OLYMPIC MEDALS AWARDED TO BRITAIN’S MOST BEMEDALLED OLYMPIC ATHLETE HIGHLIGHT NOONANS SALE

The medals and ephemera awarded to Guy Butler, winner of four Olympic medals including a Gold at the 1920 Games are to be sold at Noonans Mayfair in their auction of Historical Medals on Thursday, May 9, 2024. Bell was Britain’s most bemedalled Olympic athlete of all time, a distinction shared since 1984 with Sebastian Coe, Christine Ohuruogu and Mo Farah. Ranging from International including those from the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games and regional medals to trophies to blazers, the collection is being sold by his four grandchildren and is expected to fetch £15,000-20,000.

As Peter Preston-Morley commented: “We are very pleased to be selling this collection – just two months before the 2024 Olympic Games will be held in Paris. Guy Butler was a truly outstanding athlete who not only won more Olympic medals that any other British Athlete until 1984 when he was caught up by Sebastian Coe! This wasn’t his only feat, he even outran the legendary Harold Abrahams and came third to Eric Liddell, other heroes of the 1924 Olympics, whose feats were celebrated in the 1981 blockbuster film Chariots of Fire.”

Guy Montagu Butler (1899-1981), b Harrow, son of Edward Montagu Butler (1866-1948), a former first-class cricketer for Middlesex and housemaster of The Park, Harrow School, and grandson of Dr Henry Montagu Butler (1833-1918), the Head Master of Harrow from 1860 to 1885 and subsequently Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; he was a cousin of the former Home Secretary Rab Butler.

Also included in the sale is the 1952 Olympic Games Winner’s medal awarded to the American swimmer Jimmy McLane in Helsinki, which is estimated at £8,000-10,000. James Price McLane Jr (1930-2020), born in Pittsburgh and raised by a single mother in Akron, Ohio, won a swimming scholarship to the historic Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as a result of winning the 4-mile open-air swim at the national Amateur Athletic Union championships in 1943. As a student at Phillips, mentored by Robert Kiphuth (1890-1967), the legendary coach of the Yale swimming team, McLane, known as ‘Fishy’ to his friends, set national high school records in the 200, 220 and 440 yard freestyle events.