Finish of the 1952 Olympic Final in Helsinki

Germany returned to the Olympics in Helsinki seven years after the end of World War II, and in athletics three silver medals and three bronze medals, including those for the 800, 1500 and 5000 metres, were won. Writing in the British Olympic Association’s Official Report, Harold Abrahams – happily, as he admitted, “wallowing” in statistics – made the valid point that top six placings, of which the USA had 34, the USSR (competing for the first time at the Games) 20, Great Britain 15 and Germany 11. were as significant as medals in judging a country’s strength. However, such a favourable outcome might still have been a cause of some embarrassment to the then president of the German athletics federation, Max Danz.

In 1950 the Luxembourg athletics authorities had agreed to support Germany’s application for re-admission to the Games, and in return Herr Danz had approved a German coach being taken on for six months to prepare Luxembourg’s athletes for the Games – but this was not just any coach. Woldemar Gerschler had been the mentor of Rudolf Harbig, who had set a World record 1:46.6 for 800 metres in 1939 which still stood in 1952, and would continue to do so for another three years.  As the most notable Luxembourgoise athlete was a 1500 metres runner who ranked barely inside the leading 50 in the World in 1951, taking into account equivalent one-mile times, there was clearly a lot of work to be done in Germany’s westerly neighbouring Grand Duchy of no more than 300,000 population.

By the eve of the Games in Helsinki, a German, Werner Lueg, aged only 21, had equalled the World record for 1500 metres, 3:43.0, first set by Gunder Hägg in 1944 and equalled by another Swede, Lennart Strand, in 1947. Even so, Norris and Ross McWhirter, in their highly influential UK monthly magazine, “Athletics World”, expressed the view that “any of six men could win” the Olympic 1500 but gave special mention to Britain’s Roger Bannister: “Even after studying reports of Lueg’s truly great 1500 metres race in Berlin, such profound experts as Dr Roberto Quercetani and Fulvio Regli pronounce Bannister their choice”.  These two co-founders of the Association of Track and Field Statisticians, together with equally astute fellow pundits Dr Donald Potts, of the USA, and Ekkehard zur Megede, of Germany, were invited by the McWhirters to join them in nominating their medal predictions, and Bannister and Lueg each got four mentions out of five, and no one else more than two. 

No thought was given to Luxembourg’s Josy Barthel, and why should there be ? Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that he had had his chance in the past and never grasped it: 10^th of 12 in the 1948 Olympic 1500 metres, a distant 9^thand last in the 1950 European Championships 800 metres. Who would have then known in the first half of 1952 that Gerschler had the previously self-coached Barthel transforming his training régime by running sessions of 3 x 2000 metres and 15 x 500 or 600 metres, in the process of which he lost 20lb (9kg) in weight, which was plenty for a frame of 5ft 8in (1.73m), and won his national title by more than three-quarters of a minute, 3:52.4 to 4:30.8 for 2^nd place ! Again in obscurity during June, Barthel improved his 1500 metres best to 3:48.5.

The Olympic 1500 metres that year was the first to present the competitors – 52 of them from 26 countries – with the prospect of three races on successive days, 24-25-26 July. The introduction of semi-finals was announced only after entries had closed, and in his autobiography in 1955 Bannister was to say, “I knew the change would hit me harder than the other competitors, most of whom had been training for an hour or so daily, with very severe interval running. With three races their training would give them an advantage. My scheme of training was suited to two races, with an interval between to give the necessary edge of freshness”. By contrast, Lueg was to say in 1953 that a key part of his training was 4 x 1000 metres runs with short rests between each and intensive speed-play sessions, and “this provides all the stamina training needed for 1500/3000 metres races”.  Bannister fitted in his training between hospital duties that would lead to him becoming an eminent surgeon, but Lueg was no less gainfully employed full-time as a clerical worker.

