AOC: Australia's most senior Olympic official has pleaded with a thief to return a gold medal he won 60 years ago. Kevan Gosper, the quarter-mile champion at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, recently discovered his prized medal was missing when he returned home from spinal surgery. 

Victoria Police believe it was taken between June and November last year when renovations were being done on

his South Yarra house. Mr Gosper, a former vice-president of the International Olympic Committee and president of  the Australian Olympic Committee, said the medal had little financial but great sentimental value. 

It was the first medal he won in international competition and he won it on a famous day in world athletics — the day of Roger Bannister and John Landy’s “miracle mile’’ at Vancouver’s Empire Stadium. 

“I would like think that the person who took it didn’t intend to steal it, that it was a misunderstanding,’’ Mr Gosper said. “In any case, if they were good enough to come forward to police and simply send it or make it available, that would be all that I’d want. I would just like to see it returned.’’ 

Victoria Police detective Senior Constable Jarrod Dwyer said the medal, if melted down for its gold, would be worth about $100. 

Courtesy of The Australian newspaper Victorian edition