Athletics at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Games:

In 1951 and 1952 Soviet Vladimir Kazantsev had twice set world best times and was favored. The heats were very fast with five runners breaking nine minutes. The third heat was won by American Horace Ashenfelter in a very quick 8:51.2. In the final Kazantsev and his teammate, Mikhail Saltykov pulled away early and led by 20 metres with 700 metres remaining. But Ashenfelter and Britain’s John Disley then closed hard and caught Kazantsev on the last lap, as Saltykov dropped off the pace. Ashenfelter took the lead on the final curve over the water jump, and pulled away to an easy victory in world record time. With the US-Soviet Cold War battle at the Olympics, much was made in the American media of the fact that Ashenfelter was an FBI agent who had chased down a Soviet runner.