Category: Athlete

Inducted: Saturday, June 24, 2006

Gordon Follett put together a 24-year race walking career that ranks as the best in the athletic history of the province. He registered victories in every distance, won races in unparalleled stretches and coached his son Gordon Jr. to a bronze medal in the 1977 Canada Summer Games. He was voted St. John's Male Athlete of the Year for 1967, the same year the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada gave him a national award of merit.

Outside of the province, he won a ten-mile race in Toronto in 1964, was first in a 1969 one-mile race in New York and finished third in a 1966 50-kilometer event in Toronto. Owner at one time or another of 20 provincial race walking records, he posted 13 straight Grand Falls ten-mile races and won 15 straight Royal Stores ten-mile events. He had 13 straight wins in the Carnell Agencies 20-mile races and took first place in seven consecutive 50 kilometer competitions. His record of race walking victories, covering every distance, included every one in 1970, eight wins in '71, nine wins in '72 and '73, ten wins in '74 and seven wins in '75.

Away from race walking, Gordon Follett was a successful oarsman and coxswain at the Royal St. John's Regatta, played hockey in the St. John's Mercantile League and owns a long record of coaching slopitch softball.