Thompson’s LA glory wins fans’ poll

DALEY Thompson’s memorable gold medal- winning decathlon performance from Los Angeles in 1984 has been voted as athletics fans’ favourite performance from an Olympic Games over the last 60 years.

The charismatic Thompson, who scored a world record of 8847 points to beat Jurgen Hingsen, defended the title he first won in 1980.

The online poll by UKA, which featured every gold medal-winning performance in the post World War era, was launched last week and asked athletics fans across the UK to vote on which spine tingling moment held the most significance. In second place was the hugely emotional 800m performance from Kelly Holmes in Athens 2004, which saw years of injury-filled frustration put behind her, crossing the line ahead of Hasna Benhassi in a time of 1:56.38.

Holmes also took third place in the poll with her 1500m-winning performance from the same Games, making the double gold medallist the recipient of the most votes overall in the entire poll – albeit split across two performances. Next most popular was the Mexico 1968 400m hurdles gold won by David Hemery. He won in 48.12 ahead of Gerhard Hennige.

Other strong performers in the poll included Mary Peters’ 1972 pentathlon win, Don Thompson’s 50k Walk gold from the 1960 Olympics, and Ann Packer’s groundbreaking 1964 800m gold. The poll was part of UKA’s celebrations of 100 days to go until the London Olympic Games.