caption club birth_place weight height pb sport birth_date image article_title
armin hary -lrb- left -rrb- at the 1960 olympics fsv frankfurt quierschied , germany 71 kg lb on 1.82 m ftin on 100 : 20.5 400 m : 50.6 m : 10.0 -lrb- 1960 -rrb- 200 m sprint running 22 march 1937 armin hary and bernd cullmann 1960.jpg armin hary

armin hary

armin hary -lrb- born 22 march 1937 -rrb- is a german athlete .
in 1960 he became the first non-american since 1928 -lrb- percy williams , canada -rrb- to win the olympic 100 metres .
after playing football in his youth , hary switched to sprinting at age 16 .
only a few years later , in 1958 , he won his first international title when he came first in the 100 m and the 4 × 100 m at the european championships .
he was also one of the first track stars to be affected by the rivalry between adidas and puma ; each of the two then-fledgling companies wanted the `` world 's fastest man '' to wear its shoes .
rumors of cash payments were floated , but no evidence was ever found to support the claim .
also in 1958 , hary appeared to have run a new world record with a time of 10.0 seconds , but the track 's slope of was found to exceed the maximum allowed .
in 1960 hary set the world record , which was equaled 24 days later , but stood as a european record for eight years less one day .
that same year , at the olympics , he achieved his greatest moment of fame .
after a nerve-wracking number of near-starts , hary sprinted to the gold in 10.2 seconds to become the first non-american winner of the event since canadian percy williams .
in the final of the 4 × 100 m , hary and his teammates appeared to have finished second behind the american team , but 15 minutes later the americans had been disqualified for a faulty exchange .
germany 's time , 39.5 seconds , equaled their own world record .
during his career hary had multiple conflicts with the german athletics federation , which eventually suspended him .
these conflicts and waning motivation to compete resulted in hary 's retirement from sport in the early 1960s .
in 1980 hary was sentenced to 18 months in prison for abusing his real estate trader position and defrauding the catholic church of 3.2 million german marks .
in 2000 he was selected as germany 's runner of the millennium .
in 2011 he was inducted into the german sports hall of fame .
