Today on Oldest Olympians, we are completing our look at those Olympians who were last known living in 2013. We also have an additional update from our previous posts: thanks to information from James Flynn, we now know that Shelia Lerwill was alive at least until 2018, so we will be able to keep her on our tables. Additionally, since we discovered that three more individuals on our list were alive more recently than 2013, we only have one additional name to cover today!
(Marian Herda, pictured at hockeyarchives.info)
Marian Herda – Member of Poland’s ice hockey team at the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Olympics
Marian Herda, born October 1, 1933, was a member of Poland’s ice hockey squad at the 1956 Cortina d’Ampezzo Games, where the nation was eliminated in the preliminary round and ranked eighth overall. After the Games, he defected to West Germany and was rumored to have died in a traffic crash shortly thereafter. He was, however, still alive as of his 80th birthday, although we have not seen an update since then.
Since we have less to write about today than we thought we would, we want to also share an Olympic medal mystery. British track athlete John Salisbury, born January 26, 1934, won a bronze medal for Great Britain in the 4×400 metres relay at the 1956 Melbourne Games. He also competed in the 400 metres at those Games, but was eliminated in the semi-finals. He was a gold medalist in the relay at the 1958 European Championships, and also took silver in the 400 metres. At that year’s British Empire and Commonwealth Games, representing England, he took silver in the 4×440 yards relay and just missed a medal in fourth in the 440 yards. Despite these accomplishments, we have seen no evidence that he is still alive, perhaps because of his common name.
Finally, thanks to a reader from our blog, we have learned that Cees Gravesteijn, born April 21, 1928, whom we last heard from in 2012, was still alive in 2019. This allows us to add him back to our tables and makes him – to the best of our knowledge – the oldest living Dutch Olympian!