In his teens Willem Theunissen was a decent middle distance runner, and he bettered Dutch records in the mile and 2,000 m around the turn of the century. His medicine studies in Amsterdam put running into second place, but in 1908 he decided to partake in the qualification race for the Olympic marathon. Despite spraining his ankle late into the race, Theunissen won in 2-55:44. While this meant he qualified for London, his ankle injury prevented him from competing. Theunissen specialized as a neurologist, but in 1915 he departed for the Dutch East Indies to head a string of insane asylums between 1916 and 1935. In 1935, he became lead inspector of the hospitals, and in 1938 was named head of Public Health in Batavia (present day Jakarta). Theunissen, who was also head of the Dutch East Indies Boy Scouts Union, spent three years in a Japanese internment camp before returning to the Netherlands in 1946. There, he worked in various medicial positions, such as journal editor and court expert until his death in 1961.
Netherlands