 William Sherring | |||||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
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| Born | William John Sherring (1877-09-18)September 18, 1877 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada | ||||||||||||||
| Died | September 5, 1964(1964-09-05) (aged 86) Hamilton, Ontario, Canada | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) | ||||||||||||||
| Weight | 119 lb (54 kg) | ||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||
| Sport | Marathon | ||||||||||||||
| Retired | 1906 | ||||||||||||||
| Achievements and titles | |||||||||||||||
| Olympic finals |
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Medal record
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William John Sherring (September 18, 1877 – September 5, 1964) was aCanadian athlete of English and Irish descent, winner of themarathon race at the1906 Olympic Games (later called "Intercalated Games").[1]
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During the decade of the early 1900s, Sherring, fromHamilton, Ontario[2] was acknowledged to be a world class marathoner. He had won a second place behind a fellow countrymanJack Caffery at theBoston Marathon in 1900. He also had won the HamiltonAround the Bay Road Race on two occasions.
In 1906, Sherring – an athlete of St. Patrick's Athletic Club – was chosen to represent Canada in the Athens Olympic Games. However, it was left up to him, a working man with meager resources (he was a brakeman at theGrand Trunk Railway), to finance his journey toAthens. Sherring managed to collect an amount claimed to be between $45 and $90 (a clearly insufficient amount to travel to Athens), which he then bet on a horse namedCicely which won with good odds.[3] He arrived in Athens seven weeks before the Olympic Games and started to work as a porter at the Athens railway station.[citation needed]
At the marathon race, the 45 kg (99 lb) Sherring proceeded at a steady pace, at one point a half-mile behind the leaders, before taking the lead at about the fifteen mile mark and finishing seven minutes before the next runner.[4]Prince George of Greece[5] ran the last 50 metres of the marathon alongside Sherring. Sherring received a live lamb and a statue ofAthena as a reward. When he returned to Canada, Hamilton City Council awarded him $5000 and the City ofToronto awarded him a further $400.Baron Pierre de Coubertin wrote a letter to theGovernor General of Canada,Albert Grey, protesting the gifts as inconsistent with the Olympic ideal of "sport for sport's sake."[6] So far as is known, Sherring got to keep his money. The province ofOntario named two new townships in New Ontario (now part ofCochrane District) in honour of Sherring, Sherring twp and Marathon twp (not to be confused withMarathon, Ontario).[7]
Upon his triumphant return from the marathon, Sherring quit athletics and worked as a customs officer in Hamilton until his retirement in 1942.[citation needed]
Sherring was inducted into theCanada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1955.[8]
After his death, theAround the Bay Road Race was renamed the Billy Sherring Memorial Road Race, and Hamilton has since built a Billy Sherring Park to commemorate their most famous athlete.
Sherring is thought to have inspired the founders ofPanathinaikos to adopt theshamrock as the Greek multi-sport club's official emblem in 1918.[9]
