Percy Williams was the world’s fastest human for a time. In these days of super-charged Olympic athletes, he was truly unique.
The following is story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History
King Edward High School:
There’s a young, very thin Percy Williams in a picture of the King Edward High School track team of 1926. Williams had taken up running two years earlier when his gym teacher noticed how much faster he was than the other boys his age and bullied him into joining the track team. Two years later, he brought home two gold medals from the Olympics and became a local hero.
Percy was born in 1908 and spent a good chunk of his life on West 12th Avenue in Mount Pleasant. He was a scrawny kid, standing just five foot six and weighing 110 pounds. He had a bad heart from childhood rheumatic fever.
He was 18 when he was “discovered” while attending King Edward High School.
Coach Bob Granger:
His coach, Bob Granger, later told a reporter that he took Percy on after he tied a race with his sprint champion in 1926. “It violated every known principle of the running game,” he said. “He ran with his arms glued to his sides. It actually made me tired to watch him.”
Granger had interesting training techniques. His idea of a warm up was having Percy lie on the dressing table under a pile of blankets. Another was making him run flat out into a mattress propped up against a wall.
Unorthodox maybe, but Percy kept winning.
By 1928, he’d bulked up to 125 pounds. That was the year he brought home two gold medals for the 200 and 100 metre sprints at the Amsterdam Olympics.
Olympic Hero:
The newspapers dubbed him “Peerless Percy,” and he returned to Vancouver to a welcome from 40,000 people. Kids got the day off school and one firm came out with an “Our Percy” chocolate bar.
He was a reluctant star, and when a leg injury ended his track career in 1932, he seemed relieved. He told a reporter: “Oh, I was so glad to get out of it all.”
By 1935, the public had forgotten all about him, and city directories show him working as a salesman for Armstrong and Laing. Later he ran an insurance business.
Percy held onto his record for the 200-metre dash for 32 years—when another Vancouver boy, Harry Jerome set a new record in 1959.
In 1982, suffering from arthritis, he shot himself in the head in his West End bathtub. He was 74.
Related:
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.