William T. Britton (12 October 1890 – 15 February 1965) was an Irish

athlete An athlete is most commonly a person who competes in one or more sports involving physical strength, speed, power, or endurance. Sometimes, the word "athlete" is used to refer specifically to sport of athletics competitors, i.e. including track ...

Biography

Britton was born near Mullinahone to a farming family. He attended Coláiste Éamann Rís in Callan and worked as a bank clerk in the Munster and Leinster Bank. Britton excelled in

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

, 120 yd hurdles,

triple jump The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down the tr ...

and

hammer throw The hammer throw (HT for short) is one of the four throwing events in regular outdoor track-and-field competitions, along with the discus throw, shot put and Javelin throw, javelin. The hammer used in this sport is not like any of the tools a ...

, winning

Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sports, amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional Irish sports o ...

National Athletic and Cycling Association The National Athletic and Cycling Association (NACA or N.A. and C.A.), from 1990 the National Athletic and Cycling Association of Ireland (NACAI or NACA(I)) was a federation of sports clubs in the island of Ireland practising athletics or bicyc ...

and Amateur Athletic Association of England titles. Britton won the British

AAA Championships The AAA Championships was an annual track and field competition organised by the Amateur Athletic Association of England. It was the foremost domestic athletics event in the United Kingdom during its lifetime, despite the existence of the offi ...

title in the hammer throw event at the 1928 AAA Championships. He repeated the success at both the 1929 AAA Championships and the 1933 AAA Championships. The high point of Britton's career was representing

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

at the

1930 British Empire Games The 1930 British Empire Games were the inaugural edition of what is now known as the Commonwealth Games, and was held in Hamilton, Ontario, from 16 to 23 August 1930. The event was organized by '' Hamilton Spectator'' sportswriter Bobby Robinso ...

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: * Alexander Hamilton (1755/1757–1804), first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States * ''Hamilton'' (musical), a 2015 Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda ** ''Hamilton'' (al ...

, Canada, where he won silver in the hammer throw with a throw of 153′ 10″ (46.89 m).

References

1890 births 1965 deaths Irish male hammer throwers Irish male long jumpers Irish male high jumpers Irish male hurdlers Irish male sprinters Athletes from County Tipperary Athletes (track and field) at the 1930 British Empire Games Commonwealth Games silver medallists Medallists at the 1930 British Empire Games Commonwealth Games silver medallists in athletics {{Ireland-athletics-bio-stub