PREVIEW: HISTORICAL MEDALS: 9 MAY

Sebastian Coe, Christine Ohuruogu and Mo Farah have won more Olympic track medals as athletes than any other Briton in modern times, but before them all came Guy Butler.

He even outran the legendary Harold Abrahams and came third to Eric Liddell, heroes of the 1924 Olympics, whose feats were celebrated in the 1981 blockbuster film Chariots of Fire.

Now Butler’s family have consigned his extraordinary collection of athletics medals and trophies – including those from the 1920, 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games – to Noonans for sale here.

Guy Montagu Butler (1899-1981) came from distinguished stock. He was the 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 Headmaster of Harrow from 1860 to 1885 and subsequently Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was also cousin to former Home Secretary and prospective leader of the Conservative party, Rab Butler.

Guy Butler made his mark as an athlete early, becoming Head of School, captain of cricket and football, and Victor Ludorum at The Park in 1917. That year he also won the 100 yards in the Public Schools Championships, with Harold Abrahams unplaced six yards behind. Adding victory in the 440 yards and the long jump, he beat Abrahams by half an inch with his final leap in the latter.
After a year at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1919, by which time he was the AAA 440 yards champion.

Next came the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, where he was a member of the 4 x 400 metre relay team that won gold, also finishing second in the 400 metres, won by his great rival, the South African Bevil Rudd.

Despite competing with a strained thigh muscle, forcing him to employ standing starts, Butler reached new heights at the Paris Olympics of 1924. Setting an unofficial European record of 48.0 seconds in his semi-final, he gave it everything in the final, staged in the evening of the same day, 11 July. Second to his inspired team-mate Eric Liddell for much of the race, he eventually placed third in 48.6.

“Under any other circumstances, such a magnificent and plucky feat would have received the attention and acclaim it merited, but on this occasion, it tended to be overlooked in the excitement surrounding Liddell’s victory,” said Noonans’ Special Projects Director, Peter Preston-Morley.

Undaunted, Butler later picked up another bronze medal in the 4 x 400 metre relay, his team recording 3m 17.4s.

Tall, powerfully built and long-striding, Butler was an athlete who, as a result of leg injuries and acute nerves, never quite fulfilled his potential. As Harold Abrahams once wrote, “Ill-luck and a rather wayward temperament played their part in robbing him of distinctions which were well within his capabilities, and had he not been so successful when he was so young, he might have been very much more so later on.”

One of Butler’s finest performances came in 1926 when, a week after winning the Amateur Athletic Association 220 yards in a personal best of 21.9, he equalled the world record of 30.6 for 300 yards. He ended his active career at the 1928 Olympic Games, when he became the first British track and field athlete to compete in three Olympics but was eliminated in the second round of the 200 metres.

Butler served a term as president of the Cambridge University Athletic Club in 1921-2 and was an assistant master at Lancing College from 1922 to 1928; subsequently he was secretary of the Eton Fives Association, 1934-8. During this time, and later, he went on to make valuable contributions to British athletics in many ways. He advised on the design of the White City stadium, where he was athletics manager. He became a successful coach (guiding Alistair McCorquodale to fourth place in the 1948 Olympic Games 100 metres), lectured and wrote widely on the sport, serving as the athletics correspondent of the Morning Post until its merger with the Daily Telegraph in 1937, and became Britain’s foremost producer of coaching films and loops.

During World War II Butler worked at the Foreign Office and was a Lieutenant in the Bedfordshire Regiment. He was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014.

The list of Butler’s medals and trophies consigned to this auction number dozens, lotted together as a collection with an estimate of £15,000-20,000. Particularly notable among them are his Olympic medals, which include the following:

1920 Belgium OIympic Games in Antwerp:
– silver-gilt Winner’s medal 1600 Metres Relay (G.M. Butler, 1st)
– silver Winner’s medal 400 Metres, (G.M. Butler, 2nd)
– bronze Participant’s medal

1924 France Olympic Games in Paris:
– bronze Winner’s medal
– second bronze Winner’s medal
– bronze Participant's medal
– Competitor’s official badge in brass and red enamel

1928 Netherlands Olympic Games in Amsterdam:
– light bronze Participant’s medal, unsigned

The range of Butler’s other awards covers medals from the London Athletic Club, Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Cambridge University Athletic Club, Oxford University Athletic Club, Amateur Athletic Association Championships, the Greek Athletics Meeting in Athens of 1927, the German Internationale Leichtathletik-Wettkämpfe of 1927, and various running clubs, among others.

“One of the great pleasures of this auction is the honour of reminding the public of this outstanding figure, who contributed so much to our sporting history both on and off the track,” said Peter Preston-Morley.