Ian Thompson (marathoner)

Ian Reginald Thompson (born 16 October 1949 in Birkenhead ) is a former British marathon runners. The 1.67 m wide and its competition time 60 kg Thompson 1974 European champions.

Thompson was an average track runner when he took on 27 October 1973 under the AAA in the marathon, so that his club Luton United could bring a full team at the start. Thompson won the race and the championship in 2:12:40 hours, the previously fastest time of a marathon debutant. He had qualified for the England team at the British Commonwealth Games in 1974, which took place in late January in Christchurch. In the fastest marathon ever run was at Commonwealth Games, Thompson won in 2:09:12 hours with a British record and two minutes ahead of second-placed Jack Foster from New Zealand.

After he had won the Athens Marathon in the spring of 1974 also, which took place in Rome on September 8 European Championships Marathon was winning his fourth race over the classic distance and also this run. Already at the first intermediate time he was in the lead and at the finish he had in 2:13:18,8 hours and a half minutes ahead of Eckhard Lesse from the GDR.

In 1976, Thompson was tormented by cramps, do not qualify for the Olympic Games in Montreal. With a victory in the AAA Championship in 1980, Thompson qualified for its only international championship after 1974, but had to give up at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Thompson played from 1973 to 1982 for the UK's best marathon runners. In 1982, he won the Paris Marathon.

His wife Margaret was one of the first successful British marathon runners. She presented in 1975 in Corso, Finland, with 3:07:47 minutes a British record, so the couple Thompson for several months held the British record for men and women.