Australia’s first Olympic champion ‘every inch a gentleman’

EDWIN HAROLD FLACK: 1873 - 1935 Edwin Flack, the Melbourne businessman who passed away on Thursday in a private hospital, was very prominent in sport years ago. He was the first Australian winner at the Olympic Games. These took place in Athens in 1896, where Mr Flack won the 800 and 1500 metres championships and also started in the Olympic Marathon.

Athlete and Olympian Edwin Flack. Credit: State Library NSW The outstanding mile runner of his period in Australia, he won championships of Australasia, New South Wales, and Victoria, besides the two miles championships in New South Wales and Victoria, and many other important events. Richard Coombes, the archpriest of amateur athletics in Australia, and a very fine judge, had great admiration for Flack as a man with a high sense of sportsmanship.

In 1894 after Flack had won the Victorian cross-country championship of 10 miles in 60 min 2sec, Coombes, in his “Referee” notes, wrote: “Mr Flack, who is known on this side of the Murray as well as in Victoria, is an Englishman, but he has lived for a number of years in Melbourne, where he is a great favourite...

he is a young athlete of modest demeanour, and every inch a gentleman. His action is very taking, and his long sweeping strides particularly telling.” In one of his letters from Europe immediately after the Olympic Games, Mr Flack paid a tribute to the Royal family of Greece, the King and Queen and three princes, for the personal and practical interest they had shown in.