Jerry Cornes

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Men's Athletics
Olympic medal record
Silver	1932 Los Angeles	1500 metres

John Frederick 'Jerry' Cornes (Mar 23, 1910, Darjeeling - Jun 19, 2001) was an English middle distance runner.

[edit] Life

He was educated at Clifton College and won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he studied History. He stayed at Oxford an extra year, studying one of the languages of Nigeria and learning how to work in the colonies. He left Oxford in 1932, when he competed in the Olympics.

After the 1932 Games, he worked in Nigeria as a civil servant. He stayed for five years, during which time he was given leave to attend the 1936 Games. He only decided to go for the '36 Olympics in '35, so he did no intensive training in between. During that time, he raced with a local Nigerian around the walls of Katsima and lost.

When he returned from Nigeria in 1937, he married Rachael Addis on the 12th of June in Frant, Sussex. Their marriage was extremely happy. In 1997, they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.

In 1937, he went to work in Palestine for the civil service as assistant district officer of Ramallah, in Judea. He also worked in Hebron and Safad. His three elder sons, Nick, Colin and John were born in Palestine. He was working at the King David Hotel at the time of the King David Hotel bombing. He was curious when he heard the blast of the small explosive in the street outside the hotel (which had been detonated by the terrorists to keep passers-by away from the area). He went outside to investigate what was going on. While he was outside, the bomb inside was detonated, killing everyone on his floor.

He left Palestine in 1947, working for the Colonial Office and teaching colonial students at Oxford until 1953. His youngest son, Andrew, was born during this period. In 1953, he came into an inheritance and bought West Downs School in Winchester, where he taught History, Religious Studies and Latin, as well as being headmaster. He retired in 1980 and the school was closed down.

[edit] Running

He first became interested in running at Clifton, where he won the seven mile cross-country 'Long Pen Pole' race, as his father had done twice before him. When the Achilles Club from Oxford and Cambridge came for a match against Clifton, he beat, on handicap, Douglas Lowe, who was an Olympic champion.

At Oxford, he won the Freshman cross-country race.

He competed for Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, in the 1500 metres where he won the Silver medal. His time was 3 minutes 52 seconds. He then competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, gaining sixth place but running his personal best time of 3 minutes 51 seconds. The race was exceptional because the first two runners broke World Records and the first five, Olympic Records.