Ellery Harding Clark
American track and field athlete (1874–1949)
Ellery Harding Clark (March 13, 1874 – July 27, 1949) was an American track and field athlete and a writer. He was the first modern Olympic champion in high jump and long jump.
Biography
Clark is the only person to have won both the Olympic high jump and long jump. Clark achieved it in 1896, at the first modern Olympics in Athens. A Harvard student, he was given a leave of absence to compete because of his high grades - in contrast to another gold medal winner from Harvard, James Connolly. Clark was one of the top all-around athletes from 1893 to 1912.
In the long jump, Clark had used his hat to mark his runway. Twice the judge (King Constantine of Greece) had removed the hat, saying this was a practice of professionals. Only at the third attempt, and without the hat, did Clark achieve a valid jump, good enough for gold. His final jump was of 6.35 meters.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ellery Harding Clark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.