Runner won three Olympic gold medals
Mal Whitfield went on to foster young athletes
Mal Whitfield, a record-setting middle-distance runner who won three Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952 and later spent many years as a U.S. Foreign Service officer and sports ambassador in Africa and elsewhere around the world, died Nov. 19 at a veterans’ hospice facility in Washington. He was 91.
He had heart disease and prostate cancer, said his daughter Fredricka Whitfield, a CNN news anchor.
Whitfield, who was also a member of the acclaimed Second World War military unit known as the Tuskegee Airmen, had never competed internationally when he qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in 1948.
At the Summer Games that year in London, he won a bronze medal in the 400-metre race and a gold medal at 800 metres, setting an Olympic record of 1:49.2 as he charged ahead of his competitors over the final 100 metres on a rain-soaked track.
On the final day of the Olympics, before a crowd of 83,000 at London’s Wembley Stadium, Whitfield ran the anchor leg for the 4-by-400-metre relay team to win a second gold medal.
By the time the Olympians sailed back to the United States, Whitfield had acquired a new nickname: “Marvelous Mal.”
With his long, elegant stride, Whitfield would remain a dominant force in running until the mid-1950s.
He served as an Air Force sergeant during the Korean War and went on more than 25 bombing missions as a tailgunner. He trained for the Olympics by running on a tarmac between military assignments.
At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Whitfield went on to win two more medals, including a gold in the 800 metres, tying his Olympic record of 1:49.2 from four years earlier. He also ran a leg on the U.S. 1,600-metre relay team, which won a silver medal. He was the first activeduty member of the U.S. military to win an Olympic medal in track.
Malvin Greston Whitfield was born Oct. 11, 1924, in Bay City, Texas, and moved as an infant to Los Angeles. Both of his parents died by the time he was 12. He was inspired to take up running after seeing African-American sprinters Eddie Tolan and Ralph Metcalfe at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Whitfield, who stood six feet tall and weighed 168 pounds, ran every distance from 400 metres to 1,000 metres. Sportswriters marvelled at his “nonchalant grace” on the track and the “flawless rhythm of his running style.”
His favourite event was the half-mile, or 880-yard run. (Its metric near-equivalent is 800 metres.) From 1946 to 1955, Whitfield won 66 of 69 races at that distance.
He set six world records at various distances, including twice in the 880, with a career best of 1:48.6 in 1952. His fastest time in the 400 metres was 45.9 seconds.
In 1954, Whitfield became the first African-American to win the James E. Sullivan Award, presented each year by the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union to the country’s top amateur athlete. He was named to the U.S. Track & Field Hall of Fame in 1974 and to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1988.
After failing to make the Olympic team in 1956, Whitfield retired from running and began a long career as a coach and athletic adviser around the world, particularly in Africa. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1963 and spent decades coaching and developing sports and education programs as an athletic ambassador of the State Department.
In a 37-year career with the Foreign Service, Whitfield conducted sports clinics in 138 countries.
In addition to training athletes when he was with the State Department, Whitfield was instrumental in establishing an educational exchange program that enabled thousands of African students to study at U.S. universities.
During Whitfield’s years overseas, he lived in and coached in every African country. He helped develop the careers of many prominent African track stars, including two-time Olympic champion Kipchoge Keino of Kenya, 1968 marathon gold medallist Momo Walde of Ethiopia and Uganda’s John Akii-Bua, who won the 1972 Olympic gold medal in the 400-metre hurdles.
After retiring in the 1990s, he settled in the Washington area and led an educational foundation. His first marriage, to Mary Adams, ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife of 57 years, Nola Simon Whitfield and their three children, Nyna Konishi, Malvin Lonnie Whitfield and Fredricka Whitfield; a son from another relationship, Ed Wright, a nationally ranked high jumper; eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.