Don Thompson

Born: 20 January, 1933, in Hertfordshire. Died: 4 October, 2006, in Fleet, Hampshire, aged 73.

ONE of Britain's two gold medallists at the Rome Olympics of 1960 was a modest, shy and retiring insurance clerk who grabbed the headlines with a gutsy performance in the 50km walk. This diminutive, bespectacled man won the only British athletics gold at the Olympics that year (swimmer Anita Lonsbrough won the 200m breaststroke), and he did so as a result of hours of diligent preparation and total commitment.

Don Thompson admitted he was obsessive about his training - he rose every morning most of his adult life at 4am to walk or run eight miles. He ran in 150 marathons (his best time was 2hr 51 min) and was running every morning into his mid-sixties.

Donald James Thompson was brought up in Hillingdon and was a keen athlete at school. He had aspirations to be a sprinter until an achilles tendon injury made him take up walking.

In 1954, he was second in the London to Brighton race, and the following year he won it outright. It was a race that Thompson made very much his own, winning it on eight consecutive occasions.

In 1956, he was selected for the Melbourne Olympics but collapsed as a result of dehydration - 5km short of the finishing line. It was a lesson that the meticulous Thompson took to heart. When it came to preparation for the Rome Olympics, Thompson had evolved a training schedule that was thorough but a touch unorthodox - even downright quirky.

Thompson knew he had to reproduce in Hertfordshire the running conditions he would experience in Rome, so he placed a paraffin heater in his parents' Hillingdon bathroom and put a steaming kettle on the side. Thompson wore a heavy tracksuit and would then carry out an extensive training schedule in temperatures of 110F (43C).

When he got to Rome Thompson avoided more heavy training and instead acclimatised his body and mind to the very different conditions. The actual race was run in searing heat and two competitors retired early.

Thompson's principal rival, John Ljunggren, of Sweden, constantly challenged Thompson throughout the race, but the British walker entered the stadium first with his jaunty, rolling walk. He won by only 17 seconds and the picture of this tiny figure doing a circle of the track waving to the crowd became one of the iconic images of the 1960 Olympics.

Thompson remained modest and refused to wallow in his sudden fame. He was gracious enough to suggest one of the reasons for his success was his mother. She had concocted an unconventional hat for her son which resembled the kepi as worn by the Foreign Legion. His mother had sewn a handkerchief round the back of a cap with a wide brim, thus keeping the sun off her son's neck.

The Italians took Thompson to heart, calling him "Il Topolino" (the little mouse), and he was equally fted on his return to Britain. He admitted that he was "smugly happy" at his victory. In the 1964 Olympics, he came tenth.

Thompson remained a competitor all his life: in 1962 he won the bronze at the European Games and was acknowledged as Britain's oldest athlete when, in 1991 at the age of 58, he walked a marathon in France.

His determination saw no bounds - he was rarely ill and neither weather nor sore muscles ever stopped his daily schedule. In 1983, he actually fell during the Thanet marathon and broke a collarbone. Undeterred, he completed the walk, got into his car and drove home, where his wife had to force him not to get up at 4am for his usual dawn run.

Such was his love of competing he never worried about not staying at the top as an athlete. He derived pleasure and satisfaction from the taking part. He once said: "I came in at the ground floor and I'll leave at the basement."

Thompson was made an MBE in 1970. He is survived by his wife, Maggie Ball, whom he married in 1967, and their son and daughter.