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Mike Gratton

British marathon runner and athletics coach

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ1933174
Source-derived summary

Michael Colin Gratton (born 28 November 1954) is a male former elite long distance runner from England who won the 1983 London Marathon.

Biography

A member of the Kent athletics club Invicta AC, Gratton finished third behind Hugh Jones in the marathon event at the 1981 AAA Championships.

He represented England and won a bronze medal in the marathon event (2:12:06), at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia and the following year was the winner of the London Marathon. He won the 1983 London Marathon in a time of 2:09:43, a time which places him 14th on the UK all-time marathon list and gave him the title of British marathon champion.

Gratton now runs a sports holiday company called 2:09 Events and a running resource website called Coach the Run.

Editorial summary

“Mike Gratton” enters the record as british marathon runner and athletics coach. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mike, Gratton and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1954, 1983, 1981, 1982—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1954-11-28. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Mike, Gratton and British.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Mike Gratton” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mike, Gratton and British provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1933174. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1983, 1981 and 1982.

Critical limits

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.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Mike Gratton primary sources, Mike Gratton archive and Mike research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mike Gratton” 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.