Although he only competed at one Winter Olympics, speed skater Alex Hurd managed to claim two medals: a bronze in the men’s 500 meters and a silver in the 1,500 meters. Immediately after, he won that year’s St. Louis Silver Skates competition. After his Olympic victory, he won many championships over the remainder of the decade, most notably the North American Mass-start Indoor Championships three times in 1933, 1935 and 1936, setting a North American record in the two mile event in the process. As a miner with the Vale Inco mining company (then known as Inco) Hurd, who had been chosen for the 1936 Canadian Olympic Team on the condition that he pay his own way to Berlin, lost his opportunity to attend the games when his employer refused to help fund him. The company would have funded Hurd on the condition that the miners raised money as well, an idea that they protested based on their belief of “No money for Hitler”. Recently married, in December 1935, he could not afford to attend the Games out of his own pocket, but nevertheless continued professional speed skating until the end of the decade. During World War II, he performed with “Stars on Ice” at the Rockefeller Center in New York, which, by 1942, was the most popular show in the history of the arena.
Personal Bests: 500 – 43.8 (1934); 1500 – 2:27.1 (1934); 5000 – 8:50.6 (1934); 10000 – 19:20.0 (1934).
Canada