Guy Montagu Butler (25 August 1899 – 22 February 1981) was a British athlete, winner of the gold medal in the 4x400 m relay at the 1920 Summer Olympics.
Butler was born in Harrow, Middlesex, and attended the local Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. With four Olympic medals Guy Butler shares the British record for athletics with Sebastian Coe.
At the Antwerp Olympics in 1920, Butler won the silver medal in the individual 400 m and anchored the British 4x400 relay team to a gold medal in 3:22.2.
At the 1924 Summer Olympics, Butler won bronze in the 400 m and again anchored the British 4x400 m relay team, this time winning bronze in 3:17.4. In his final Olympics in 1928 he reached the quarter final of the 200 m.
Butler also won the British AAA championships in 440 yd (400 m) in 1919 and in 220 yd (200 m) in 1926. He also ran the 300 yd (270 m) world record of 30.6 in 1926.
After his athletics career, Butler was a schoolmaster, then an athletics journalist and was a pioneer of filming athletes in action.
Guy Butler died in St Neots, Huntingdonshire, aged 81.
Famous quotes containing the words guy and/or butler:
“I thought it was a wonderfully conceptual act actually, to fire a replica pistol at a figurehead—the guy could have been working for Andy Warhol!”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things ...”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)