Among the 1500-metre contestants in Helsinki were the first three from the European Championships of 1950, Willy Slijkhuis (Holland), Patrick El Mabrouk (France) and Bill Nankeville (GB), and the British Empire Games one-mile and three-mile champions of the same year, Bill Parnell (Canada) and Len Eyre (also GB). Slijkhuis had additionally been Olympic bronze-medallist at both 1500 and 5000 metres in 1948, though his fitness was now in doubt, and Nankeville, Denis Johansson (Finland) and Sándor Garay (Hungary) had run in that 1500 final, as had Barthel. Historians of the future would also savour the presence of  later World record-holders, Stanislav Jungwirth (Czechoslovakia) at 1000 and 1500 metres; Olle Åberg (Sweden) and Audun Boysen (Norway) at 1000 metres; Sándor Iharos (Hungary) at 1500 and 10,000 metres; and John Landy (Australia) at 1500 metres and the mile. Those same historians might well also ponder over the fact that all but three of those lining up for the series of six heats in Helsinki were from Europe, the British Empire or North America. The others were from Egypt, Thailand and Venezuela. No one from Kenya, and nor would there be at the Olympics at this distance for another 16 years.

Iharos, Eyre, Slijkhuis (succumbing to injury), Landy, Garay and the outclassed Egyptian, Thailander and Venezuelan were among the 28 eliminated in the first round – first four in each heat to the semi-finals, and no concept of fastest losers in those days. Nankeville, Parnell and Jungwirth departed after the two semi-finals – first six in each to the final. The survivors were Åberg, Bannister, Barthel, Boysen, El Mabrouk, Johansson, Lueg, Don Macmillan (Australia), Rolf Lamers (Germany), Ingvar Ericsson (Sweden), Bob McMillen and Warren Druetzler (both USA). On pre-Games times – not necessarily, of course, the truest guide to form – Lueg was by far the fastest, followed by Åberg (3:45.4), El Mabrouk (3:47.2), Johansson (the stadium record 3:47.4) and Lamers (also 3:47.4). Johansson had won the first semi-final in 3:49.60 and Barthel the second in 3:50.51.

In the final Lamers led through 400 metres (57.8) and 2:01.4, as if to some pre-conceived Teutonic plan, and then Lueg went ahead with still 900 metres to go and passed 1200 metres in 3:03.0. “Sweeping round the last bend three yards in the clear, Lueg seemed to have the race well in hand”, the onlooking McWhirters reported, but then, as the journalistic twins put it in their customary graphic style, “The strain of leading for 500 metres began to tell on Lueg, and up the home straight the fiery little man from Luxembourg attacked and passed the sagging German 40 metres out. Also closing with a mighty rush was Bob McMillen, whose last lap in 56.0secs was the greatest in history. Barthel, with arms aloft, just made the line but had to share with the American the new Olympic record of 3:45.2”. Lueg was 3^rd and Bannister, though “he “never looked to possess any fire” (the McWhirters again), was 4^th in a British Empire record time.  

The 1952 Olympic Games 1500 metres final: 1 Barthel 3:45.28, 2 McMillen 3:45.39, 3  Lueg 3:45.67, 4 Bannister 3:46.30, 5 El Mabrouk 3:46.35, 6 Lamers 3:47.18, 7 Åberg 3:47.20, 8 Ericsson 3:47.70, 9 Macmillan 3:49.77, 10 Johansson 3:50.24, 11 Boysen 3:51.75, 12 Druetzler  3:56.0.

The McWhirters, quoting the original hand timings, concluded, “Added to the eclipse of Lovelock’s Berlin record, Don Macmillan’s 3:49.6 9^th and Johansson’s 3:49.8 10^th ensured the race’s place in history as the greatest mass rupture of the hallowed time of 3:50. The race provides evidence that Barthel is the most punishable athlete ever in this department, that McMillen is probably the most difficult man to beat and must now rank as America’s greatest ever, that Lueg is the greatest talent and is No.1 priority for the ‘Four Minute Mile’, and that for potential it remains hard to beat Bannister”. They saw no significance, and nor did their media colleagues, in the fact that El Mabrouk was Algerian-born and might be evidence of unrealised North African potential. 

Barthel’s victory was all the more historic because it was the first known Olympic gold medal for Luxembourg, and only the second medal of any kind in any sport since Joseph Alzin had won silver in the heavyweight division of the weight-lifting at the 1920 Games. Alzin weighed 23 stone (146 kilogrammes) and his connections with the country he represented might have been tenuous because he had been born in Paris and died in Marseilles at the age of only 37. In the fulness of time a further unforeseen chapter would be written in the story of Luxembourg medal-winners at the Olympics, as will be revealed in due course.

