Walter Renwick Knox

Margaret Haylock Capon

Declared “the World’s Greatest Athlete” and also recognized as a notorious sports hustler, Walter Renwick Knox (1878- 1951) is buried in Wellington Cemetery. Born in Listowel. Ontario, he later moved to Orillia where he worked on his father’s farm. Small in stature, through manual labour he developed considerable strength and by 1896 had begun a remarkable athletic career that would span 37 years and take him throughout the United States and Europe.

During his years of formal competition, Knox garnered 359 first place finishes in track and field events, 90 seconds and 52 thirds. A track and field star, he set records in the 200-yard dash (22.8 seconds), the pole vault (12 feet, 6 inches) and the standing broad jump (10 feet, 7 inches). He also matched the world record of 9.8 seconds for the 100-yard dash.

Grockipedia notes that Knox was known as a vagabond athlete. It was his practise to travel across the United States and Europe, using aliases to challenge local competitors to matched races. He would bet heavily on himself and realize substantial winnings. Because he was small in stature, he was often underestimated by his opponents. Knox invested his winnings in mining, became wealthy and used the money to further finance his travels as a sports hustler. In 1907, this unscrupulous conduct led to a lifetime ban from Olympic competition.

During his career, Knox won five national titles in various events during a single 1907 meet in which he defeated Olympic medalists such as Ed Archibald and Cal Bricker. In 1913, he won the All-Round Professional Title of America and the following year claimed the World Championship.

In later life, Knox turned from competition to coaching, serving as the Canadian Olympic Track and Field Team coach in 1920 and chief coach for the Ontario Athletic Commission. Ahead of his time in advocating for female athletes, he coached Mamie Skrum of Orillia to a record setting shot-put win and Ethel Catherwood to Olympic gold in the high jump event at the 1928 Amsterdam games.

Knox and his bride, Mary Boyce wed late in life. The couple met in Ellisburg, New York, where she had been residing, and were married in 1924, in Prince Edward County, where Mary had family connections. At her death in 1942, Knox erected a monument to her memory in Wellington Cemetery, with an inscription which read “I have lost my soul’s companion, a life linked with my own, And day by day I miss her more, As I walk through life alone.” Nine years later, when Knox died at the age of 73, while holidaying in Petersburg, Florida, his body was returned to Canada for interment with his wife, in Wellington Cemetery.

In 1955, Knox was inducted posthumously into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. In 1960, he was additionally honoured with induction into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame as a builder in athletics, in recognition of his pivotal role in coaching Canada’s Olympic track and field teams at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and the 1920 Antwerp Games.

The world claimed Walter Knox in life, but in death he rests in a country cemetery in the village of Wellington, the World’s Greatest Athlete and the vagabond hustler.