Be honest.  When you read the headline above, you thought for sure that someone from Johns Hopkins named Clarke had just won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Paris.  If you did, I succeeded in part one of my mission – to get you to click on this story.  Let's face it, if you've read what I've written in this space previously, I need all the help I can get getting people to read what I write and a little trickery never hurt.
 
The second part of my mission is to educate.  So, on the off chance you are still reading this, my plan of deception has worked and it's time to share another piece of Hopkins athletics history.
 
To be clear, I wasn't entirely inaccurate in my headline.  Johns Hopkins graduate Louis Alfred "Pinky" Clarke did in fact win a gold medal at the Paris Olympics as he ran the second leg of the United States' 4x100 relay team that crossed the line first in a world-record time of 41.0 seconds to win the gold.
 
Here's where the trickery and deception come in.  I may have failed to mention one thing; Clarke's gold medal came at the Paris Olympics in 1924, not 2024.  So, in theory, my headline is as accurate today as it would have been 100 years ago.  Sort of.  Let's face it, I'm not the most creative guy in the world, but that headline was pretty good wasn't it?
 
A Johns Hopkins graduate who earned a degree in chemistry (of course he did - don't all world champion sprinters have a degree in chemistry?), Clarke was ticketed for greatness on the Blue Jay baseball team when he arrived at Homewood in 1919 - until he wasn't.  After a tryout that stood out only for his speed on the bases, the Johns Hopkins track coach encouraged him to trade in his baseball spikes for running shoes – and an Olympic Champion and world-record holder was born.
 
Clarke's rise to stardom was nearly as quick as he was.  In 1923, he won the 100-yard dash at the NCAA Outdoor Track Championships.  There was only one NCAA Championship meet at that time, so Clarke, whose running career was still in its infancy, competed against the best runners from largest schools in the nation.  Did you know that Clarke's first-place finish in the 100 helped the Blue Jays place seventh in the final team standings at those 1923 NCAA Championships?  That's ok - they actually pay me to know this stuff and I didn't realize that either.  Even after 27 years, I learn something new about our history every day.
 
Less than a year later, in February 1924, Clake set a world record in the indoor 100-yard dash with a time of 9.80 seconds and by later that spring was training at Philadelphia's famous Franklin Field for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris with renowned Olympic Track Coach Lawson Robertson.
 
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the U.S.S. America, Clarke and his teammates arrived in France and promptly set a world record … more than once.  Running in the sixth and final qualifying heat in the 4x100, Clarke and teammates Frank Hussey, Alfred LeConey and Loren Murchison eased into the semifinals with a world-record time of 41.2 seconds.  They bettered that mark to 41.0 seconds in the semifinals and matched that mark in the final to edge the relay team from Britain and claim the gold medal.  Prior to this, the Olympic and World records stood at 42.2 seconds.
 
After the Olympics, Clark continued to compete as a member of Baltimore's Fifth Regiment and the Newark Athletic Club, where, in 1926, he was a member of the club's 4x100 relay team that captured the AAU National Title and twice broke the world record.
 
Like most Johns Hopkins students, Clarke put his degree to good use.  He worked for the Texaco Company as a chemist and patent liaison from just after graduation until 1966 – late in his career, he was a Senior Representative at the Texaco Research Center, not far from his hometown in Fishkill, New York.
 
Just over 70 years after graduating and nearly 20 years after passing away in 1977, Clarke was honored in 1994 as a member of the inaugural class of inductees in the Johns Hopkins Athletics Hall of Fame.  That first class of inductees, 12-strong, includes, as you would expect, the best of the best among student-athletes and coaches from the first 100-plus years of Blue Jay athletics.  The men on that list – from Bob Scott to Henry Ciccarone, from Doug and Jack Turnbull to Joe Cowan, from Bill Stromberg to Bill Milne to name a few – are the foundations of the remarkable tradition that is Blue Jay athletics.
 
Among those 12 initial inductees, each did something unique that cemented their place in Blue Jay lore.  Bob Scott … well, he was Bob Scott … enough said.  Doug Turnbull was a four-time First Team All-American in lacrosse.  Bill Milne won nine NCAA individual swimming titles.  Bill Stromberg set an NCAA record for career receptions and later became Hopkins' first (and still only) inductee into the College Football Hall of Fame.
 
Louis Clarke?  He was Hopkins' first NCAA Champion.  He also ran to gold at the Paris Olympics.
   
Ernie Larossa is in his 27th year as the Director of Athletic Communications at Johns Hopkins.  In short, he has the greatest job in the world; he gets paid to watch Johns Hopkins athletes compete and chronicle their achievements.  In September, 2017, he decided it was time to periodically pen a column about something related to Blue Jay athletics.