When Stan was our own Olympic man

IT WILL be a proud moment for Stan Wild when he carries the Olympic torch along Rougier Street tomorrow on the York leg of its journey around the UK.

He will be cheered on by past and present members of the York Gymnastics Centre that he started – as the York Gymnastics Club – almost 40 years ago.

“There will be hundreds of them,” he says. “It will be a great moment. I shall be representing all of them.”

Inevitably, the moment will bring back his Olympic memories. Stan, who still lives in York, represented his country in gymnastics at two Olympics – in Mexico in 1968, and four years later in Munich in 1972.

They were very different occasions, he admits. “Mexico was probably the happiest Olympics. It was just the atmosphere. The Mexicans were very happy-go-lucky. There wasn’t a dry eye in the stadium during the closing ceremony.”

Four years later, in Munich, it was very different. That was the year in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Stan and the rest of the GB team were housed in a building only 100 yards or so from the Israelis. They had been on a bus tour to see Ludwig’s castle in Bavaria that day, he recalls. “The German bus driver told us what had happened. On the way back we saw helicopters circling the Olympic village.”

The following morning the athletes attended a meeting in the Olympic stadium at which they were told the Games would go on.

It was ‘absolutely’ the right decision, Stan says. But inevitably what had happened cast a pall over the remainder of the games. “It was quite traumatic.”

South Yorkshire-born Stan, who came to York in 1969 to teach physical education at York St John College, had a distinguished gymnastics career.

He represented his country at four world championships, three European Championships and two Olympic games. He was also British champion for five years.

But he still rates setting up the York Gymnastics Club as his proudest achievement. “Gymnastics is for everybody, whether two years old or adults, beginners through to the highly able.”

Stan is one of 40 or so York sporting heroes featured in a new book – It’s How You Play The Game – by York oral historian Van Wilson.

Not all of them represented their country in the Olympics. But all excelled at one of the recognised 25 Olympic sports – whether by representing their county, or their country at world, European, Commonwealth or Olympic level.

Some of those featured – such as the hockey player Derek Bellerby, who died earlier this year, aged 89 – are no longer with us.

Others, such as the boxer Frank Fowler, passed away many years ago.

But many are still alive and well – and Van allows them to tell their stories in their own words.

“It has been a real privilege to meet them and share their stories,” she says.

• It’s How You Play The Game: Olympic Sports in York by Van Wilson is published by York Archaeological Trust on June 26, priced £9.99.

• The Olympic Torch will be carried through the streets of York tomorrow between 5.24pm and 6.50pm, finishing at York Racecourse.

Sporting heroes

Allan Whitwell

Born in 1954, Allan competed in three Olympics, winning silver in Moscow in 1980. He now runs an international sculling camp in France. But as a lad he went to Acomb Secondary School, and first went to York City Rowing Club at the age of 11.

“It was my uncle’s suggestion,” he recalls in Van’s book. “He was an ex-rower from the navy. My uncle encouraged my brother to go, and within six months, they needed a coxswain, so I was dragged down.” It was more relaxed than today, he recalls. If the adults had finished with the boats, the youngsters would “take them out for a little scull. We learnt by falling in and teaching ourselves a bit of watermanship”.

Allan left school and got a job with British Sugar on Boroughbridge Road. The company arranged a job in Tower Hill in the sales office so he could train and have a chance to make the Olympic team in late 1975.

“I was working shifts... so in the afternoon after I’d slept, it allowed me to train perhaps more than most, because of limitations of being on the water in the dark. I was doing two or three hours training a day.”

His coach, Baz Turner, was hugely influential, he says. “He dragged me out once even though I’d got a hangover, he said, ‘Get out and row’. He certainly toughened us up.”

Eventually, Allan moved to London and then Nottingham so as to get the coaching and training he needed.

He competed as a single sculler, in pairs, quadruples and eights, and it was as part of the GB eights team that he won silver at Moscow in 1980.

“We were only together for 100 days,” he recalls. “The boat itself wasn’t prepared for the Olympics, so to get the medal at the end was quite incredible.”

The highlight of his career, however, was the World Championships in Nottingham in 1986, when he won the Lightweight Double Sculls with Carl Smith. Winning a world title, he says, was like an out of body experience. “Almost like bursting a bubble… you don’t understand the importance of it until later.”

