Going once, going twice … gold! Men’s 100m Olympic medal up for auction

Harrison Dillard should never have won the 1948 Olympic 100 metres gold medal on a blazing July day at Wembley Stadium. He shouldn’t have been in the final at all.

He entered the event at the American trials only to sharpen his speed work for the high hurdles – his specialist event. Back then the 25-year-old Clevelander was the greatest sprint hurdler the world had ever seen and had racked up 82 consecutive wins in the run up to the trials and held the world record of 13.6sec in the 120-yard hurdles. He was deemed unbeatable. Then catastrophe struck.

He recalled: “All I had to do was finish third and I was in the team. But on that particular day, as history shows, I finished dead last. I hit the first hurdle, got over the second and then hit every other hurdle in succession, stopping completely at the eighth. I had totally lost the rhythm of the race and my timing was so completely destroyed I just stopped and didn’t even finish. Here I was the world record holder and American champion and it all went for nought because under the American system you qualify on that day or you don’t make it at all.”

But he had managed to squeak third spot in the 100m, so he was able to join the US team on the boat to London for what became known as the austerity Games, a unifying moment of hope and spectacle for the British public in a city scarred by six years of war and blighted by strict rationing.

The skinny Dillard, 143lb soaking wet and known to his teammates as “Bones”, then ran the race of his life to win one of the closest 100m finals in Olympic history.

The Omega photo finish camera, used for the first time at the Games, captured the inches that separated Dillard, running on the outside lane, and US No 1 Barney Ewell in Lane 2,