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| Born | Christopher John Commons 9 December 1950 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Athletics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Event | Long jump | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Box Hill Athletics Club, Melboune University Athletics Club, Geelong Guild Athletics Club | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Christopher John Commons (born 9 December 1950) is a retired long jumper from Australia, who represented his country in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. [1] [2] [3]
Commons won silver medals in the 1974 and 1978 Commonwealth Games during his career. [4] [5] [6] A four-time national champion in the men's long jump (1973–1976), he held the Australian Residential Long Jump Record of 8.08 metres. [7] He won the Pacific Conference Games in 1977 and was second in the event in 1973. [8]
He won the New Zealand Games in Christchurch in 1975 and competed in the World University Games (Universiade) in 1973 in Moscow. [9]
Commons was ranked sixth in the world by the magazine Track & Field News in 1975. [10] He received the Athlete of the Year award from the Athletics International organisation for the 1974–5 season.
As a young athlete, Commons was the Australian Junior Champion (under 19 years of age) in the triple jump for three consecutive years (1967–9). [11]
His brothers, Don Commons, a triple jumper, and David Commons, were also notable athletes.
Commons completed a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in inorganic chemistry at the University of Melbourne in 1975. [12] In later years, he had a distinguished career as a teacher of chemistry and as an educational administrator. [13] He has authored numerous secondary school chemistry text books as well as chemistry research articles, in the fields of X-ray crystallography and coordination complexes. [14] [15] [16]