Jack Lovelock

Jack Lovelock won the 1936 Olympic gold medal for 1500 metres, with a race that was acclaimed as a tactical masterpiece, in a world record time. In middle distance track racing, that’s the ultimate. “There never was such a race, nor such a runner,” wrote the Manchester Guardian. Lovelock described that Berlin race as “an artistic creation.”

It was the peak of a career that included a gold medal for the mile in the 1934 British Empire Games, three world records, and high-profile victories against world-class fields in America and Europe. He did all that at a time when public and media attention on sport was greater than at any previous time in history, with radio and film newly powerful alongside the most potent vintage era of newspaper journalism and photography. In August 1936, Lovelock was one of the most globally famous sportsman the world had ever known. This fame was prolonged by the choice of Lovelock’s race as a key sequence in Leni ...