Lennart Hedmark

Who is Lennart Hedmark?

Lennart Per-Olav Hedmark is a retired Swedish track and field athlete who competed in the decathlon. He represented his country three times at the Summer Olympics.

He started his career as a javelin throw specialist and claimed three straight titles in the event at the Swedish Championships from 1963 to 1965. He was selected to compete at the 1964 Summer Olympics, but did not start the competition. His first international medal came at the 1965 Summer Universiade, where he was the bronze medallist.

Hedmark changed his focus to combined events in 1967 and he was one of his region's dominant athletes over his career: he had four consecutive victories in the Nordic Combined Events Championships from 1967 to 1970, and in a decade of national competition he won seven Swedish decathlon titles in addition to five titles in the pentathlon. At the 1968 Summer Olympics he came eleventh in the decathlon. International medals came at the 1970 Summer Universiade, where he took the silver behind Mykola Avilov, and at the 1971 European Athletics Championships, finishing as runner-up to the defending champion Joachim Kirst.