William Sherring
William D. "Billy" Sherring (1877 - 1964) was a Canadian athlete, winner of the marathon race at the 1906 Summer Olympics.
In the early 1900s, Billy Sherring from Hamilton, Ontario was acknowledged to be the world premier marathoner. He had won a second place behind a fellow countryman Jack Caffery at the Boston Marathon in 1900. He also had won the Hamilton Round-the-Bay Marathon on two occasions.
In 1906, Sherring was chosen to represent Canada in the Athens Olympic Games. However, it was left up to him, a working man with meager resources (he was a brakeman at the Grand Trunk Railway), to finance his journey to Athens. Sherring managed to collect 90$ (clearly insufficient amount to travel to Athens), which he then bet on a horse which luckily won with good odds. He arrived to Athens seven weeks before the Olympic Games and started to work as a porter at the Athens railway station.
At the marathon race, Sherring led almost all the distace. Prince George of Greece ran the last 50 metres of the marathon alongside Sherring. Sherring received a live lamb and a statue of Athena as a reward. When he returned to Canada, Hamilton City Council awarded him 5000$ and Toronto City 400$.
