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John Giles (athlete)

British shot putter

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ6235337 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Alfred Giles (9 February 1927 – 7 April 2024) was a British shotputter who competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics and in the 1952 Summer Olympics.

Biography

Giles was born in Edmonton, London and was a member of Southgate Harriers.

Giles finished third behind David Guiney in the shot put event at the 1948 AAA Championships. Shortly afterwards he represented the Great Britain team at the 1948 Olympic Games in London, where he participated in the shot put competition. He qualified in fifth place to make the Olympic final.

In 1949 he won the Southern title and claimed honours at the Kinnaird Trophy meeting but his big achievement that year was becoming the British shot put champion after winning the British AAA Championships title at the 1949 AAA Championships.

Giles died on 7 April 2024, at the age of 97.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “John Giles (athlete)” as british shot putter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Giles and athlete.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1927, 2024, 1948, 1952—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1927-02-09. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with John, Giles and athlete providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “John Giles (athlete)”, the useful work is to connect “british shot putter” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6235337. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2024, 1948 and 1952.

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The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Giles (athlete)” 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.