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Britain’s first black Olympic medal winner Harry Edward is to be inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame. Edward will join the likes of Mo Farah, former sprinter Sonia Lannaman and medal-winning hurdler Shirley Strong, who will all be honoured at a ceremony in Birmingham in November. Edward’s citation includes the tribute: “A true citizen of the world and a pioneer of British sport, England Athletics is proud and humbled to induct Britain’s first black Olympic medallist into the Hall of Fame.”
Edward was until recent years a forgotten hero of the 1920s, a decade that saw him win two bronze edals, in the 100m and 200m, at the 1920 Antwerp Olympics. He was also three times the AAA 100yd and 220yd champion and won the 100, 220 and 440-yard AAA championships in 1922, inside a single hour. King George V came down from the stands to personally congratulate him.
Soon afterwards he emigrated to the US and disappeared from view. When he died in 1973 not a single British newspaper published a line to mark his passing.
Born and raised in Berlin, he was forging a promising career as a teenage sprinter when the first world war began. His father came from the British colony of Dominica, so Edward was arrested and interned. After the war he went to London, joined the Polytechnic Harriers and ran for Britain in the Olympics. Harold Abrahams, the British sprinter immortalised in Chariots of Fire, regarded him as one of the greatest sprinters he ever saw. He never beat him.
After Edward emigrated in 1923, he devoted his life to fighting for civil rights and leading international programmes to help refugees and foster children. He had written an extraordinary autobiography, entitled When I Passed the Statue of Liberty I Became Black, but it failed to find a publisher. It sat unread in a box in a New Orleans archive, among his medals, photographs, scrapbooks and letters, until it was discovered and published in 2024 – making the William Hill Sports Book of the Year shortlist. Next year, English Heritage plan to erect a blue plaque on his old London home near Euston station.
Farah, Britain’s most successful athlete of all time, is among this year’s other Hall of Fame inductees. Birmingham-born Lannaman was Britain’s premier sprinter of the 1970s and a favourite for medals at the Montreal Olympics in 1976 before injury scuppered her chances. She went on to win 100m gold at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and 4x100m relay bronze at the 1980 Olympics. Strong won silver in the 100m hurdles at the 1984 Olympics, having won Commonwealth gold in 1982.
The three other three inductees are triple Paralympic gold medal winner Stephen Miller, who also co-founded the SMILE Through Sport organisation to encourage disabled people to participate in sport, the coach Mike Holmes, who guided Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s early career, and the photographer Mark Shearman, a fixture at major athletics events for more than six decades.
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Tickets are available for the England Athletics Hall of Fame dinner and awards presentationat the Hilton Metropole Hotel, Birmingham, on Saturday 21 November. Visit eventbrite.co.uk/e/england-athletics-hall-of-fame-and-awards-evening-2026-tickets-1983450136752
