Go Canada! Happy Heavenly 95th Birthday to Gerry Gratton!

August 29, 2022 – 2x Olympian, 2x Commonwealth Games champion, Olympic vice champion, legendary Gerry Gratton of Canada would have been celebrating his 95th Birthday today. Happy Heavenly Birthday to Canadian weightlifting legend!

Gerald “Gerry” Gratton (1927-1963) was one of the finest Olympic weightlifters of the 1950s.

He began training in Montreal, Canada in the 1940s. His first coach was Harvey Hill, a native of England and one of the well-known pioneers of organized weightlifting in Canada. Gerry’s signature approach in training was based on his great discipline and sports ethics.

At 20, Gratton was selected to represent Canada at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London and won the 5th place in the 75kg class. Four years later, he won a silver medal in the middleweight class at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. It was the first Olympic medal in weightlifting for Canada. At the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Gratton was one of the favorites to win a medal but didn’t make weight at the official weigh-in, by 100 grams (two ounces).

As previosuly noted, Gerry Gratton competed for Canada at three British Empire Games and won gold medals in Auckland (1950) and Vancouver (1954). He was a Canadian team flagbearer at the Opening Ceremony of the 1954 British Empire Games in Vancouver.

In June 1963, he suffered serious injuries in a car accident and died a few days later. He was 35.

Gerry Gratton was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 1955 and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.