Ray Lewis (sprinter), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetRay Lewis (sprinter)
Canadian sprinter
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
About Ray Lewis (sprinter)
- Raymond Gray "Ray" Lewis, CM (October 8, 1910 – November 15, 2003) was a Canadian track and field athlete, and the first Canadian-born black Olympic medalist. The descendant of African-American slaves, he was born and died in Hamilton, Ontario.
- Lewis was nicknamed Rapid Ray for his speed on the track.
- He excelled in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 metre distances in high school and captured seventeen national high school championships (including a record four in one day) while a student at Hamilton's Central Collegiate. Lewis briefly attended Milwaukee's Marquette University on a scholarship, but returned to Canada after only a semester.
- He found a position on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as a porter during the Great Depression, a job he would hold for 22 years.
- Lewis continued training – often running alongside the CPR train tracks during stopovers on the Canadian Prairies – and won a bronze medal as part of the 4x400 metre relay team at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
- In the 400 metre event he was eliminated in the quarter-finals. Two years later he won a silver medal in the mile relay (4×440 yards) at the British Empire Games (later the Commonwealth Games).
- In the 440 yards competition he was eliminated in the semi-finals.
- Narrowly missing the cut for Canada's 1936 Olympic team, he ran for two more years before retiring after a bout of pain from shin splints (shin splints had caused Lewis problems in the latter portion of his running career).
- He received greater recognition later in his life, including the Order of Canada in 2001.
- In 2002, Canadian author John Cooper wrote his biography, Rapid Ray: The Story of Ray Lewis.
- The children's book chronicled his youth in Hamilton, as well as his training for the Olympics.
- A Hamilton school named in his honour, Ray Lewis Elementary, opened in 2005 and was occasionally visited by his widow Vivienne.
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