Emil Voigt, vegetarian Guardian writer who triumphed at the 1908 Olympics

When London first staged the Olympic Games in summer 1908, one of the British heroes was Emil Voigt, a runner from Manchester who entered the five mile race at the last minute and set an Olympic record that still stands. Voigt was a stalwart of Harriers race meetings in Manchester, occasionally cropping up in Manchester Guardian reports. It was during this period that he also worked as a Guardian correspondent, though, as was the style at the time, his pieces weren't bylined. In July 1908 Voigt, an unknown outside the Lancashire running scene, won his five-mile heat in what the Guardian dubbed the 'race of the day' . Four days later he triumphed in the final, finishing over a minute faster than his time in the heats. On his return from London he was presented with a 'gold watch, an address and a lifetime member's ticket' by Manchester Athletics Club. Vegetarianism was central to Voigt's beliefs, but was a humanitarian choice rather than an athletic one. He was a member of the Vegetarian Cycling Club, who honoured him at a dinner in January 1909. At the banquet, Voigt spoke of his desire to eat simply and healthily, and suggested that others could achieve the same results if they avoided 'other harmful things, such as tea, coffee, and lentils.' In 1910, Voigt founded the Amateur Athletics Union, aiming to improve the status of amateur athletes and the conditions they faced, but it was disbanded following Voigt's passage to Australia the following year. Though he returned to England at the outbreak of the first world war , Voigt eventually settled in Australia, where he became a pioneer in the field of radio broadcasting. At this point he disappears from the pages of the Manchester Guardian, other than one curious footnote. In 1935, the newspaper reported that Voigt was safe in Russia; it was feared that he had been captured by the Germans during a visit to Europe. The article gives no explanation as to why Voigt, who was part-German, would have been detained. A year later, Voigt returned again to England, before retiring to New Zealand in 1947. His death in 1973 made the sports pages, but the paper made no mention of his brief stint as a Manchester Guardian man.