Continuing the series that we revived last week, today Oldest Olympians is once again looking at cases for whom we believed to have identified their date of death but, for whatever reason, we were unable to connect the information, such as obituary or public record, conclusively to the athlete. As always, we present them here not only in the hopes of solving some of these cases, but to continue our commitment to transparency in our research.

Julían Velásquez – Member of Argentina’s fencing delegation to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics

Julían Velásquez, born December 7, 1920, was a member of Argentina’s sabre fencing team at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, which was eliminated in round one of the tournament. He had better luck at the 1963 Pan American Games, where he took home a silver medal with the sabre team. This is the extent of what we know about him, but a user on Wikipedia added a date of death of November 12, 2010 and a place of death of Buenos Aires to his article. Unfortunately, we have been unable to confirm this in other sources.

Herman Kunnen – Member of Belgium’s track and field delegation to the 1948 London Olympics

Herman Kunnen, born March 28, 1925, was a three-time Belgian national champion in the 400 metres, from 1946 through 1948. During that time, he was sixth in that event at the 1946 European Championships and did not reach the final at the 1948 London Olympics. He was also sixth in the 4×100 metres at the 1946 Europeans. As with the Velásquez, our only clue about his later life comes from a Wikipedia user, who claimed that Kunnen died in August 2001 in Gent, but we have been unable to find additional evidence to back this up.

Masood Ahmed – Member of Pakistan’s field hockey squad at the 1948 London Olympics

One thing that can be said for certain about Masood Ahmed, born June 1918, is that he represented Pakistan in its fourth-place finish in the field hockey tournament at the 1948 London Olympics. Other information about him is difficult to ascertain, as his name is seen as both Masood Mirza Ahmed and Masood Ahmed Khan, and thus it is possible that two individuals are being conflated in our search for more information. One anonymous Wikipedia user, however, asserted that the Olympian in question died January 19, 2003, but unfortunately this has proven impossible for us to verify.

That is it for today, but we will continue this series next week as we explore even more Olympic Mysteries that we have uncovered. We hope that you will join us!