After the Olympics there was no highly organised series of Grand Prix meetings renewing rivalries among the Olympic medallists. Instead, two-a-side international matches were all the rage – GB-France, Germany-Switzerland, Norway-Denmark, Poland-East Germany, Sweden-West Germany among them. Barthel beat Lueg convincingly in a rare open meeting in Zurich on 12 August, 3:45.6 to 3:47.0, and then, returning home to a hero’s welcome on 20 August, overcame McMillen again but rather more easily than for Olympic gold, 3:44.6 to 3:45.2. A World-record attempt was organised in the Grand Duchy’s capital on 4 September with local pace-makers, but the day turned out cold and windy and after passing 800 metres in 1:56.5, which must have had his fellow-countrymen looking on in a feverishly excited mood, Barthel finished in 3:44.1. This was the 6^th fastest ever after Hägg, Strand, Lueg, Slijkhuis 3:43.8 in 1949, and Hägg’s wartime rival in Sweden, Arne Andersson, 3:44.0 in 1944. 

Barthel had married after the Olympics, and though his wife, Fernande, had no great interest in sport his younger sister, Cécile, strongly supported him and later wed the Luxembourg national record-holder at 110 metres hurdles and 400 metres hurdles, Johnny Fonck. In 1953 the UK monthly magazine, “World Sports”, published a most revealing profile of Barthel, written in an endearingly chatty style by a Swedish journalist, Svante Lofgren, who took a particular interest in Barthel’s private and workaday life. “Barthel is a true amateur who  trains enormously hard but puts his business first”, Lofgren wrote of a visit he had made then to Luxembourg. “Rain or shine you will meet chemist Barthel in the laboratory of Luxembourg’s Bacteriological Institute every working day from 8 a.m. to noon and 2 to 6 p.m. I called upon him one morning a few minutes after eight and found him already busy, analysing the bacteriological content of food, water and blood. Even after his Olympic victory, when he was feted as his nation’s hero, he never accepted favours, and rarely does he agree to race in events which do not allow him to be back at his laboratory bench next morning. He trains daily during the lunch hour, but his main work is done in the evening from 7 to 9, either on the sports ground or in the woods”.

Barthel told his interviewer frankly about his introduction to athletics, “I was a rather stout and clumsy boy with no special enthusiasm for physical exercise. By chance I was entered in a school event when I was 15, which I won, and in the same year I ran 800 metres in 2 minutes 2 seconds. When I was 16 I was timed at at 4 minutes 16 seconds over 1500 metres, and I became enthusiastic about running and began to train systematically”. Of his Olympic success Barthel said, “I was not sure that I would win in Helsinki. I thought I would come in about 6^th, but what I did know was that I would run the best race of my life. My training graph gave convincing evidence of that a week before the final”. 

That graph, first devised at age 16, was duly endorsed by Woldemar Gerschler, whose abilities as a coach were to be described the year after those revelationary Helsinki 0lympics in the most detailed manner by a leading British distance-runner, Tony Weeks-Pearson. The two had met up at the International Student Games in Dortmund, where Weeks-Pearson had finished 2^nd at 5000 metres and his team-mates, David Law and Ralph Dunkley, 1^st and 2^nd at 1500 metres. “One’s first impression is of an immense calmness of manner which one feels in itself breeds confidence in the athlete”, Weeks-Pearson wrote of Gerschler in an article for the “Athletics Weekly” magazine in December 1953. “This is no superficial veneer and is no more assumed than the assurance with which he gives his advice, for both qualities have their source in a firm basis of experience in coaching during a period lasting over 25 years”.

