Mervyn George "Merv" Lincoln (22 November 19331 May 2016)[1] [2] was an Australian middle-distance runner who won a silver medal in the mile run at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games and twice competed in the Summer Olympic Games.
Merv Lincoln was born in Leongatha, Victoria[1] and raised in Wodonga, where for many years in his honour there has been a Lincoln Causeway adjacent to the Hume Freeway.[3]
He qualified for the 1500 metres final at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, finishing 12th.[1] He was tipped as a potential successor to the retiring John Landy as Australia's leading miler;[4] however, newcomer Herb Elliott defeated him at the 1957 national championships.[5]
Lincoln ran his first four-minute mile on 23 March 1957, the eleventh man in the world and the third Australian to accomplish that feat. His time of 3:58.9 was less than a second short of Landy's world record of 3:58.0.[6] Despite his loss to Elliott at the Australian championships he did also win a national championship mile that year, winning the United States championship race as an outside competitor.[7] Track & Field News ranked him #7 in the world for 1957, one place below his Australian rival Elliott.[8]
Lincoln reached his peak in 1958 but was overshadowed by the rapidly improving Elliott.[9] The Australian team of Elliott, Lincoln, and Albie Thomas swept the medals in the mile at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Lincoln running 4:01.80 for silver.[10] He set his personal mile best of 3:55.9 in Dublin on 6 August 1958,[11] finishing more than a second under Derek Ibbotson's world record of 3:57.2 yet still only being the runner-up as Elliott won in a new record time of 3:54.5.[12] Track & Field News ranked Lincoln as second in the world that year; however, that proved to be the last time he was ranked among the world's top ten,[8] and at the 1960 Olympics in Rome he failed to qualify from the heats.[1]
He was coached by the Austrian-born Franz Stampfl, a bitter rival of Elliott's coach Percy Cerutty.[13] Stampfl stated Lincoln only trained one hour a day, in contrast to the harder training of Elliott.[13]
He died on 1 May 2016, aged 82.[3] [14]