Helsinki was to prove the peak of his achievements, and by the time of the next Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 other athletes, copying his training techniques and refining them, had come on the scene.

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Simple clinical diagnosis would probably trace the condition back to 1896, the year of the first modern Olympic Games, when a trainee accountant from Melbourne called Edwin Flack headed to Greece as Australia's first Olympian.

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It was the only truly world-class event the Games offered, with India midway through a hot streak of Olympic victories that was to stretch from the Amsterdam Games of 1928 to the Melbourne Games of 1956.

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