Harper became the
national 10 miles champion after winning the
AAA Championships title at the
1923 AAA Championships. At the 1924 Olympic Games, Harper finished fifth in the
10000 metre and fourth in the
individual cross country event. and won it again at the
1927 AAA Championships and
1929 AAA Championships. In 1928 Harper finished 22nd in the
Olympic marathon; he improved to second place at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Harper earned praise for advising eventual winner
Sohn Kee-chung not to chase after
Juan Carlos Zabala, who had opened a big lead. Zabala eventually pulled out of the race. Sohn was later reported to have said: "Please say Mr Harper is a very fine man for telling me about Zabala." At the
1930 British Empire Games in Hamilton, Canada, Harper won the silver medal in the six miles event. Harper ran for
Hallamshire Harriers and Athletic Club in Sheffield. His record in the national cross-country championships was: 3rd (1923), 2nd (1924), 2nd (1925 & 1926), 1st (1927), 14th (1928), 1st (1929) and 2nd (1930). In addition, he won numerous Yorkshire and Northern cross-country titles and represented England in
International Cross Country Championships in 1923–1931, winning the individual competition in 1926. Harper had a fine reputation for sportsmanship. As well as the 1936 marathon incident mentioned above, in a 1924 international cross-country race he waited for another competitor, as described in
The Times:
[The collapse of Ryan], besides causing much excitement, left Harper with every prospect of coming in first. Instead of making the most of his opportunity, however, Harper turned and waved for Cotterell to come along. Cotterell came up with a bound, and the pair ran abreast until about twenty-five yards from the tape, when Cotterell made a great sprint, leaving Harper apparently standing still, and won a sensational race. Cotterell must have put in some wonderful running in the last two-and-a-half miles to make up the ground he did. Without in the least trying to discount the excellence of his victory, however, every credit must be given to Harper, a young runner who, to say the least of it, displayed great unselfishness. There is no means of knowing exactly how much [Cotterell] had in reserve at the finish, but it certainly seemed that Harper deliberately sacrificed his chance of being the first man home. Apocryphal stories tell of him helping up competitors who had fallen, and re-directing someone who had taken a wrong turn on a cross-country course. More prosaically, he was once said to have vacated his seat on a full bus to allow another passenger to sit, instead running behind the vehicle all the way up the steep hill to his home. In 1939 Harper turned professional. Around that time he lived with his married daughter, who settled in Australia. == References ==