Description

This is an auction for LOVELOCK by James McNeish.

"This is an 'autobiographical' novel about Jack Lovelock, New Zealand's first Olympic gold-medal winner. Rhodes Scholar and Oxford medical student Lovelock (1910-1949) visits Berlin for the 1936 Olympics and retires from running almost immediately after winning the 1500-metre race against the greatest milers of his time. The remaining events of his life - World War II on the home front; his long, successful wooing by an American heiress; the physical suffering caused by a riding accident (and exacerbated by his own emotional problems); his last years in America; and his mysterious death, at 39, under a New York subway train - have none of the glamour of his golden years. But, in this novel, Lovelock becomes real, an unhappy and haunted man. Patient readers will be rewarded by this unlikely 'sports novel'."

Publishers Weekly (US)

From Wikipedia:

"John ("Jack") Edward Lovelock (5 January 1910 – 28 December 1949) was a New Zealand athlete, and the 1936 Olympic champion in the 1500 metres... The highlight of Lovelock's career came in 1936, when he won the gold medal in the 1500 m at the Berlin Olympics, setting a world record in the final (3:47.8). Lovelock had plotted ever since his defeat at Los Angeles and developed a revolutionary tactic. The race is regarded as one of the finest 1500 m Olympic finals and included one of the finest fields assembled. The final was a culmination of the first great era of mile running from 1932-36 in which the world records for the 1500m and mile were broken several times..."