Marquis Olympian
Return of the Olympics this summer brings back the memory of Al LeConey, Class of 1923, who made history in Paris a century ago.
J. Alfred “Al” LeConey was a track star who won numerous college spring titles at Lafayette. After his time on College Hill, he ran the anchor leg for the American 4×100-meter relay team at the 1924 Summer Olympics, which took the gold medal with a world record time of 41 seconds.
Al LeConey surges across the finish line at Yves-du-Manoir stadium to capture the gold medal at the 1924 Olympics. The race also included Harold Abrahams, the great British sprinter later immortalized in the 1981 Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, which tells another story of those same Olympics. One century after LeConey’s historic win, this same stadium will welcome another U.S. Olympian from Lafayette: Amanda Magadan Golini ’17, who will compete in field hockey there.
LeConey received an unusual honor when a picture of him in the starting blocks was used by the U.S. Post Office to develop a 3-cent stamp commemorating the 1932 Olympics. His nephew, William W. LeConey ’55, wrote the following in a letter published by Sports Illustrated in November, 1981: “When I was a student at Lafayette before my uncle’s death in 1959, it was traditional to ask pledges at Sigma Alpha Epsilon, our mutual fraternity, to name the only living American on a postage stamp. The answer: Al LeConey.”
