Beautiful Track Champions Lead

[DoubleRBar]

Happy birthday today (Friday) to two Olympic champions with a total age of 141 years.

These two champions were born approximately 3,840 miles (6,179 km) from each other.

The older athlete was 21 years old when the younger person was born.

They won a total of two Olympic gold medals, competing in three Olympics.

Both people competed in the same event when winning those two Olympic gold medals.

Did I tell you that both athletes won their Olympic gold medals on the same continent?

Now is the time to name our birthday athletes for this second Friday of 2020.

[Olli]

Haha, I'll try again to figure out what follows from the clues. The older was born 1939, the younger 1960. Olympics on the same continent might most probably be 1964 and 1988 or 1968 and 1984. Based on initials, some alternatives come to mind. For one, Claudia Losch won women's shot put in 1984, which would imply that a B. T. won in 1968, but my instinct says this not the case. (I don't remember who won women's shot put in Mexico, but I suspect she was Russian with some other initials...) In any case, I cannot think of a better guess than Losch.

[tandfman]

No mention of hurdles, so if Losch is correct, B.T. must be a hurdler or a multis person. Bingo--Bill Toomey?

[Olli]

According to the clues "Both people competed in the same event when winning those two Olympic gold medals." Seems a bit misleading, if it was Toomey. Toomey had to do shot put but he did not compete in shot put, did he?

[DoubleRBar]

Happy birthday today to Bill Toomey (81) and Claudia Losch (60). Nice going, Olli and tandfman. You know that Toomey won the 1968 decathlon and Losch won the 1984 women's shot put.

I believe a decathlete must "compete" in all of the ten events available to those athletes, therefore, Toomey and Losch both "competed" in the shot put. Losch competed for the gold medal while Toomey competed for as many points as he could get in the shot put.

Bill Toomey would have never won the Mexico City decathlon without competing in the shot put.

[Trickstat]

Haha, I'll try again to figure out what follows from the clues. The older was born 1939, the younger 1960. Olympics on the same continent might most probably be 1964 and 1988 or 1968 and 1984. Based on initials, some alternatives come to mind. For one, Claudia Losch won women's shot put in 1984, which would imply that a B. T. won in 1968, but my instinct says this not the case. (I don't remember who won women's shot put in Mexico, but I suspect she was Russian with some other initials...) In any case, I cannot think of a better guess than Losch.

I think it was an East German, Margitta Gummel.

[DoubleRBar]

Yes it was. She broke the world record twice (rounds 3 & 5) in winning the 1968 Olympic gold medal.

[Olli]

OK. Funny thing is that Bill Toomey was actually the only B. T. that came to my mind, but I thought he did not fit the clues; I again underestimated DoubleRBar's slyness.

[DoubleRBar]

Thank you, Olli.