Content area
Full Text
I Just Ran: Percy Williams, World's Fastest Human Samuel Hawley Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2011. 260 pp. $23.95 paper.
A feature attraction at the 2012 London Olympics was Jamaican Usain Bolt's attempt to repeat his feat of four years earlier in Beijing, when he won gold medals in both the men's 100-metre and 200-metre sprints. Canadians might be forgiven if they had forgotten that, eighty years earlier, the Los Angeles Olympic 100-metre sprints featured the final race of Vancouver's Percy Williams, who, like Bolt, was trying to repeat Olympic sprint success. Celebrated at the time as the "world's fastest human," four years earlier Williams had shocked the sporting community by winning both the 100metre and 200-metre races at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. Before his career was cut short following a leg injury suffered in 1930 while winning the 100metre gold medal at the first ever British Empire (now Commonwealth) Games, Williams would retire from competitive racing as the 100-metre world record holder (10.3 seconds).
Williams' unexpected rise to sports stardom and...