As for the substance of  Gerschler’s recommended schedules, Weeks-Pearson explained, “He prescribes a training period of anything up to three or four hours a day as being necessary for the finest achievement, which is, of course, prohibitive for all but a very few. Naturally, he recognises this but thinks one or two hours essential. Gerschler follows the convention of longer and slower in winter, shorter and faster in summer, when the emphasis is entirely on racing. Whereas in summertime one might do a dozen quarters in 63 seconds each, this would in winter be replaced by 30 in 72 seconds”. Gerschler (1904-1982) had been appointed head of the institute for physical exercise at Freiburg University in 1949, combining this academic and scientific work with coaching, and among the athletes he helped was Britain’s Gordon Pirie, who set World records at 3000 and 5000 metres in 1956, and then, ironically, Roger Moens, the Belgian who broke Harbig’s 800 metres record in 1955. Both Pirie and Moens were also Olympic silver-medallists. 

Training was a matter of absorbing interest to athletes, coaches and informed spectators alike in the 1950s – its type, quality and volume. So much so that Bannister’s Austrian-born coach, Franz Stampfl, had a book published in London in 1955 entirely concerned with preparing for the sprints, middle distances and long distances, both for club-standard runners and for internationals, and by 1960 it was already into its eighth printing. In it Stampfl laid out the most detailed schedules, day-by-day and month-by month,  and for milers his core work-out was 10 x 440 yards at 68 seconds each in December, coming down to 60 seconds each by May. In one of the most erudite of books about athletics history, published in 1969 and entitled “Champions In The Making”, two of the leading US coaches, Payton Jordan and Bud Spencer, pointed to the contribution to the development of training methods made by the Hungarian, Mihály Iglόí, who had been a fine 1500 metres runner himself , taking part in the 1936 Olympic heats, with a best of 3:52.2 in 1937.

By the 1950s Iglόi was coaching a group of promising middle-distance runners in Budapest, immeasurably aided by the fulsome financial support provided by the state, and Jordan and Spencer said that he had devised his system “after studying the work programs of Josy Barthel and Bob McMillen as it was obvious for all to see that the combination of Gerschler’s high intensity interval training and the simple speed training of McMillen was to afford a new and productive concept. The co-authors explained further, “Gerschler used probably the most scientific method of high-stress interval training. McMillen used a combination of interval and tempo training, relying on 110-yard repeat runs on grass”. 

McMillen was never the same runner again after 1952, but between them during 1954-55-56 the Hungarian triumvirate of Iharos, Rόszavölgyi and Tábori set 12 World records at 1000 metres, 1500 metres (down to 3:40.6 by Rόszavölgyi), 2000 metres, 3000 metres, 2 miles, 3 miles, 6 miles and 10,000 metres, plus two at the 4 x 1500 metres relay, aided by a willing fourth man, Ferenc Mikes. The brutal Russian invasion of 1956 after the Hungarian uprising put an end to that era, though Iglόi, making his escape to the USA, would produce another two-mile World record-holder, Jim Beatty.   

Joseph Barthel was born in the village of Mamer, some seven kilometres from Luxembourg city on 24 April 1927, and the same year Nicholas Frantz, also born in Mamer, which had a population of no more than 5000, won the Tour de France cycle race and did so again in 1929. Nothing remotely comparable had been achieved in athletics, and when Barthel started competing the best Luxembourg times at 800 or 1500 metres dated from the mid-1930s at 1:55.8 and 4:04.4. His first coach was Lucien Bentz, but their association sadly did not last long because Bentz was a leader in the resistance to German occupation and was arrested and shot by the Nazis later that year. Barthel had already made something of an impression on the track by beating in a 1500 metres race Charles Heirendt, whose preference was for longer distances, having placed 2^nd in the German championships 10,000 metres of 1942 and 2^nd again at 5000 metres in 1953 – not the only athlete from occupied countries during World War II to undertake such a contentious venture. He would later be 6^th in the 1946 European Championships 10,000 metres in Oslo and win the prestigious annual Kosice marathon in Czechoslovakia the following year. 

