Louis Clarke (athlete)
American sprinter (1901-1977)
Louis Alfred "Pinky" Clarke (November 23, 1901 – February 24, 1977) was an American chemist and former sprinter and track and field athlete, who won a gold medal in the world record time of 41.0 seconds in the 4 × 100 meter relay race at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Clarke was Jewish. He was born in Statesville, North Carolina to Mr. and Mrs. Sol Clarke on November 23, 1901.
College
After winning the AAU Junior 220-yard sprint in 1922, Clarke enrolled at Johns Hopkins University and finished second in the 100 yard and third in the 220-yard sprints at the 1923 annual IC4A (Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America). In February 1924, he posted a world record of 9.8 seconds for the 100 yard indoors and later in the year placed third on both the 100-yard and 220-yard sprints at the IC4A.
He won the NCAA 100 yd (91 m) championship in 1923 while a student at Johns Hopkins.
In perhaps his most significant achievement in the Olympic year, Clarke also took the world indoor 100-yard record, at 9.8 seconds, in February 1924.
Olympic gold medal
Clarke was trained for Olympic competition in May 1924 by the Olympic Coach and former American Olympic medalist Lawson Robertson at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. Robertson would later coach Jessie Owens in the 1936 Olympics.
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This entry incorporates text from “Louis Clarke (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.