Mark Allen

Mark Allen may refer to:

See also

Mark Allen (businessman)

Sir Mark John Spurgeon Allen CMG (born 3 July 1950) is a British former spy, turned businessman and academic lecturer.

Early life

Allen is the son of Peter Muir Spurgeon Allen, headmaster of Cokethorpe School in Oxfordshire. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and at Downside School, the Roman Catholic public school in Somerset, where he studied classical languages and took up falconry and calligraphy. He then read Arabic at Exeter College, University of Oxford.

Career

After university, he joined the British Foreign Service, where he worked for 30 years. After studying at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies, a claimed British ‘spy school’ in a village near Beirut, he was posted to Abu Dhabi in 1974, where he developed his love of falconry from his contacts with Bedouin to the extent that he wrote a series of books on the subject, including Falconry in Arabia (1980). He then spent much of the rest of his operational career in the Middle East.

In 2003, as head of MI6’s counter-terrorism unit, Allen and Stephen Kappes of the CIA led talks which resulted in an end of support for terrorist activity by Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s, and of international sanctions against Libya.

Mark Allen (triathlete)

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Mark Allen (born January 12, 1958 in Glendale, California) is the second six-time Ironman Triathlon World Champion. He graduated from UC San Diego, where he was an All-American swimmer, with a degree in biology.

After competing and losing in the Ironman Triathlon Championships six times (often to Dave Scott), Allen emerged victorious in 1989, winning one of the most difficult one-day sporting events in the world.

It would be the first of six Ironman victories for Allen, the last coming in 1995 at age 37. He has also excelled at the Olympic distance, winning the sport's inaugural World Championships in 1989 in Avignon, France, by more than a minute. He was undefeated in 10 trips to the Nice International Championships, and from 1988-1990 he put together a winning streak of 20 races.

Over the course of his racing career, which ended in 1996, he maintained a 90% average in top-three finishes. He was named Triathlete of the Year six times by Triathlete magazine, and in 1997 Outside magazine tabbed him The World's Fittest Man. Allen was inducted into the Ironman Triathlon Hall of Fame in 1997.