A 91-year-old athletics trophy has surfaced in Dunedin and the custodians are trying to find out more about it.
The silver cup has an engraving that tells only half the story:
"Presented to the Otago University Athletic Club by the Oxford University Athletic Club to commemorate the World’s One Mile Record of 4min 7.6sec set up on July 15 by J.E. Lovelock — President of the Oxford University Athletic Club and previously captain of Otago University Athletic Club"
Now that name sounds familiar.
Jack Lovelock ran into New Zealand athletics immortality when he won gold in the 1500m at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
The mile record referred to on the trophy’s engraving was set three years earlier.
Lovelock, who hailed from South Canterbury but started his training in medicine at the University of Otago before heading to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, broke the world mile record by 1.6sec at Princeton University.
It was the first time a New Zealand athlete had set a recognised world record.
Dunedin already has Lovelock Ave and the Lovelock Relays. Now there is another link to the running great.
The mystery trophy was uncovered by Mica Goldsmith-Lonie at the University of Otago, and is now in the hands of the merged Hill City-University club.
HCU president Mark Geddes understood the trophy was in the old Unipol building and had been moved along with some other items.
The club did not know much about the trophy at all.
"It may be a commemorative trophy only but we are doing some research and are trying to remove some of the mystery that surrounds it and its relative absence for some time.
"We are unaware if it has been used as a trophy for a mile race here or not.
"On the other side it does say it is a challenge cup, suggesting that it may have been raced for.
"The trophy itself has been found but it is evident that there was once a stand it stood on . . . which could also have been engraved."
The Otago University and Hill City clubs amalgamated in 2012.
Geddes said the HCU club would look to establish contact with the Oxford University Athletics Club to see if it had any more information.
They would also tap into the memory banks of some older club members.
"The other interesting part is that no-one missed it, suggesting that few to no-one knew about it."
