Out Of Gaol For Games?

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 17

Out Of Gaol For Games?

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) MEXICO CITY. General Humberto Mariles, the first Mexican Olympic gold medal winner and once the country’s most beloved sportsman, may be released from gaol in time to watch the Olympic Games.

He is serving a 20-year sentence for murder.

He won his gold medal In the individual jumping of the equestrian event at the 1948 London games, and then led his team to a second gold medal in the team jumping. The Mexican Supreme Court is studying an appeal by General Mariles to quash his conviction, based on a plea that the victim, a construction worker, Jesus Velazquez Mendez, died from lack of medical attention four years ago.

On August 14, 1964, exactly 16 years after he won his gold medal, General Mariles was involved in a car accident at Chapultepec Park in central Mexico City. During an argument with the driver of the other car. General Mariles was accused of having pulled out a pistol and shot the worker. He was charged, convicted and sentenced.

After the conviction, General Mariles vanished into obscurity behind the bars of Lecumberri Prison, and the Mexican custom of celebrating his Olympic triumph each August 14 with parties and public tributes died. But General Mariles, who had been awarded every honour Mexico could bestow on him, has talked to local newspaper reporters from his cell for the first time since his imprisonment.

“It has been hard. It has been exacting, but I was educated by soldiers to be a soldier,” said the man who was pushed through Mexico City in a car by delirious fans 20 years ago.

General Mariles said hundreds of horsemen around the world had not forgotten him and still sent him frequent letters or visited him if they passed through Mexico.

General Mariles leapt from his horse after the victory ceremony at Wembley Stadium in 1948 to argue with a policeman who wanted to apprehend a Mexican photographer who had jumped a fence.

Now he is waiting anxiously for the result of his conviction appeal which, if allowed, will enable him to attend the October games in his native country as a spectator.