Cathy Mitton

York table tennis player Cathy Mitton was one of the first athletes to be named for the Great Britain table tennis team for the 2008 Paralympic Games.

Having contracted polio at the age of two, sport was never easy for her.

But the Polio Games held an event at least every year.

“You took part in everything, javelin, discus, running and swimming,” she says in Van’s book.

There were huge challenges to overcome. Sometimes she would arrive at a practise hall only to find it was up a flight of steps, or at the top of a hill, or the gate would be padlocked, or the lift wouldn’t work. It was also difficult to find coaches who could train wheelchair users.

“You have to be really determined if you want to get into it,” she says.

But she persevered, and by the late 1980s was playing frequently. “They’d have a Yorkshire event and winners would go to the national games in Stoke Mandeville.”

It was at an international championship at Stoke Mandeville in 1994 that she had her first taste of international competition. “Then I was selected for the European championships in 1997 in Sweden.” She won silver.

Cathy has won three World Championships medals in all, including gold in Taipei in 2002. She also won bronze at the Sydney and Athens Paralympics Then came Beijing in 2008. She was 51 and it was in many ways the highlight of her career: she was appearing in a country whose national game is table tennis.

“There were crowds at every session, every seat was taken,” she says.

Now 55, Cathy lives just outside York. She is still competing, though she hasn’t been selected for this year’s Paralympics. “But her determination and desire to show what can be done have shown her to be a true role-model for sportsmen and women with disabilities who want to compete at the highest level,” writes Van.

Wally Beavers

Walter James ‘Wally’ Beavers, who died in 1965, was one of York’s finest athletes.

Born in York in 1903, he joined York Harriers in his teens. He won a total of nine Northern Counties titles over distances of one, three and four miles, and was selected for the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, where he finished ninth in the 1,000 metres to the ‘flying Finn’ Paavo Nurmi. His greatest achievement was winning gold in the 1934 British Empire Games. But there is a lovely story about his victory in a Northern Counties Athletics Association three mile event at Leeds University.

The story is related in Van’s book by one W. Illingworth. “Beavers was soon nearly 100 yards behind… and was subject to some barracking from the crowd,” he says.

“What many spectators did not know was that Beavers was running according to a strict schedule set by his coach Jimmy Dawson. Dawson shouted ‘tha’s all reight, Walter’ as he came past him. Two and a half laps from the finish, Jimmy called out ‘Nah then Walt, tha’ can go’, and with a phenomenal burst of speed, Beavers overhauled his …rivals. His time of 14 mins 38.4 seconds was not beaten until 1949.”

Alf Patrick

York City legend Alf Patrick celebrated his 90th birthday late last year – and earlier this year was presented with Maundy money by the Queen.

He is City’s oldest surviving player – and the only one to score five goals in one match, in a 6-1 thumping of Rotherham in November 1948. He was also the first man to reach 100 goals for York and is fourth on the club’s all-time goal scorers’ list, with 117 goals from 241 matches.

Layerthorpe-born Alf played for Manor School then York City Boys as a lad, and had a trial with Yorkshire schoolboys.

But he served with the Royal Engineers’ tank assault unit in the war, so didn’t start his football career proper until he was 25. He was then a part-time pro, working for Cooke, Troughton and Simms and training two nights a week.

He played seven or eight games for City’s second team before he got into the first team as centre forward.

“I started at about £2.10s as a part-time player,” he recalls. “I used to go on a bike to the match, I’d think sometimes if I got a puncture I’d have been a bit late. You got two pound if you won, on top of your wages.”

The wages might have been meagre by today’s standards, but the crowds were not. “At Hull there were 42,000 there and we beat them 3-2,” he recalls.

He had a number of nasty injuries during his playing career.

“In 1947, a real bad winter, I fell and broke my scaphoid bone (wrist). Then I had me nose done once, and I used to have a bit of trouble with the hamstring. All they did in those days, you used to have like a sunlamp, and they’d put that on, laid on the bed.

“None of the fancy stuff that you get today. A magic sponge and a bucket of cold water. I had a plaster cast on my leg... We lived in Penyghent Avenue, and when I finished with it I stuck it in our compost heap, there was this pot leg sticking up.”