In 1944 Barthel had best times of 2:02.0 and 4:09.0, but there was no competition of note for him the next year as the war came to an end. He was selected alongside Heirendt for Oslo at the age of 19, having improved enormously to 1:54.2 and 3:58.4, and winning the national titles that year, but was eliminated in his 800 heat. By the following year he had moved up yet another class: neatly clocking 1:51.0 for 800 metres, 3:51.0 for 1500 metres, ranking respectively equal 15^th in the World (with future double Olympic champion Mal Whitfield, of the USA) and 9^th. The leaders were an immensely talented New Zealander, Doug Harris, with 1:49.4 for 880 yards, but who would suffer serious injury in the Olympic heats, and Lennart Strand, with his World record 3:43.0. Four others of those ahead of Barthel at 1500 metres were Swedish, including Henry Eriksson, who would win the Olympic gold ahead of Strand and Slijkhuis, and the remaining trio were French (Marcel Hansenne, Olympic 800 metres bronze-medallist to be), Belgian (Gaston Reiff, Olympic 5000 metres champion to be) and Czech (Václav Čevona, who would be 4^th in the 1948 Olympic 1500). An American theological student, Gil Dodds, had run a 4:06.8 mile indoors, worth 3:48.7 for the metric distance.  

Barthel was studying chemical engineering and somehow managed to take part during 1947 in both the International Student Games in Paris, in which he was 3^rd to Britain’s Harold Tarraway at 800 metres, and the Allied Forces in Europe championships, winning a modest 1500 metres in 3:55.4. Barthel would also win the 1500 metres at the Student Games in 1949 and again in 1951, when they were held in Luxembourg, beating another future Olympic gold-medallist, Chris Brasher, of Great Britain (1956 steeplechase), 3:52.6 to 3:54.0. After his Olympic triumph great things were naturally expected of Barthel, but matters did not work out like that, and the doyen of athletics writers of that era, Dr Roberto Quercetani, succintly indicated as to why in his 1964 “World History of Track and Field Athletics”: “In following years he was absorbed by other interests, and as far as the track was concerned he never returned to his superb 1952 form”. 

It was not without trying, though, because he trained intensely throughout the winter of 1952-53 under Gerschler’s guidance and by March was turning out such interval sessions as 12 x 400 metres in 60.5 and 6 x 1000 metres in 2:48.5. Unfortunately he then suffered a tendon injury, ran no faster than 3:49.2, and even lost his national record at 800 metres to Gérard Rasquin, 1:50.4. Barthel then went off to the USA, but the purpose of the visit was as much to further his chemical engineering studies as to compete on the track. Maxwell Stiles, the most knowledgable of US track correspondents, who had been covering the sport since 1921, met up with Barthel in California and was clearly much impressed: “This Barthel is the most methodical runner in his training I have ever met. He produced a worn black log-book in which he has recorded every training manoeuvre, every time in training or a race, everything he has done since he was a boy of 16 in 1943. He and coach Woldemar Gerschler use this in the most consummate piece of human engineering I have ever seen in athletics”.  

Continuing his studies at Harvard University, and he was now receiving advice from the Harvard head coach, Bill McCurdy, who would serve for 30 years and after his death would be described as “not only a legend to those he coached but to opponents and other coaches”, Barthel won six races in succession at the mile indoors early in 1954, with a best of 4:07.5, and these were actually the first occasions that he had raced that distance since making a visit to the 1948 pre-Olympic AAA Championships in London, where he had been 2^nd to Bill Nankeville, 4:14.2 to 4:15.4, with a gangling 19-year-old named Bannister 5^th in a personal best 4:17.2. Barthel finished off his unbeaten campaign on the boards with an easy AAU national title win, and all this sequence had Norris McWhirter in “Athletics World” linking him with Australia’s John Landy, who had run 4:02.0 in Melbourne in December, and Wes Santee, who had put together a remarkable outdoor double of relay stages in 4:02.6 and 1:51.8 within 40 minutes in February, as challengers to Bannister for the first sub-four-minutes. Santee had also been at the 1952 Olympics but as a novice 20-year-old 5000 metres runner, 13^th of 15 in his heat.

