionary tactic. Instead of being a sprinter on the home straight, something his competitors knew him to be, he would break away with 300 metres to go and take them by surprise. The move would work.
The race is considered one of the greatest 1500-metre finals in Olympic history.
Witnessed by Adolf Hitler and 120,000 other spectators, it would be the first gold medal ever won by a New Zealander at the Olympic Games.
Jack Lovelock was born in the town of Crushington, on the banks of the Inangahua River on the West Coast of the South Island. He was a standout sportsman - playing rugby, swimming, and competing fiercely in athletics throughout his schooling.
He was also a smart cookie - named dux, head prefect and winning the boxing championship cup at Timaru High School, where he boarded in 1928. The next year he’d go to medical school at Otago University, before becoming a Rhodes Scholar and attending Exeter College, Oxford. He graduated as a doctor in 1934 and became a general practitioner.
After the 1936 Olympics, Lovelock served in World War 2 and was a major in the Royal Army Medical Corps. After the war he married Cynthia James and had two daughters. A year later he began working at Manhattan Hospital in New York. In 1949 he was waiting at the Church Avenue subway station in Brooklyn when he fell onto the tracks. He was then killed by an oncoming train.
The “Lovelock Legend” exists to this day. Streets, bars and sports fields have been named after him. He’s inspired books, stamps, a play and a film. Jack Lovelock - our first gold medal winner - and one of Today FM’s Greatest Kiwis of All Time.
GKOAT 23 - Thanks to resene.
Today FM's Greatest Kiwis Of All Time, thanks to Resene - helping Kiwis decorate with NZ made paints since 1946.
