TOM Lancashire will be the first Bolton athlete to compete at the Olympic Games for 44 years.

The 23-year-old will run the 1,500m in Beijing next month after winning the Olympic Trials in Birmingham on Sunday.

He is the first Bolton Harrier to go to a Games since Ron Hill ran the marathon in 1972.

As Hill came from Accrington, you have to go back another eight years to the last time a Bolton athlete competed at the Olympics.

John Boulter, a Bolton Harrier who went to Bolton School, ran the 800m in 1964.

He reached the semi-final in Tokyo, and only missed out on a place in the final by the skin of his teeth.

The man from Moses Gate ran 1 minute 47.1 seconds in his semi, just two hundredths of a second, and one place away from qualifying for the final.

Lancashire will be the eighth Bolton Harrier to compete at an Olympic Games.

As well as running the marathon in 1972, Hill also went to the two previous Games, competing in the 10,000m in Mexico in 1968 and both the 10,000m and the marathon in Tokyo 1964.

Four years earlier, Boltonian Chris Goudge ran the 400m hurdles in Rome.

Fred Norris from Tyldesley ran the 10,000m in Helsinki in 1952 and ran the marathon four years later in Melbourne.

The previous Bolton Harrier to run at a Games was Cyril Butler Holmes, who was from Heaton and competed in the 100m in Berlin in 1936.

And four years earlier, fellow Westhoughton 100m sprinter Ethel Johnson ran in Los Angeles.

Prior to them was the first Bolton Harrier to represent the town at the Olympics when George Wallach ran the 10,000m in Stockholm in 1912, just four years after the club was formed.

Lancashire's presence in Beijing is the perfect way to mark his club's centenary year, ending a 36-year wait for a Harriers athlete to go to a Games, and a 44-year gap since a Boltonian did it.