Barthel started outdoors in May with 4:06.3, and this was achieved ahead of another of the Helsinki Olympic winners, steeplechaser Horace Ashenfelter, on the track at Cambridge, Massachusetts, for which the mile record had been set, unusually, in 1943, at 4:05.3 by Gunder Hägg on a fund-raising wartime goodwill tour of the USA. Barthel was still not as fit as he would have liked to be before a mile race against Santee in Los Angeles in June, and this was painfully demonstrated as Santee ran 4:00.7 and Barthel, after staying with him past the bell (3:00.0), lost 50 yards. Stiles quoted Barthel as saying, “My big objective is to beat Bannister, Jungwirth and Lueg in the European Championships. If I had two more weeks to train, and my own coach on hand, I would be ready to run even with Santee”. Stiles explained Barthel’s uneasy balance of priorities, “He is a chemist who was sent to this country by his government to learn the latest in sewage disposal. His degree came first, running secondary and only as a hobby”. Yet Stiles also wrote, “In the autumn of 1952 Gerschler assured Barthel he would run the 1500 in 3:41 or even 3:40 in 1953. That schedule now steps back to 1954 because of the injury sustained in 1953. Barthel’s diary, charts and targets all aim at 3:41 for 1500 metres and 3:59 for the mile”.

Regrettably, none of these plans were fulfilled. Either unfit or distracted by his demanding employment, or both, Barthel was even beaten in a slow 1500 metres at the Luxembourg championships early in August, 4:05.7 to 4:07.1, by Roger Müller, who had run 3:50.4 in June. Inevitably, Barthel was withdrawn from the team for the European Championships in Berne, and in any case 1500 metres/mile running had moved on to another level. Bannister had run the first sub-four-minute mile in May, 3:59.4, and Landy had reduced that to 3:57.9 in June. The 1500 metres record had been beaten after a decade and there was obviously still room for improvement because Santee had run 3:42.8 during a 4:00.6 mile and Landy 3:41.8 during his record mile. Bannister won the European 1500 metres in 3:43.8. Barthel’s deputy, Müller, ran reasonably enough in the heats, even finishing ahead of an ailing Gaston Reiff, but was eliminated. There was some good cause for Grand Duchy celebration, though, as Barthel’s successor as national 800 metres record-holder, Gérard Rasquin, was 6^th, though distantly so, in what “Athletics World” headlined as “The 800 metres of the Century !”. 

In 1955 Barthel’s fastest 1500 was only marginally better than two years previously at 3:48.8, and in London in September for a floodlit meeting sponsored by the “Daily Express” newspaper he was a well beaten 2^nd to Siegfried Herrmann, of East Germany, in the mile, 4:03.4 to  4:06.4. Still, Herrmann had set a 3000 metres World record of 7:46.0 a month previously, and those close athletics followers of a nostalgic frame of mind might still have mused that Barthel’s World ranking of roughly 50^th, combining times for 1500 metres and the mile, was much the same as it had been a year before the 1952 Olympics. Such wishful thinking was all in vain because the McWhirters in their “Athletics World” preview of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics mentioned 14 different contenders but not Barthel, whose year’s best was 3:47.0, and they were proved right. Barthel trailed in 10^th of 11 in the first heat – and 11^th was  Mamo Wolde, of Ethiopia, who would win the Olympic marathon in 1968 ! In the final, won by Ronnie Delany, of Ireland, the first eight finishers ran 3:43.0 or faster, which had been the World record when Barthel won his title.

Barthel had been critical of what he thought was the Luxemburg athletics hierarchy’s failure to capitalise on the nationwide enthusiasm after his Olympic triumph, and he took matters into his own hands by serving as president of the Luxembourg athletics association for 10 years from 1962, during which time his national 1500 metres record was improved to 3:43.0 by René Kilburg, who came from Dudelange, 26 kilometres (15 miles) from Barthel’s birthplace. Barthel was then president of the national Olympic committee, and he was government Minister for Energy, Transport and Environment from 1977 to 1984. He died on 7 July 1992, aged 65, and it was not until seven years later that research by the French athletics historian, Alain Bouillé, revealed that Barthel was not the first Olympic gold-medallist from Luxembourg, as had been firmly believed all his lifetime, because the winner of the marathon in 1900, Michel Théato, credited for almost a century as being French, was born in Luxembourg’s capital city and had spent the first 12 years of his life there. 

The Luxembourg national record for 1500 metres is now held by Charles Grethen at 3:32.86, and Grethen was born in Tuntange, which is only 17 kilometres (11 miles) from Barthel’s birthplace of Mamer. As you will appreciate, the Luxembourg Duchy is Grand but the country small.