Trinidad-born sprinter who represented Great Britain at the Olympics
From 1946 to 1953, the sprinter Emmanuel McDonald "Mac" Bailey established a record for winning the most national Amateur Athletics Association titles. These 15 victories included the sprint double of the 100 yards and 220 yards at the AAA Championships every year apart from 1948. Mac, who has died aged 92, achieved his finest Olympic result in Helsinki in 1952 when he took the bronze medal in a photo finish in the 100m, with the same time – 10.4 seconds – as the gold and silver medallists.
His achievements – including a 100m victory in 10.2 seconds in Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia, in 1951, matching the then world record established by Jesse Owens in 1936 – were won for Great Britain, where he lived, off and on, from the early 1940s until the late 1980s. He would ultimately have preferred to represent his native Trinidad and Tobago, a British colony until it achieved independence in 1962. He had been eligible to run for either his birthplace or his workplace, and for the London Olympics in 1948 had chosen Great Britain. He subsequently came fourth in the 100m despite the fact he was recovering from a leg injury. Partly with that injury in mind, a cash-strapped Trinidad and Tobago Olympics Association declared: "We have not made any provisions for Bailey." While Britain always regarded him with great warmth, official recognition in his land of origin came much later.
Born in the south Trinidadian village of Hard Bargain, in Williamsville, he was the son of a schoolteacher. Mac was sprint champion at his primary and secondary schools, and at 16 beat JRN Cumberbatch, Trinidad's leading runner, over 220 yards in 21.5 seconds, a national record at the time.
In 1939 he was elected along with Cumberbatch to represent Trinidad at the AAA Championships at White City, London. Mac, at the age of 18, was eligible to run in the junior events but declined, preferring to pit himself against seasoned runners in the open international events. Far from being humiliated, he had the distinction of reaching the semi-finals.
Having returned to Britain with the RAF, he promptly made a name for himself in sprinting. His time of 10.2 seconds in 1951 stood for five years. Mac ran in an amateur era. For a season's hard work in training, he and his family had to content themselves with the prize of a toaster or a radio and the occasional under-the-table cash payment.
In 1953 he won an appeal after the AAA suspended him following the publication of an advert for starting blocks "made to the requirements of E McDonald Bailey Ltd" in the Oxford v Cambridge sports programme. That year he published a sprinters' guide, If It's Speed You're After, and retired from running. He subsequently played professional rugby for Leigh in Lancashire for one season and worked for several years for Booker, the food wholesale group, in what was then British Guiana. He was the administrator of the group's sports training programme.
In Trinidad, at various times, he found irregular work on national and private sporting bodies and committees. In an age when money from television and sponsorship has flowed into sport, he belonged to an older generation whose experience was not exploited properly; as a former world-class athlete from a small nation, Mac often felt bemused, though not ungrateful.
He coached Trinidad's athletics team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and worked as a BBC journalist at the Rome Olympics in 1960 and at the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1970. With his wife, Doris, an excellent cook, he opened a restaurant in Port of Spain.
In the late 1990s Mac lost his eyesight after suffering from glaucoma for several years. He was given a lifetime achievement prize at the Spirit of Sports awards in Port of Spain last year.
He is survived by Doris and his children, Christine, Joan, Rachel, Robert and Richard.
• Emmanuel McDonald (Mac) Bailey, athlete, born 8 December 1920; died 4 December 2013