Landmark Olympians Jim Thorpe and Lina Radke were honoured today to mark the opening of the virtual Museum Of World Athletics Olympic Athletics Collection ©World Athletics

Landmark Olympians Jim Thorpe and Lina Radke were honoured today to mark the opening of the virtual Museum Of World Athletics (MOWA) Olympic Athletics Collection.

Thorpe, who won the pentathlon and decathlon titles for the United States at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics, and Germany’s Radke, the first women’s 800 metres champion at the Antwerp 1928 Games, have been awarded the World Athletics Heritage Plaque in the posthumous category of Legend.

Artefacts from Emil Zatopek, Naoko Takahashi, and Eliud Kipchoge are among the standout items in the latest MOWA room to be opened.

The collection also commemorates the last day of the athletics programme at the Paris 1900 Olympics on July 22.

A miniature silver commemorative plaque from those Paris celebrations, designed by the renowned Parisian sculptor and engraver Frédéric-Charles-Victor de Vernon, is the oldest Olympic artefact on display.

The Melbourne 1956 tracksuit top of four-time Olympic champion Zatopek, who finished sixth in the marathon that year despite having undergone a hernia operation just six weeks earlier, is the star attraction of the new exhibits.

Jim Thorpe, pentathlon and decathlon champion at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics, was specially honoured today to mark the opening of the Museum Of World Athletics' Olympic Athletics Collection ©Getty Images
Jim Thorpe, pentathlon and decathlon champion at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics, was specially honoured today to mark the opening of the Museum Of World Athletics' Olympic Athletics Collection ©Getty Images

The top has undergone more than 400 hours of conservation work by some of the world’s top experts in the Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum.

It was donated to the World Athletics Heritage Collection in 2018 by Zatopkova's wife Dana, the 1952 Olympic javelin champion.

Takahashi, Japan’s Sydney 2000 marathon winner, has donated a signed competition number, and Kipchoge has given one of the shoes, signed, that he wore in winning the Rio 2016 marathon title in 2 hours 8min 44sec.

Meanwhile the shoes worn by 10 Olympic medallists are featured in a display enabled by manufacturer Asics, formerly named Onitsuka Tiger, founded by Kihachiro Onitsuka in 1949.

Photographed in-situ at the ASICS Museum in Kobe by World Athletics Heritage, the shoes are now available virtually in MOWA in 360-degree three-dimension vision.

They include the footwear worn by Britain’s Basil Heatley and Japan’s Kōkichi Tsuburaya as they won silver and bronze respectively behind Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia at the Tokyo 1964 Olympics.

One of Finland’s Lasse Viren’s shoes worn during his second Olympic 5,000-10,000 metres double at Montreal 1976 is also now featured.