Louis Clarke (athlete)
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Louis Alfred "Pinky" Clarke (November 23, 1901 – February 24, 1977) was an American chemist and
athlete An athlete (also sportsman or sportswoman) is a person who competes in one or more sports that involve physical strength, speed, or endurance. Athletes may be professionals or amateurs. Most professional athletes have particularly well-devel ...
, who won a gold medal in the 4 × 100 meter
relay A relay Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off A relay is an electrically operated switch ...
race at the
1924 Summer Olympics The 1924 Summer Olympics (french: Jeux olympiques d'été de 1924), officially the Games of the VIII Olympiad (french: Jeux de la VIIIe olympiade) and also known as Paris 1924, were an international multi-sport event held in Paris, France. The op ...
. Clarke was Jewish, and was born in
Statesville, North Carolina Statesville is a city in and the county seat of Iredell County, North Carolina, United States, and it is part of the Charlotte metropolitan area. Statesville was established in 1789 by an act of the North Carolina Legislature. The population was r ...
.


IC4A 1923-4

After winning the AAU Junior 220 yard sprint in 1922, Clarke enrolled at
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...
and finished second in the 100 yard and third in the 220 yard sprints at the 1923 annual
IC4A IC4A Championships (Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America) is an annual men's competition held at different colleges every year. Association was established in 1875, the competition (started in 1876) served as the top level col ...
(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 and 220 yard sprints at the IC4A.


NCAA 1923

He won the
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
championships in 1923 while a student at Johns Hopkins.


Olympic gold medal

At the
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
Olympics The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
, Clarke ran the second leg in the American 4 × 100 meter relay team, which won the
gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...
in a new
world record A world record is usually the best global and most important performance that is ever recorded and officially verified in a specific skill, sport, or other kind of activity. The book ''Guinness World Records'' and other world records organization ...
of 41.0 seconds. Clarke also held the world indoor 100 yard record, at 9.8 seconds, in February 1924. He began work with the Texaco Company shortly after college, and retired in 1966 as a chemist and patent liasion for Texaco where he had been employed for over forty years. He was a member of the American Chemical Society."Obituraries, Louis Clarke", ''Poughkeepsie Journal'', Poughkeepsie, New York, pg. 3, 25 February 1977 Clarke died at Vassar Hospital in
Fishkill, New York Fishkill is a village (New York), village within the Fishkill (town), New York, town of Fishkill in Dutchess County, New York, Dutchess County, New York (state), New York, United States. The village is in the eastern part of the town of Fishkill o ...
on February 24, 1977, at the age of 75. He was buried at Fishkill Rural Cemetary, and was survived by his widow Olive, a son, and two grandchildren. In 1994, he was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Athletics Hall of Fame.


See also

* List of select Jewish track and field athletes


References

1901 births 1977 deaths American male sprinters Athletes (track and field) at the 1924 Summer Olympics Olympic gold medalists for the United States in track and field Jewish American sportspeople Jewish male athletes (track and field) Johns Hopkins University alumni Medalists at the 1924 Summer Olympics People from Statesville, North Carolina Track and field athletes from North Carolina 20th-century American Jews {{US-sprint-athletics-bio-stub