IT WAS THE ERA of black and white television for most people. However, colour film footage has become available showing a young man from Nantymoel wearing number 149 taking deep breaths on a rainy day before running and jumping into the record books, and taking the gold medal for Great Britain at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Lynn Davies – ‘Lynn the Leap’ – took gold with a jump of 8.07m.
He was the first Welshman to win an individual Olympic gold medal, and he was the first and still only British man to win Long Jump gold at the Olympics. Lynn has an impressive record of wins at National and International level and went on to win the BBC Sports Personality of the Year twice.
He studied Physical Education at Cardiff Training College and later became technical director of Canadian athletics (1973-6) and British team manager before taking up a broadcasting career with BBC Wales and then working as Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Wales in Cardiff. He was elected as president of UK Athletics in 2003 and remains one of the most respected names in British sport.
The Herald caught up with the ever youthful Lynn Davies (now 74) at the Corran Resort and Spa in Laugharne, where he was hosting an ‘Olympic Legends Lunch’. We began by asking him what it was like growing up in Nantymoel in post -war Wales.
“I grew up in a small mining community. It was a typical mining community. Everybody knew everybody else and there were no real sporting facilities other than the rugby pitch. That was our arena for cricket, football and rugby. I remember going to see the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff in 1958 and that inspired me. There were no throwing or jumping facilities. We jumped rivers and made do. We had races between the lads and I remember going up the Bwlch mountain and jumping the river as it broadened. I was a very small boy and so I really didn’t start in athletics until I was eighteen. Up until then I played football, cricket and rugby.”
The Herald asked the Olympic legend if he believed that children have more opportunities to take part in sport today.
He replied: “Children have better facilities now and more opportunities and there is a greater awareness of the value of sport. It really is all about the volunteers. The main factor is the Mums and Dads and the coaches who train the children. They have to give up time taking the children back and forth. I am worried about the cuts in sport. “There is a saying – ‘From the Playground to Podium’. Sport relies not just on facilities but on people, and without them, we can never achieve anything. It begins in the playground. We have to support the playground level and the grass – roots level to provide opportunities. When children watch Wimbledon or the Olympic Games, they want to go out and play and be like the heroes they just watched. If you take that away we won’t have those heroes in the future.”
We asked Lynn what is opinion was of non competitive sports in schools.
He did not hold back with his answer: “It is nonsense, absolute nonsense. Sport is so character building. Life is not about not competing. We have to survive and compete and be the best that we can and sport teaches you that. It teaches you how to lose. Losing isn’t a problem – there are lessons you learn from it. Sport is a valuable tool for teaching young people and we must recognise that.”
Everyone has someone they have been inspired by in some way or another. The Herald asked Lynn who had inspired him. He told us that it began when he watched the Empire Games in Cardiff in 1958.
“As television developed in the 1960s, I watched people on television being great athletes. I had a chance meeting with Ron Pickering and he encouraged me to take up athletics instead of football or rugby. Growing up in the 1950s, I loved all sport. My heroes were John Charles and Ivor Allchurch, who became sports personalities.
“On the first occasion I became Welsh Sports Personality of the Year, I thought, ‘ten years ago I never ever thought I would become Welsh Sports Personality of the Year and one of those people I looked up to’.”
Lynn Davies had a career in teaching and he had to juggle that work with being an athlete. We asked him if that had been a problem at the time.
He replied that circumstances dictated there was no problem: “In my era, I was an amateur athlete and I had to have a full-time job. That meant I went to Cardiff Training College. I quite liked the balance of being an athlete but having a career alongside it. I am very happy in the way that it has all worked out.”
It is difficult to imagine the great Lynn Davies admiring anyone else but we asked anyway. He was characteristically generous in his response. He said: “I admire lots of sporting people. In athletics, we have Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farrah. I also admire Andy Murray and we have our Welsh football team, of course, who got to the semi -finals of Euro 2016. It is wonderful that a country the size of Wales can punch so tough above its weight. I think it is wonderful that people from Laugharne or Aberystwyth or Bangor can think that it doesn’t matter where they are from, they can achieve at the highest level because other Welsh people have done that.”
Judging by the reception Lynn received from the large audience at the Corran Resort and Spa, he has cemented a place firmly in the hearts of sports lovers and fellow athletes everywhere. It was a real pleasure to interview this elder statesman of athletics who, on a rainy day in Tokyo, while others were asking for changes and allowances, including changing the running strip so it would be out of the wind, managed to embrace the rain and wind and leap for gold in glorious black and white or colour depending on where you happened to live in Wales at the time.
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