Gary's Story
Gary Knoke competed at three Olympic Games and four Commonwealth Games. His best Olympic performance in his specialist event, the 400 metres hurdles, was at Tokyo 1964 where he finished an excellent fourth. In the rarefied atmosphere of Mexico City in 1968 he was the ninth fastest in the semi-finals and missed the final by one place.
At Munich 1972, disaster struck in the semi-final when he mistook the echo of the starter’s pistol as the signal for a false start and he stopped running. By the time he had realised his mistake the rest of the field was too far in front for him to catch up.
He died prematurely in 1984 at 42 years of age. Knoke Avenue in the Canberra suburb of Gordon is named in his honour.
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